When the Darkness Starts Talking
With each passing day, I still experience a full range of emotions about everything that has happened in my life in the past year and a half. Some days I feel strong. Some days I feel hopeful. Some days I feel angry. Some days grief sneaks up on me without warning. The other day was one of those days. I was feeling down, and out of curiosity I opened Spotify and searched for “sad songs” just to see what it would give me. Somehow, of all things, I landed on a playlist called “Depressed Dad Rock.” Apparently, there really is a playlist for everything.
I listened to a few songs, but I couldn’t take much of it. There was only so much darkness I wanted pouring into my head, so eventually I switched back to the faith-based rock that has carried me through so much of this season. But before I did, one song caught my attention. I had heard it before on the radio: Shinedown’s “45.” Here’s what the song says:
Send away for a priceless gift
One not subtle, one not on the list
Send away for a perfect world
One not simply, so absurd
In these times of doing what you’re told
Keep these feelings, no one knows
What ever happened to the young man’s heart?
Swallowed by pain, as he slowly fell apartAnd I’m staring down the barrel of a 45
Swimming through the ashes of another life
No real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45Send a message to the unborn child
Keep your eyes open for a while
In a box high up on the shelf
Left for you, no one elseThere’s a piece of a puzzle known as life
Wrapped in guilt, sealed up tight
What ever happened to the young man’s heart?
Swallowed by pain, as he slowly fell apartAnd I’m staring down the barrel of a 45
Swimming through the ashes of another life
No real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45Everyone’s pointing their fingers
Always condemning me
And nobody knows what I believe
I believeAnd I’m staring down the barrel of a 45
Swimming through the ashes of another life
No real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45And I’m staring down the barrel of a 45
And I’m swimming through the ashes of another life
There is no real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45
It is a dark song. It wrestles with despair, death, hopelessness, and the kind of emotional darkness that can make a person wonder whether continuing to live is worth the pain. And as I listened to that playlist, song after song seemed to circle around the same emptiness. No hope. No way out. Nothing left.
Suddenly I wasn’t simply listening to sad music anymore. I was thinking about broken men. I was thinking about husbands and fathers that I know. I was thinking about men who have lost their marriages, their families, their children, their homes, their reputations, their careers, their finances, their sense of purpose and eventually their hope. Because now I understand something I once understood only from a distance. I understand how a man can get there.
I Lost Everything
Let me tell you about my situation. Over the course of this season, I have felt stripped of nearly everything that once defined my life. I lost my identity as a husband and, in so many practical ways, as a father. I lost part of my sense of purpose when I was downsized from my career. I have been lied to, lied about, falsely accused, gossiped about, and watched my reputation questioned. I went from being a husband, father, marketing professional, ministry volunteer, and a good man trying to provide for his family to sitting in a box alongside hardened criminals. I lost ministry opportunities. My integrity was questioned. My finances were devastated. My record was stained. I became isolated and abandoned. My marriage entered legal separation and now headed toward divorce. I became alienated from my children. I was removed from my home, everything I once knew and kicked out on the street, and suddenly separated from the life I had spent 47 years building.
Home. Family. Marriage. Fatherhood. Career. Ministry. Reputation. Financial security. Freedom. Purpose. One by one, pieces of the life I recognized disappeared. And from where I stand, so much of the avalanche that followed began with one lie. So let me ask you something: How would you feel if all of that happened to you?
One person recently said they’ve just become numb from all the pain. I am well past numb. I have walked through some of the darkest despair and grief I have ever experienced. I have mourned people who are still alive. There is a peculiar kind of grief in loving people who still exist somewhere in the world but are suddenly absent from yours. I have experienced nearly every emotion imaginable, sometimes within the same day. Fear. Regret. Guilt. Pride. Anger. Sadness. Loneliness. Resentment. Bitterness. Grace. Mercy. Forgiveness. Love. Hate. Lament. Sometimes I have gone from rock bottom to the mountaintop and halfway back down again in a matter of hours.
I have wrestled with losing my purpose on this earth. I have lost daily life with my own flesh and blood, my children, my pride and joy. I lost the person I believed would always have my back, always be on my team, and love me unconditionally. She abandoned me in the middle of the worst moments of my life. Except for my health, there have been moments when it has felt as though I lost everything.
I Understand the Darkness Now
After everything I have experienced, I don’t think many people would be shocked if I told them I had considered ending my life. I know men who have died by suicide after experiencing far less loss. As I write this, a friend has just told me about another man, married, with children, who took his own life this week. I regularly speak with another man whose family was torn apart after he threatened suicide.
