(Broken) Love Story

“You just left me!” my fiancé shouts. “In the middle of a city I don’t know. You just drove away.” Our wedding is supposed to be in just a few days.

Feverish with anger and July’s midday heat, we are standing by the road in my parents’ suburban neighborhood. Dagi, an Ethiopian who has only touched down in my hometown of Indianapolis a few weeks ago, has had to puzzle out a bus route to return to my parents’ home where we are both staying before the wedding. He’s just been walking from the bus stop.

By now I am shouting too, my body shaking with screams and desperation. “You told me to!” I recall that moment earlier in the day, after yet another argument, when he dared me to go, and I did. I slipped into the car, trembling with tears, and punched the gas—leaving him stranded downtown, alone.

Suddenly a police car stops, and a window rolls down. “You guys okay?” the officer asks. “Some neighbors were calling about a public disturbance.” With a shock of shame, I look around at the homes surrounding us, wondering who called. Perhaps someone our family has been trying to show God’s love to over the years. Perhaps that bridge has now been broken.

I am too exasperated to consider what other bridges Dagi and I have broken recently. We are both in ministry. I am a teacher at an international mission school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the city where I met Dagi, the media and communications coordinator and interim youth leader at our church. For the thousandth time since we landed in America—thrashing in that cauldron of prenuptial stress and culture shock (mine reverse)—I wonder if we should call off the wedding. Even though we have filled out endless stacks of forms for Dagi’s fiancé visa. Even though we have already prepared everything from the venue to the vows. Even though, in the deepest reaches of myself, I still love him…

Finish reading this and other stories from 45 women serving around the world in Yet We Still Hope: Stories of Courage from Women Serving Around the World available on pre-order here!