Gayle and Ted Haggard are confronted by media when the scandal broke in 2006 (9News)
Almost from the day Gayle Haggard learned in early November 2006 that her famous evangelical husband, Ted Haggard, had a secret life of drug use and homosexual liaisons, she knew she would try to forgive him.
That's what Christians do, she writes in her book, "Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour." The candid memoir, whose official release is Jan. 26, was available Tuesday at the Barnes & Noble store on Denver's 16th Street Mall.
Gayle Haggard says she searched her memory, journal and records to answer this question: "Will I be the woman who washes her hands of the situation and walks away from Ted, or will I be the woman who loves him and shows forgiveness? The choice was mine."
Christians
"Love is powerful enough to erase a person's sins," she writes.
The Haggards, founders of the evangelical megachurch New Life, were exiled from Colorado after Ted's fall from grace. They have returned to Colorado Springs, where they sometimes hold prayer meetings at their home, as they did when they organized New Life in 1985.
Gayle Haggard says in the book, co-written by Angela Hunt, that she knew forgiving her husband would not happen all at once.
In the days after learning that many of the allegations against her husband were true, she says she heaped "spadefuls of guilt onto Ted," who considered suicide at one point.
"You should divorce me. I'm so toxic, Gayle, I'll ruin you," she writes he told her. "You and the kids could leave me. The church would take you in and help you."
However, Gayle Haggard wanted to be the person who remained faithful to her Lord, husband, family and church.
"I hope our story convinces people to believe in one true principle: The best thing you can do for your children is to love and cherish your spouse," she writes.
From the beginning of the Haggards' marriage in 1978, through the raising of five children and through 22 years growing New Life to a 14,000-member church, Gayle Haggard says she always sensed a lack of intimacy in their relationship.
Ted Haggard kept part of himself "walled off from the world," she writes, and that left her feeling isolated, frustrated and sometimes jealous of his best friends, who shared more of his time and confidences.
Even with the searing pain of the revelations about her husband's long struggle with same-sex attraction, she writes, part of her was thrilled he had finally decided to trust her with the truth.
She also experienced grief, terror, anger, revulsion and embarrassment at being pitied.
And while her faith in God strengthened, she writes, her feelings about so-called Christians didn't fare as well during her husband's formal "restoration," a process with "overseers" who separated the couple from the church they had built.
"Christian people are still people, so I no longer expect more of them than I do of anyone else," she writes.
Indeed, Gayle Haggard describes several instances during the period she and Ted were exiled from Colorado Springs when people whose faith - or lack thereof - wasn't known to her were treating her and her husband with more compassion than fellow church members did.
She doesn't, however, shy away from her husband's personal failings and the weaknesses in their marriage.
A deeper connection
For many years, at the peak of their ministerial successes, she writes, she knew her husband loved her, but she longed for a deeper connection.
When she turned 40, she felt she had come to a milestone. She became the first full-time paid director of New Life's women's ministries, a job that "helped fill the deep well in her heart."
Besides being pastor of a thriving megachurch, Ted Haggard ran several other large ministries and served as president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
In the summer of 2006, as his four-year term as president of the group came to a close, he repeatedly told Gayle he was exhausted and thought he ought to resign. He didn't.
She noticed he was off his game, occasionally exhibiting poor judgment and bursts of anger, as well as overreacting to situations in a way that alarmed her.
Then, during an executive staff meeting at New Life in early November 2006, Ted Haggard received a text message from a pastor friend that a gay "escort" in Denver had leveled an accusation against a nationally known evangelical pastor in Colorado Springs.
"(Ted) assured us there was no truth to the man's allegations," Gayle Haggard writes.
Still, she says she felt a sharp jab of suspicion.
The next morning, a radio interview with the accuser, Mike Jones, a Denver masseur later described as a male prostitute, detailed a three-year homosexual affair with Ted.
Truth comes out
Later, at another meeting with the church attorney, Ted told her the truth.
"I sat stunned in my chair as Ted looked at me with the saddest eyes I have ever seen on his face," she writes. " 'It's true, Gayle - not all of it, but part of it, enough of it.' "
Ted Haggard later told the group of men overseeing his proposed "restoration" that there was no need for an investigation.
"I know I need to resign," he told them.
They told him he needed his own attorney.
Gayle Haggard says she climbed the stairs to their bedroom that night with mixed emotions.
In spite of her anger, revulsion and pain, she writes, that night she started choosing to forgive. "I turned and slid into his arms."
Terrified as she was, she writes, "Somehow, I felt closer than ever to Ted."
She says if he had not repented and if he had persisted in sin, she might have chosen differently.
She says she was heartbroken again when church overseers told them they must leave New Life permanently.
The Haggards then flew to a friend's home in Florida.
"On that flight I learned Ted's haunting secrets," Gayle Haggard writes.
He had been battling sexual temptations for years and had succumbed to those temptations, she writes.
Years before, he told her he was struggling with same-sex attraction, although he didn't use those words, she writes.
"Though he had shared those concerns early in our marriage, I never realized the magnitude of the problem," she writes.
She describes a long process, fraught with tears and disappointments, in rebuilding her life.
As things unfold, she is never far from her husband's side. She apparently comes to view the biggest obstacle to moving forward not as her husband's transgressions but the callousness of the pastors and church leaders charged with rehabilitating him.
Yet, while this group that gave itself absolute power over the future of the entire Haggard family barred the couple from the church, forbade church members from talking to them and ultimately forced them to leave Colorado, Gayle Haggard held her tongue, until now.