The statistics surrounding men and suicide are sobering. Men account for roughly four out of every five suicide deaths in the United States, and the male suicide rate is several times the female rate. There are other numbers worth considering too. U.S. Census data show that in 2022, approximately 78.2 percent of custodial parents were mothers, compared with 21.8 percent who were fathers. Research has also consistently found that wives initiate or desire a majority of heterosexual divorces. Those statistics do not prove that divorce or custody arrangements cause male suicide. Human beings are far too complicated for that conclusion. But they should at least make us willing to ask harder questions about men, fathers, family breakdown, isolation, identity, and what happens when someone believes everything worth living for has disappeared. Sometimes it feels as though society simply doesn’t know what to do with broken men.
So let me be absolutely clear about something. I am not contemplating suicide. I am not in imminent danger of harming myself, nor have I ever put myself in such a position. But have I thought deeply about suicide? Absolutely. Not about doing it, but about understanding it. What happens inside someone’s mind before he reaches that point? What combination of grief, isolation, shame, fear, hopelessness, rejection, and loss convinces a human being that death is preferable to another day on earth?
After walking through what I have walked through, I understand that darkness better than I once did. And because I understand it better, I have far more compassion for those who have reached that terrible place and for the families left behind afterward. For what it’s worth, I also do not believe the Roman Catholic teaching sometimes associated with suicide, that the act automatically condemns someone to hell. That’s a theological discussion deserving an article of its own, and perhaps someday I will write it.
But today, this isn’t really an article about suicide. It’s an article about why I am still here.
Will the Real Brian Davis Please Stand Up?
For those reading this who actually know me, who know my character, know my integrity, know my story, and know what I have and have not done, thank you. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your support. Thank you for refusing to reduce an entire family, marriage, father, or husband to accusations and rumors. Please continue praying for every person involved in my family’s situation, not simply collectively, but individually and specifically.
And for those who don’t know me, let me introduce myself.
First and foremost, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I was saved very young. I grew up in a Christian home. I attended church, Christian school, and Christian college, and decades later I am still learning what it actually means to follow Christ. Do I read or listen to my Bible every single day? I wish I could tell you that I do. I’m still working on that.
By God’s grace, I have never consumed alcohol. I have never used drugs. I have never smoked a cigarette or cigar. I also don’t swear, curse, or use God’s name in vain. That isn’t because I think avoiding certain words somehow makes me more righteous than anyone else. I simply believe the words that come out of my mouth should reflect the character I am trying to live out. My language is part of my testimony, and I strive to make sure the way I speak reflects the man I claim to be and the Christ I claim to follow.
I have only ever had sex with one woman, my wife. I have never cheated on her. I have never even flirted with another woman. Throughout my marriage I established strict personal boundaries concerning being alone with other women, whether in cars, elevators, offices, or other situations where I believed protecting my marriage and testimony mattered.
Have I seen pornography? Yes. What man hasn’t? And rather than pretend otherwise, I chose to fight it. I established multiple accountability relationships and installed accountability software across my devices, software intentionally designed so that I couldn’t simply bypass it without those men knowing. I put people in my life who could confront me if I crossed boundaries, and this has been happening the entire duration of my marriage.
In college, I battled depression and OCD. Through counseling, reading, faith, and a lot of work, I came through those seasons without medication and conquered my ticks and fears. I graduated from college. Later, while working, I went to school at night and earned my MBA. I built a career in marketing spanning more than two decades. I continued educating myself through courses, online learning, new technologies, design, communications, and everything else I could learn to become better at what I did.
I worked. I provided. I gave my paycheck to my family and lived on $120, bi-weekly for myself. When I wanted extra money for something for myself, I freelanced, building websites and doing design projects on the side, often using that additional income not only for myself but for things my family needed or wanted.
I bought two houses during my life, although I eventually lost one. I spent years climbing the corporate ladder. At one point, I turned down a six-figure job out of state because keeping my family in Northeast Ohio mattered more to me than the paycheck. That’s another story to share someday.
I love my children, and after everything that has happened, I still choose to love my wife. I have never hit my wife. I have never intentionally harmed my children. Discipline existed in our home, as it does in many families, but I never set out to hurt my boys, despite what anyone has to say otherwise.
I put my sons in Christian school. As a family we attended church on Sundays and Wednesdays. We participated in Bible studies. We volunteered. We served in ministries.
For 47 years, I have tried to build a life characterized by honesty, integrity, responsibility, hard work, family, and faithfulness to Christ. By the grace of God, I built a career. I built a house. I built a home. I built a family. I’m a good man, and through all of it, imperfectly but sincerely, I tried to honor Christ and raise my family according to what I believed Scripture taught.
