Carnage & Grace: Confessions of an Adulterous Heart

by Tullian Tchividjian

Skip ahead a month or so to midsummer 2014. I’d had no communication of any kind with this woman, and in my mind I had successfully appeased both the husband and the father (emphasis on in my mind). I figured this was now firmly behind me. Then I received a text out of the blue from her now-fuming father: “I know everything. I just read through every text message you exchanged with my daughter, and the two of you significantly minimized what actually happened.” My heart sank; it was jarring, like the treadmill skipped a gear or something. Those texts were a smoking gun—indisputable, damning evidence of a much more involved relationship than what anybody knew up until then. I could tell this wasn’t going away. I was on vacation with my family, and needless to say, mine was over. I subsequently received a message from our mutual friend who’d been contacted by the now-fuming father who wanted the three of us to meet in person in Orlando. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as scared as I was in that moment. We met, the three of us, and her father raked me over the coals (as he should have). The “treadmill” was now shaking violently, like a boat on stormy waves. I was losing my footing, and then he essentially pulled the power cord from the wall so that everything came to a screeching halt—he read me a letter his son-in-law had written to me. It was well written and maturely tempered, but at the same time scathing and surgical. It’s been many years since that letter was read to me, bu...