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couple of years. That was after Carson, who was an otherwise perfect child, came home drunk in high school and wrecked his room with a boat paddle from Kanakuk Christian camp. When I was sure I never craved alcohol, I started again, allowing myself wine with a fancy dinner.
    By 1975, I was working in investment banking in Fort Worth, where I first made my mark as a fine-arts dealer. I quickly got too big for my britches and, in 1986, decided we needed to move to Dallas in order to grow my business and be truly appreciated by the art-world elite.
    That’s where Deborah and I started to grow apart. While I stormed the art world and collected a closetful of Armani suits and custom-made boots painstakingly handmade from the skins of various animals, Deborah plugged into God , pursuing a passionate spiritual life that included working with AIDS babies and hours spent on her knees in prayer.
    Those were sometimes lonely days for Deborah. In Dallas, she had a tough time finding friends who were willing to venture deep into spiritual waters. Most people (including me) were happy to watch from the shore. Some braved the shallow end on occasion, but most were afraid of getting in over their heads.
    When we first arrived in town, Deborah wanted to pray for our children, Regan and Carson, and all their classmates and the teachers in the school, so she started a weekly prayer group and invited all the mothers in Carson’s grade. I remember how puzzled Deborah was that several women in our neighborhood seemed hesitant about the invitation. Many times, nobody showed up at all.
    â€œWhy would anyone not want to pray over their kids?” she asked me one day.
    Later, I heard through the grapevine that most people were a little afraid of Deborah’s intimacy with God. They were especially afraid because she invited them to do the scariest thing of all: pray with her out loud .
    To tell you the truth, even I felt intimidated when praying with her. Deborah prayed with such passion—not like some nut-ball holy roller but with such knowledge of the Father as though He was her daddy and she was His favorite child. Without pausing or stumbling, she let her words flow like a psalm or a sonnet. Captured on canvas, her prayers would be considered masterpieces, like a Rubens or a Caravaggio. And yet her prayers were not artful, as though she meant to impress. Instead, she would simply remind God of His own promises in Scripture and, in an inexplicably reverent way, sort of shake Him by His lapels when she thought He really ought to get moving on a particular project.
    There was a depth, an intensity, a beauty to my wife’s prayers, as if she had boldly stepped into a rare inner circle of divine light that others dared only regard from a distance. And in the beginning, that irritated me. It was as if she was so spiritual that she wasn’t being real or down-to-earth. So I understood why the ladies didn’t want to show up and secretly wished I had that option.
    Before long, Deborah and I had grown so far apart that I was looking for a way out. She was sure I loved art and money but not so sure I loved her. I knew she loved God and our kids but was fairly certain she could just barely stand the sight of me. And so, in 1988, when I found myself in Beverly Hills, sharing wine with a beautiful blonde painter, I made a lot of excuses to myself on the way to a hotel room.
    After a friend threatened to rat me out, I confessed. Deborah and I went to marriage counseling, and she forgave me. She also told me a truth about women’s hearts that I wish I could tattoo on the insides of every married man’s eyelids: “I know you’re an art dealer and that you love ranches and horses and longhorn steers and fancy cars. But what I don’t know about you is what’s in your heart. What you’re thinking when you look at me, when you hold me. Even if you’re thinking you don’t like me very much at that moment, I