That’s Brian Davis, in a nutshell. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. But I do my best, try my hardest. This is the man my wife married, and whatever circumstances may surround me today, I refuse to abandon the convictions that made me that man.
But That’s Not the Whole Story
But if I stopped there, this would simply be a defense of myself, and that wouldn’t be honest either. Alongside whatever good I have done, I have sinned. I have failed. I have done things that were unloving toward my wife and my children. At times I allowed anger to control the way I responded. At times I felt a need for control, authority, or justice because I was convinced that what I believed was right needed to prevail.
Sometimes I was lazy. Sometimes complacent. Sometimes defensive when life didn’t go the way I wanted. Sometimes I allowed the relentless circumstances within my marriage to harden my heart, and then I allowed that hardened heart to affect the way I treated the people closest to me.
I’ve discussed some of those sins elsewhere on Faith for Real Life, and I don’t need to catalog every failure again here. Because there is something far more important I need to say. I am forgiven. I have been on my knees before God. I have sought His face through tears. I have prayed the words of Psalm 139:23–24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” I have asked God to expose what is ugly in me rather than merely showing me what is ugly in everyone else. I have repented of sins committed recently and sins committed years ago as God has brought them back to my memory. I have pleaded with the Father for mercy through His Son.
New Brian
But repentance has meant more to me than simply admitting what I did wrong. Since being removed from my family, I have spent an enormous amount of time examining myself, making many reparations where I could, changing behaviors, confronting weaknesses, rebuilding disciplines, seeking counsel, learning, growing, and trying to become a better man. There are simply too many lessons and changes to recount in one article. Some have been painful. Some have been humbling. Some required me to admit things about myself I would rather not have seen. But all of them have been necessary.
My pastor has a name for the man who has emerged from all of that work. He calls him “New Brian.” I like that. “New Brian” isn’t a perfect Brian. He isn’t a man who suddenly has no weaknesses, never gets angry, never sins, or always responds exactly as Christ would. That man doesn’t exist. New Brian is the man who has been forced to look honestly at the old one, to keep what was honorable, confront what was sinful, repair what could be repaired, learn from what could not, and allow God to use suffering to change him.
In many ways, losing so much forced me to ask a question I might never have asked so seriously otherwise: Who is Brian Davis when everything is taken away? The answer cannot simply be husband. It cannot simply be father. It cannot be homeowner, marketing professional, provider, ministry volunteer, or any other title I once carried. Those things matter deeply to me, but circumstances have shown me that they can disappear.
What remains is the man standing before God, and I want that man to be different because of what he has endured. Not more bitter. Not more hateful. Not consumed with proving everyone else wrong. More humble. More discerning. More forgiving. More dependent upon Christ. More aware of his own sin. More willing to extend grace because he understands how desperately he needs grace himself. That is the man I am still becoming. That is new Brian.
I Am Forgiven
And again, here is one of the greatest truths in my entire story: I am forgiven. Not because Brian Davis lived a perfect life. Not because I can assemble a résumé of good deeds. Not because I can prove that someone else sinned worse than I did. Not because I won an argument, but because of Jesus Christ.
Romans 8:1 declares: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That changes everything. I can stand before God not claiming perfection, but claiming Christ. Forgiven. Redeemed. Free.
I still owe repentance to two people in particular, my wife and my oldest son. There are things I want the opportunity to acknowledge, things for which I want to ask forgiveness, and conversations I wish I were permitted to have. So far, those conversations have not been possible. I have often felt silenced by circumstances involving my wife, the courts, clergy, and people who have formed conclusions about me without ever really knowing me, or learning the truth of our entire situation.
Perhaps that is one reason this website has become so important to me. Faith for Real Life has become part testimony, part ministry, part journal, and, frankly, part therapy. When I haven’t had a voice elsewhere, I have written.
My Creed
If you have read this site for any length of time, you already know how much I love Christian rock. You also know that although I may call myself a writer, I am definitely not a poet. Sometimes somebody else writes the words that express something you have carried inside yourself for years. For me, one song does that better than almost any other. Interestingly, its title almost mirrors the Shinedown song that started this article. Shinedown has “45.” Stavesacre has “Colt .45.” But where that first song took me into darkness, this one reminds me why darkness does not get the final word. It reminds me of the importance of my faith and hope in Jesus Christ. He is my everything. Here’s what it has to say:
I thought about what you said
And I’m not sorry for a thing
You do not understand this
Or what it means to meCannot discard this as emotion
This is more than another passing stage
You’ll have to prove it’s just opinion
In defense of everything, this is my everythingCould it be that you have stumbled?
