Below are excerpts from my upcoming book, The Extortion of Forgiveness:

“August twenty-second of 1998 was a perfect day for a perfect couple. I stood with my closest family and friends, about to make Kristi my wife—not far from the cramped, campaign office in “Old Germantown” where we’d first met. We were about to exchange vows—in sickness and in health—for better or for worse. I knew what better meant, but worse – that I could not imagine. Not that day. Yet the vows we made before God ended up making us face the ultimate test, when “worse” would be defined years later.”

 

“Where exactly did our ball of yarn – our marriage begin to unwind? That’s hard to say, but my lack of patience and inflated expectations of how our life should have been scarred and wounded both of us. Instead of light scratches, our injuries turned into deeper wounds, the kind that are hard to heal and easy to reopen and inflict greater damage each time. Maybe it was my constant pursuit to build a perfect life on an imperfect foundation, with imperfect materials, all handled by imperfect people.”