Happy Divorce-iversary to Me!

I'm going to throw caution to the wind and post this celebratory declaration of the one year anniversary of my divorce.  This anniversary celebrates a passage of time in which I have not had to suffer verbal, emotional or physical abuse.  My children now live in a house where they go to bed every night certain that they won't wake up to violence, rage or outbursts.  In the last year nobody has told me that I was fat, clumsy, stupid or a b*tch.  In our home, nothing has been thrown, broken, mutilated, or destroyed in a fit of anger.  I have not had to duck, hide or passively apologize to neutralize a toxic situation.  Nobody has disabled my car to keep me from leaving or made empty promises to manipulate me into staying. Perhaps divorce breaks God's heart, but I can't help but think that this metamorphosis of our family gives Him anything but joy.

A divorce marks the disentanglement of two legally joined parties, but if I'm honest, my heart was disentangled long ago.  My life followed slowly, and what a life it is!

The Mother Wound I Give

This morning - the overwhelming emotion is melancholy. A sense of sadness for what my kids are feeling. Kullen poured his heart out to me last night. He told me that though he didn't used to want his dad and I to get back together - he did now. He said he thought that his dad had changed and that the fighting would stop. It breaks.my.heart. It takes me back to my 9 year old self, standing in the driveway, begging my parents to fix what was broken, to love each other again, to validate me - the girl with a "real family" and not the girl whose life would always be marked by this horrible sadness.

All I know to do is hold Kullen tight. If he needs to be angry at me, to let that be okay.

He does not know the way the girls do how I pushed further, loved deeper, held on tighter. He doesn't see with any maturity how the neglect and abuse and loneliness choked my spirit, crushed me as a person, until I ceased to do more than surviving, limping around broken and bruised.

My heart aches for this beautiful child who daily is pushing towards manhood, but is still very much my little boy. Oh how I wish I could carry his pain, quiet the brewing storm and tenderly hold and protect him from this.

For so long I had this loop tape that played over and over again that "God hates divorce". How that one little phrase imprisoned me. It took a caring voice to tell me that God hated equally the things I was going through. I thought I would lose His love. I know now that He loves me - period, outside of my actions. He is the one day by day setting me free.

I can only hope that one day, my kids will all understand that I am holding out for a better way for all of us. I stayed as long as I did because I didn't want this hurt for them, but now see with more clarity that by staying I allowed them to be hurt in a different way. This is never what I wanted for any of us.

God help me minimize the damage and maximize the love.

John Ortberg on Marriage and Divorce

Not long ago my friend and former pastor, Porky sent me an mp3 sermon by a pastor named John Ortberg on Marriage and Divorce. I can't find out how to load it and send you a link so you can listen, but I did find videos on his website. You can view it in three parts by clicking on the playlist at the right.

Part 1 - The History of Marriage and Divorce
Part 2 - Jesus' Teaching on Marriage and Divorce
Part 3 - The Pharisees Teaching on Marriage

I have felt for a long time that God himself would be utterly disappointed in me if I left my husband and gave up on my marriage. I am not in any way trying to find justification for a divorce, or even that I am pursuing one, but to know that God does not condemn me where I am right now set me free. I have been very angry at Him for a long time, feeling like He expected me to be trapped in misery. Now I know that my hurts have broken His heart.
I share this in the hope that it will be as liberating for someone else.

Taking the Next Step

Little bits and pieces are coming together. Loose ends are getting tied up. I am starting to see a small ray of light at the end of the tunnel. It is the hardest thing I have ever gone through in my life, and if you've read this blog at all I am sure you already know the kind of angst going on inside of me. I was looking at some blog archives the other day and remembered this post and song. That was last April. I'm not going to live another year of my life like this, and no matter how it hurts - I am just going to push forward for a better life.
I got an email this morning from a friend that strengthened me. It helped me know that I won't be lost forever in the muck that I feel is drowning me right now.

So we shall allot the first month for misery & mourning. Then when it is over.... it will be Spring. You will be home. There will be walks at the river, hikes on the trail, lunches & coffee out with friends. Then comes Fall, the time I start missing you the most. This year you get leaves & pumpkin flavored everything, Halloween party & Oktoberfest & bonfires at the river. Then Thanksgiving, Planes Trains & Automobiles & finally Christmastime with you, the way I like it best. You have done this for years "with" him.... now you can do it alone without him. Only you won't be alone. You will be free.

Validation of my pain. Permission to mourn. A future to look forward to.
I'm taking the next step....

Who Would Choose This?

There has been this feeling over the last couple of days that the bottom had dropped out. Everything that was familiar has become foreign, strange. The world looks different as I figure out how to make just Julie out of "Julie and Travis". But now it seems a strange and eerie peace has settled that is a huge relief, and terrifying.
It all hurts, and confuses and muddles. At work I see elderly couples shop together, moving seamlessly as if they were one. Communicating without words. I wanted that for us, the golden years. Then there are the young couples, and I remember us, a newborn between us in that early morning light when all the edges are blurred and all the sounds are softened.
I don't know how to separate it. When my parents got divorced, all the memories of us as a family seemed to have to die with their new relationships. The ones that managed to survive were the bad ones. How do I preserve the dignity of our lives for the last 21 years and not let anyone else define it based on their limited knowledge? Yes, the bad has overwhelmed the good - but there is still good there to find. I want those memories - they are mine.
Yesterday a friend eloquently explained marriage to me in a way she heard it when going through her own painful divorce - and it was so very helpful. (Thank you Becky) A marriage is like a child. It needs physical and emotional care. If you had a child that was sick, you would do everything you could to take care of it and nourish it back to health. On the other hand, if the child were to die, you would not hold onto it and keep it with you. You would bury it and mourn the loss and day by day learn to live without it again.
This is so hard. It is so painful. It isn't what I ever wanted. Who would ever choose this?