Tripped and fallen over something more than faith?Could you prove yourself?
This is a matter of life and death
Would you step up to the line?
But please don’t just talk this timeI want what you ask of me
I want what you ask of me
It’s time to step up to the line
Action begs reactionWhat is left to be said?
Anything less has all been done before
To put to rest what you’ve been wondering
If you could take my life
Would you still ask for more?I thought about what you said
Something occurred to me
You wouldn’t ask me to turn my back on anything
If you believed that I believeTruth is I would love to show you
Take “faith and works” to another, higher stage
So there is little time for words you’ve heard
Life and death are only steps
I’m not afraid of what comes nextWhat is enough, in your opinion?
Perhaps my death would bring some substance to my claimsCould you prove yourself?
This is a matter of life and death
Would you step up to the line?
But please don’t just talk this timeI want what you ask of me
I want what you ask of me
It’s time to step up to the line
Action begs reactionWhat is left to be said?
Anything less has all been done before
To put to rest what you’ve been wondering
If you could take my life
Would you still ask for more?Vanity of vanities, this life, love, art, and sex
Each breath you breathe is grasping at the windHe is my everything
We cannot both be right
About right and wrong and God and man
Right and wrong and God and manI want what you ask of me this time
Please step up to the line
He’s my everything
Action begs reactionWhat is left to be said?
Anything less has all been done before
So put to rest your wondering
If you could take my life
You’d still ask for more
That song has become something of a creed for me. It represents my stand against sin and against a world that often cannot understand why my faith matters as much as it does. My faith is not an accessory. It isn’t something I put on Sunday morning. It isn’t inspirational language I use when life is easy. It is my life, and yes, it is something worth dying for. My convictions matter more than my emotions, because emotions change by the hour. Words without action are empty. Action begs reaction. As James 2:26 reminds us, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
One line from that Stavesacre song has stayed with me for years: life and death are only steps, I’m not afraid of what comes next. That is the difference. I am not living in fear of tomorrow. I am living for Christ. He is my everything. I don’t have to fear death because death is not the end of my story. Life and death are merely steps toward eternity with Jesus Christ, and that means despair doesn’t get to tell me when my story ends.
Then The Holy Spirit Stepped In Again
If you have followed my recent writing, you know that because of everything happening in my life, I had reached the decision that I would file for divorce. Eventually, after more than a year apart, I was finally able to sit in a room with my wife and two pastors. We had sixty minutes. From the moment I entered the room, I sensed that her heart was hardened toward reconciliation. She was angry, bitter, and it seemed to me that in the past 430 days, she had not processed anything. She was as angry as the day she put me into jail. I came into that meeting still hoping there might be a path forward, but I became discouraged by the direction the conversation took.
Then something happened inside me too. I hardened. I became accusatory. I stopped responding from hope and began responding from hurt. Needless to say, the meeting was a disaster. By the time it ended, it appeared that divorce was where we were headed. I accepted that. I even wrote about accepting it. Then the conviction began. The Holy Spirit began pressing against the very creed I just described.
Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Somewhere in that wrestling came an almost ridiculous thought: Maybe I am uniquely suited to keep loving my wife precisely because a weaker man might have walked away by now. Maybe doing the right thing isn’t supposed to make sense to everybody watching. Maybe conviction means most when it costs you something. Maybe faith becomes real precisely when obedience is the last thing you feel like doing.
I Will Not Surrender
And so, today, my decision is this: I will not file for divorce. I will not voluntarily carry the weight of initiating the final destruction of my family on my shoulders. I will not walk away simply because this has been the most difficult season of my existence. I will not willingly make myself another statistic.
There has been sin on both sides of this marriage. There has been hurt on both sides. There are things requiring repentance, forgiveness, healing, counseling, truth, accountability, and an extraordinary amount of grace.
But I still choose what I believe is right, because love is not merely an emotion. Love is a choice. So I choose to love my wife. I choose to forgive her, and maybe, by the grace of God, someday I will have the opportunity to cherish her again.
Do I currently feel all the warm emotions people normally associate with romantic love? No. I’m too wounded for that right now, but love is bigger than a feeling. So today, publicly and deliberately, I am declaring what I choose. I choose obedience. I choose forgiveness. I choose integrity. I choose my covenant. I choose Christ.
Rebel Against Sin and Despair
Call me stubborn. You’d be right. Call me rebellious. Fine. Then let me rebel against despair. Let me rebel against bitterness. Let me rebel against hatred. Let me rebel against Satan’s lies. Let me rebel against the sin that so easily entangles us. As Hebrews 12:1–2 tells us, “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.”
