I grew up in a teetotaler family, and for anyone who doesn’t recognize the phrase popular in 1920’s America, it simply means that we didn’t have alcohol of any kind at our house. Alcoholism was common on both sides of my family, and my mother drilled into us that addiction is hereditary. One drink may not harm you; two drinks may not harm you. But choices catch up to you, and it’s better to make wise choices from the beginning than to try to fix foolish ones later. So neither of my parents drink alcohol at all, and my mom has some hilarious stories about being too embarrassed to go into a grocery store to buy beer to marinate steaks and having to go to a liquor store to get rock-n-rye whiskey to give my sister who had had a cough for months that nothing seemed to be able to treat – except a tablespoon of that whiskey mixed with honey and lemon. Words like wine, beer, and whiskey were treated almost like curse words in my house, and we said them in a low whisper. This environment protected me from many mistakes growing up, but it didn’t prepare me well to be married to a man who grew up in a different world.

Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.

1 Timothy 5:23

Afa’s history was the exact opposite. Before he became a disciple, he had a history of abusing drugs and alcohol; because of the way I had been raised, the only logical response to that kind of history was to avoid alcohol entirely. There was no reason to consume it because it led to addiction, or at least that was my line of thinking. When we got married, he recommended drinking wine for a stomach ache, and in my mind, he might as well have offered me hard drugs. He told me that it was in the Bible, and I didn’t believe him…until he actually showed it to me. (I still don’t know that wine is a great treatment for a stomach ache, but I can confirm that kombucha was the only thing to successfully treat my pregnancy heartburn.) There are examples throughout the Bible of people drinking alcohol without sinning. Unless I wanted to discount all these verses, I needed to re-evaluate my “absolutely no alcohol under any circumstances” point of view.

Throughout our marriage, Afa would ask at different times if he could have beer or a glass of wine, and I was always taken aback by the question. It didn’t make any sense to me. When we had been married for about five years, we went to Los Angeles to spend some time with Afa’s family. After all the kids had gone to bed, I was asleep on the couch and I heard someone get Afa a drink. I was upset but knew that was not the time to address it or even ask about it. I waited until we were driving back to San Francisco the next day to even mention it. It became an argument going in circles, so we decided to stop talking about it until we could get some help having the conversation. I texted the couple who discipled us at the time and received the following text message that I don’t think I will ever forget: “Are you under the impression that Afa does not drink any alcohol at all?”

I can read between the lines (or at least I like to think that I can), and I read a lot more in that text message than it actually said. I could tell that I was missing something huge. 

We got back to San Francisco and went to dinner with our friends who had helped us through many arguments. We sat down at a Vietnamese restaurant, and they started asking us some tough questions. They were masterful at digging into the heart of the issue when I would get stuck on the one thing that I wanted to talk about. They helped us first walk in the light and be completely honest with one another and second figure out where to head from there so that we could avoid these relationship landmines in the future. 

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

Mark 2:23-24

While Afa had his share of sin in this story, the biggest lessons of the day were for me. I had become like a Pharisee, placing burdensome restrictions on the people around me that are not in the Bible. I had become so dogmatic about a rule that I grew up with that my husband could not even be honest with me about his disagreement with it. He was scared to tell me the truth because I was easily angered, and alcohol was an issue that I did not think spiritually or rationally about: it was simply off limits. 

In so many ways our marriage is incredible, and at that time, Afa was pulling most of the weight. Finiasi was nine months old; Eliam was two, and Ana Lia was three. They filled my whole days, and Afa did a majority of chores around the house and took care of me when I was overwhelmed. He became my rock and my anchor. Even though we were far from perfect, I looked to him for everything. When I found out he had been drinking alcohol for a couple years and not telling me, even though he was never drunk, it felt like an earthquake rocked my entire world. 

The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Psalm 18:2

This is a natural consequence of choosing a person as an idol. I had made Afa the center of my world and my strength, rather than God…and my sin set everyone up for failure. I needed to radically repent and radically forgive to heal a destructive rift in our marriage that I had widened to a chasm. Afa could never have lived up to the ideal of him I created in my head, and he couldn’t tell me the truth because I didn’t give him the space to do that. God has to be rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My husband is my leader, my discipler, and my friend – but he cannot fill God’s role. When I expect him to, disaster ensues.

To this day, alcohol makes me a little uncomfortable. There’s still a twitch inside me when Afa talks about what kind of wine to buy. But I have to remember that just because something makes me uncomfortable doesn’t make it a sin, and I am only allowed to hold disciples to the Bible – not to my comfortability. Afa and I have had many conversations about alcohol, when it is okay to drink it and when it is not. I’m grateful for these conversations because it means that I have grown. I’m not shutting them down before they even begin, so we can make choices together. Sometimes, I don’t always agree with the choices, but we are discussing them in the light instead of hiding them in the darkness. And I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to go through challenging times and come through with the refreshment that repentance brings.

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord

Acts 3:19