Jenny Sanford - Staying True

I SEE NOW THAT J UNE 24, 2009, WAS A DAY THAT CHANGED FOREVER the trajectory of my life, but it did not change me.

I woke up early that day, as I have always done during our summers at the beach. The boys and I were at our house on Sullivans Island, where we had moved when the school year ended a few weeks earlier. My mornings there began with a sunrise cup of coffee in the hour before the boys woke. I savored that quiet time alone as the kitchen filled with light and I wrote in my journal. I jotted thoughts, rarely a narrative of events, and usually reflected on a passage of scripture. My devotions had become more urgent and searching in the six months since I discovered that my husband, Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, was having an affair with a woman in Argentina.

As I sat on a stool at the kitchen island writing, I knew Marks flight from Buenos Aires was about to touch down. He had been out of the state (though the world didnt yet know how far hed wandered) for several days. The media and his political opponents were asking pointed questions about where he was, but only a few reporters had called me. Being on Sullivanstwo hours away from the state capital, Columbiawas a blessing on that front. Id found out only the day before that Mark was in South America. Within hours, the world would know, and the press would be hovering at the end of our driveway.

The truth was that Mark and I had been quietly separated and had not spoken for two weeks, at my request, with clear restrictions on contact with the Argentinean woman he had started an affair with a year earlier. If he and I were to have a chance at reconciliation, he agreed not to contact her or the boys and me while he sorted things out. Cut off this way, I hoped, Mark might understand what it would be like to lose his family in the form hed always known it. I wanted Mark to ache for what hed always said mattered most to him. I thought he got it. Before he left to get his head right, as hed explained it to the boys, he looked me straight in the eye and said, I will not see her. That morning I knew he had broken that promise.

My prayers were brief but pointed: Lord give me strength. Lord let Mark find you. Lord protect our boys. So many times, I had prayed for the patience to wait this out, or for understanding for him and for me. I felt the full weight of the day ahead on my shoulders. This time when I clasped my hands and shut my eyes, I prayed that the Lord would grant me the strength to protect our children in the ugly time ahead, and I prayed for Mark who was clearly lost.

The only one of the four boys at home that morning was thirteen-year-old Bolton, who was about to leave for a day of fishing with his uncle and cousin. As he gobbled down his breakfast, I pictured our dear friend and Marks long-time aide, Chris Allen, picking up Mark at the Atlanta airport. A loyal young man who had recently tied his business goals to Marks political future, Chris had driven through the night to be there when Mark landed. By now, they were on the road to Columbia. I wondered if Mark understood that the whole country, it seemed, wanted a full description of his hiking the Appalachian Trail.

The phone rang. It was Mark calling from the car. Hey, how are you? he asked quietly.

How am I? How do you think I am? I sighed.

Jenny, be gentle with me, he said in a tired voice.

Gentle? I asked incredulously. Do you know what kind of a storm you are returning to? And where do we stand?

The good news is its over now, he said of his affair, and then added, Ive already met a reporter at the airport and told her of my love of adventure travel and so on. Ill call you after I get to Columbia.

I asked again, What about us?

I told you its all behind us everythings good.

Good?! What part of this did he think was good? I wondered.

I had been anticipating this call, searching for the right way to respond, but everything about his manner caught me off guard, beginning with his blas tone. I dont know what he could have said to soothe me, but at least I expected an apology and some expression of regret. I hadnt detected a note of that in his voice. He was riding down the highway with Chris arranging for a press conference later that morning and I was one of a number of things he was dealing with. By the time we hung up, I hoped it was slowly dawning on him that this story about his adventure wasnt going to hold.

There had been many a morning in the six months since I discovered his affair when I had cried about the state of my marriage, and just as many evenings spent praying with my two girlfriends Frannie and Lalla Lee. This morning, at least, I wasnt going to cry. I was the one who needed to get my head right. I grabbed my iPod, smeared on some sunblock, and headed out the back gate to the beach, some two hundred yards away.

The sun was moving quickly higher in the slate blue sky and the air was hot and sticky, but that thickness didnt dim the sparkle of the sea. My spirit lifted as soon as I set my flip-flops in the sand. Orange and yellow wildflowers lined the path behind our house that leads to the shore. His Strength Is Perfect was the first tune on my iPod, which helped my spirits too, as I emerged from the corridor of low dunes and saw the broad beach before me.

This was not in my control, not in my hands, I thought, as the song changed to I Can Only Imagine. What my future held was something I, the woman who always thought years ahead, now couldnt imagine. Could I imagine a life without Mark, the man whose ambitions had been the center of all that we had done as a family for twenty years? Without him, what was our direction? And how did he feel about me now that he had seen her? Once we got through this day, both of us had life-changing decisions to make. I walked more quickly along the shore, smiling when I saw dolphins playing in the surf. At the beach, I feel wondrously small; my problems are insignificant in this big, beautiful world. This would all sort itself out, and at some point, I would know what to do next. I felt certain of that and that only. I breathed steadily, more deeply, and drank in the peace the sea affords, a tremendous luxury in a world and life otherwise very public.

When I returned, I found that Lalla Lee Campsen, one of my oldest friends in South Carolina, had let herself in. Of course she was there. I could have guessed that she would be from the moment I turned up the path home. She sat at the kitchen island with a notepad and a pen, fielding calls. Petite, bright-eyed, and always smiling, Lalla Lee was the first of Marks childhood friends to embrace me when this Midwestern Catholic girl found herself living in the Deep South. In those carefree days before politics consumed my time, wed boated together and played many sets of tennis. Our boys had become good friends, almost as close as Lalla Lee and I had. I was grateful for her steady presence. Whatever this day brought me, we would face it together.

I heard the door to the carport slam and went to the top of the stairs to see Frannie Reese, my closest friend on the island, sprinting upstairs toward me, a bundle of energy in her shorts and bathing suit. She had two cups from Starbucks and handed me one. When we first moved to Sullivans Island back in 1998, Frannies husband, Tim, was away almost as much as Mark had been during his years serving in Congress. She and I started out as carpool pals, but within months we were picking up each others kids after school, taking them to appointments and to practices and eating dinner frequently at each others homes, herding our kids around like one big mob. Recently, when my sister Kathy moved to Charleston and had a baby of her own, she fell seamlessly into Frannies generosity. Frannie came to see how I was doing that morning. She said shed be back before Marks press conference. I retreated to shower and freshen up.