I Still Believe Truth Matters
If I am going to be stubborn about something, let me be stubborn about following Jesus. I have told the truth from the beginning of this ordeal. I know what has been said about me, and I know what I maintain actually happened. Divorce may seem like the obvious solution to some people. Scripture itself contains some of the strongest language imaginable concerning the breaking of marriage covenant, and Christians have debated the biblical grounds for divorce for centuries.
My pastor believes our circumstances do not provide biblical grounds for divorce. I disagree. I believe I could make a biblical argument that grounds exist. Perhaps someday circumstances will require me to wrestle publicly with that question. I sincerely hope I never have to write that article. Being permitted to do something does not necessarily mean I must choose to do it. My wife however, does not have biblical grounds for divorce or legal separation, as her current justification is solely based on false information and lies.
My hope remains that my wife will choose to end the legal separation, remove the barriers currently preventing contact, and allow us to pursue genuine family counseling and determine whether something broken beyond human repair can still be restored by God. That would require repentance. It would require forgiveness. It would require truth. It would require accountability. It would require putting down our pride, putting down our selfish desires. It would require both of us confronting our own sin instead of merely cataloging the other’s.
And it would require two willing hearts. I cannot control hers. I can only surrender mine to God. I believe fear and hardness of heart have played significant roles in where we are today. But I also know that only God sees another person’s heart perfectly, and only God can change it.
For a long time, I have felt put into a box without a voice. That is one reason I write. Someday I will tell much more of this story, the good, the bad, the painful, and the ugly. My prayer is that future articles tell a story of restoration. I would love nothing more than to write about repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, and the miracle Christ performed in our family when everyone else thought it was impossible.
If God Writes a Different Ending
But I don’t control the ending. If restoration doesn’t happen, then I will still tell the story God gives me. I will write about pain. I will write about suffering. I will write about what really happened in my life and marriage from my perspective. I will write about what it did to me. I will write about what God taught me through it, and most importantly, I will write about how suffering drove me closer to Jesus Christ rather than farther away from Him.
That is Faith for Real Life. Real suffering. Real failure. Real forgiveness. Real faith. Real hope for somebody else walking through hell who needs to know that Jesus is still there.
And to anyone, family, friends, counselors, clergy, or anyone else, speaking into the lives of my wife or sons, I ask you to consider carefully the weight of your counsel. Don’t encourage permanent destruction simply because reconciliation is difficult or because you don’t agree with me. Don’t speak confidently about people or circumstances you do not fully know. Don’t let gossip become wisdom or bitterness masquerade as discernment.
Ultimately, none of us is the final judge. Our Father in heaven is, and every one of us, including me, will answer to Him for the words we spoke, the counsel we gave, the truth we told, and the lives we affected.
So Why Am I Still Here?
It has been 436 days since I have seen my boys. As things stand today, I face the possibility of being separated from my family for years. I’ve lost almost everything I once thought made my life my life. From the outside, someone could look at me and ask: What do you even have left to live for?
Oh, but I do. That’s the whole point. I have walked through hell and come back breathing. I am alive. I am free, and I am learning to live without regret. If necessary, I can be broke. I can be lonely. I can work a dead-end job. I can live without the house, the title, the career, the reputation, the comfort, and everything else I once believed gave me significance, and if Jesus Christ is all I have left at the end of this story, then I still have everything that ultimately matters.
But I also believe God is not finished with me. 1 Peter 5:10 says: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
After you have suffered a little while. I understand those words differently now. The suffering is real. The loss is real. The loneliness is real. The grief is real. But so is the promise. God is not finished.
My Story Isn’t Over
So I will rebuild. I will find love again, whether that means restored love in the marriage I’m still clinging to or whatever love God allows in a future I cannot yet see. I will see my sons again, and when that day comes, I will look them in the eyes and tell them the truth, not merely about what happened, but about what their father learned while walking through it. I will tell them that I fell. I will tell them that I sinned. I will tell them that I cried. I will tell them that I got angry. I will tell them that there were days I couldn’t understand what God was doing, but I will also tell them this: Their father did not quit.
I survived. I forgave. I repented. I got back up. I kept believing. I kept following Christ, and tomorrow morning, if God gives me another day, I will get up and do it again.
As Jesus says in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” So I will take up my cross. I will follow Him. I will keep walking, because the darkness does not get the final word. Divorce does not get the final word. A courtroom does not get the final word. My mistakes do not get the final word. Someone else’s mistakes do not get the final word. My reputation does not get the final word. My pain does not get the final word, and death certainly does not get the final word. Jesus Christ does, and as long as there is breath in my lungs, my story isn’t over.
