Our friends and even family are so confused about our divorce. Paul and I still live together... I filed back in November, but I can't finalize the divorce until I get a job... which I have not been able to. If there were a job cleaning horse stalls for no pay, weekend/overnight position... I could not get that job. It sucks. I feel stuck. But Paul and I do have a good working relationship and I think that is a blessing for the kids. We plan to continue this loving, kind, relationship even after the divorce, because it makes sense to us. We will forever be friends (we hope) and forever be the kids parents. We are always going to be partners in that, God willing.
I guess what makes me so angry is that everyone analyzes the choice to divorce. As if, if I could produce enough evidence to convince them that we have done everything we could possibly do before we got to this place, they might hesitantly offer their support. I feel like I should issue some kind of statement that I could just send out to each person who asks. I know that so many ppl ask because they care. It's not that I doubt that. I'm sure most ppl don't think about how many other ppl you've hashed it out with. What bothers me is the judgement. I got one e-mail where the woman didn't even have the courage to sign her name. She told me her husband had an affair and that they were still going to stay married. I don't remember sharing that we had that issue, but who ever she was, she had decided that if they could do that, so could I. What if that was my issue? What if my husband had 20 affairs? What if I couldn't trust him as far as I could throw him and he was abusive? Yet she still felt the freedom to write a letter telling me how God felt about my divorce and how she was succeeding and I was failing.
Then there's the ppl who tell you it's hard on the kids. Really?! Huh. I had never even considered that. Therapy? Really? You think we should try it? Huh. Never entered my mind. Get counseling from our church pastors? Huh. Well... I guess I could. Argh! Like it's not painful enough without ppl's assumptions that you are the most clueless human on the planet... when you're LIVING it! Day in and day out, for years, struggling with the tearing apart of two ppl who were one. Do you think it's painful? Really? I guess it could be. (Was the sarcasm inferred there?)
Sorry.
I heard on the radio a woman say that she had gone thru something similar... the criticisms from every side. She said the one comment she never forgot was when someone said to her, "I'm so sorry about your divorce. It must be so hard." That's all. "It must be so hard." It stuck with her, and blessed her. The woman on the radio probably believed as I did, that she'd be married forever. I dreamed of being old and holding hands on a front porch swing. Maybe some ppl get married with an out option, but I believed in RV's and rocking chairs. Sometimes we take a beating from life, and we learn to walk with a limp. I'm still crawling, I'm hoping to limp soon.
You know there's a reason God hates divorce. Is it 'cause He doesn't want ppl to jump in and out of marriages so He had to say something really profound to make His point? I don't think so. It's because to the depths of his being, He loves ppl. He knows what leads to divorce and He knows how much it hurts them. It's a wound that somehow was self inflicted... something went terribly wrong and it tore two ppl who became one... back into two again... and the tear is never clean. He hates that, and not the ppl themselves. He can heal. He can bind. He can restore. Lucky for some of us, He can do this to two broken ppl as well as He can do it for a marriage. He loves ppl. He loves me, even when you think I've failed. Even when I hate myself. Even when my life feels destroyed. He loves me. Once I get that... everything else falls into perspective.
