> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://lovetheunfolding.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Seeing the Cracks - URL: https://lovetheunfolding.com/seeing-the-cracks/ - Published: 2026-07-20T07:02:50.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-20T19:37:38.000Z - Author: Sherry Howard *The place where I finally saw the wall.* Not every story inside that wall belongs on these pages. There are too many of them. Some are painful. Some are ordinary. Many simply repeat the same lesson in different forms. After the day everything changed, the years rolled on, and the bricks kept stacking up. But every now and then, something happened that weakened the wall instead of reinforcing it. In the fall of 1982, my husband and I sold our house, packed up our belongings, and with our two young sons, left Texas for Montana. At the time, it seemed like a practical move. Work had become scarce, and we needed a fresh start. I was a young mother moving thousands of miles from everything I had ever known. Beneath the uncertainty was something I couldn’t have named then. It was a quiet courage, a gentle pull, a calling forward. Looking back, I still wonder was I boldly choosing a new life or was a struggling economy simply forcing a detour leading me somewhere I didn’t know I needed? As the Houston skyline disappeared behind us, something inside me began to loosen. I was leaving more than a city. I had left the childhood dysfunction, toxic patterns, southern beliefs and conservative Christian views behind, but I was still carrying that wall. What I couldn’t fathom was that I was traveling much farther than the miles marked on a map. Montana altered me, shifted my perspective. The vast skies, towering mountains, and changing seasons expanded something inside me. Away from the heavy expectations that had scripted my childhood, I slowly began the quiet work of discovering who I was apart from them. It also gave our marriage room to become our own. We were far from the people who had opinions about how we should live, what we should believe, or who we should become. There was no one nearby to judge our choices or press their expectations upon us. We were on our own, and together we learned that we could take care of ourselves, our children, and one another. We built a home. We built traditions. We built a life. We romped through the snow and cut down our own Christmas tree to carry home. We hiked mountain trails and spread picnic blankets beside rushing streams where no one else was in sight. The boys explored a world that felt wild and free, and for a while, so did we. There was something magical about those years, not because they were perfect, but because the life belonged to us. Montana became firm ground beneath our marriage. My husband and I were no longer simply responding to the lives we had inherited. We were choosing how our own family would live. In that wide-open country, faith became more than a set of beliefs. It became a living companion, steady, patient, and present as I learned to trust both God and the woman, He was shaping me to become. Looking back now, I realize Montana didn’t create the cracks in the wall. They had begun years earlier. Leaving home for college. Becoming the first person in my family to earn a degree. Marrying. Raising a family. Choosing a life different from the one I had inherited. Each step quietly weakened the wall. Montana was simply the place where I finally had enough distance to see the cracks. Light was finding its way in. Healing had begun. But the foundation of the wall still stood, anchored by a question I had never dared to ask. The cracks were widening. The breakthrough would require a truth capable of shaking my entire world.