A Rant About the Church on Marriage and Divorce, Etc.

Maybe I'm bitter - but I can't stop thinking about this, the bill of goods we've been sold as women. I just finished reading Vinegar Hill and the priest describes to the young woman about to be married her role as the "hearth" and the "home". What if the hearth has no one to stoke the fires? What if the home is more of a house, empty and fractured? What then?
I have been told throughout the years by well-meaning (and much loved) Christian friends that they couldn't condone divorce. They would support me through a separation - hold my hand, help me financially, even give the kids and I a place to live - but that divorce was never going to be an option. I have been in circles before where women who were divorced were whispered about when they left the room, tongue in cheek as one person would lean over and say, "this is her second marriage". Like I needed to know, be warned.
I am in a crisis so perhaps I will look back on this years later and come down on a completely different side of the issue - but for right now I am really struggling. Please filter whatever you read here through that fact. Right now I am angry. The "church" as an institution that would hold to this belief that I am less of a woman if I divorce my husband, that even through all of the hell I've lived and how I've tried to love in spite of it, I have failed. That I am a failure.
God hates divorce. It is true - but I know He sees what my kids and I have endured, and hates it as well.

Trying to Remember

When I look back on the best memories of my life, they were all without him. Outings with friends. Trips. Vacations. Walks on the beach. Laughing with my children uninhibited by someone's criticism. I've waited for the better life together, the time when he calms enough to enjoy life with me, laugh with me, love with me. I moved across the country in the hopes that he would be happy, but the cold hard fact is that he never will be. We'll never have the jacuzzi on the rooftop, romantic vacations, frolicking together with our grandchildren. All the dreams are dying. But I'm trying to remember that every moment together was one in which I had to manage him, make sure he wasn't uncomfortable, unhappy, unsettled. It was always too much work. I made my life without him. I am trying to remember why this needs to happen. I've been married alone. Not much is changing for me except the tremendous relief of not having to always make sure he is okay. I need to concentrate for a change on making sure I'm okay. What I want more than anything right now is to have a mom - someone to show up and help make sure my kids have food, the floors are swept and life is manageable for me. I want someone who I can put my ugliest crying face on in front of, who will wrap me in their arms with no pretense and let me cry my eyes out.
It is all frightening - like being on the edge of a cliff and having others tell you that they know there are arms that will catch you. But YOU know that the free fall you do on your way down, starting with that first step off the edge must be done alone. I keep hearing the words of Elisabeth Eliot, who used to start her radio show with “…..you are loved with an everlasting love, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
I can go on. I will step off this cliff. I have been on my own for so long anyway. I just need to continue to remember.

Picking Scabs

My friend is here visiting - she actually came here to escape. It is so difficult to watch the hurt she is going through at the disintegration of her marriage. The pain she is experiencing is palpable. I wish I knew what to do to help her.
One thing that has been difficult on my end is that I went through a similar situation from the perspective of a child. My dad left and while it crippled me emotionally in ways that I still experience today, I am living proof that you can rise above. I have to be there for my friend, even if it hurts, and even if it means picking off scabs.
This whole thing has hit her as unexpectedly as a flying train. Earlier today she told me that she didn't feel like a Christian. I can testify to Papa's love. You either are a Christian or you aren't. It isn't based on how we feel. We aren't 72% Christian today and 28% non-Christian. This is one of the biggest lies. In our infirmities, in our failures, in our shortcomings, and yes, even being mad as hell - we are still His, written on the palm of His hands and no less so when we struggle with the rawest emotions. It does not make us any less so to be human and feel such things.
Tonight has been particularly hard for her. Tomorrow is a new day - and if necessary, I will pick the scab off of another wound to share in her suffering.

Hurricane's A-Comin' and Other Stormy Weather

Since Lizbeth got here there has been laughter and tears, ecstatic screaming, card games, movies, great food, and tons of fun. There is so much to tell and yet no time at all in which to tell it. She has recently been going through a very difficult trial - the end of her marriage. It is a painful thing. It is always with her - just under the surface. Even happy moments can bring it up again for her, but like someone who is sick to their stomach, it feels a slight bit better at least for the moment when you get it out. I hope that for the time she is here that I can carry it with her. The betrayal she has felt is palpable. She deserves good things.
For those of you who wondered, she brought another friend of mine, Betsy and her two kids with her for the ride, but Sunday afternoon Betsy went to meet an old friend and stay with her for the month of August. It was so good to see her too.
Oh yeah, and there is also a hurricane coming. It appears that Hurricane Edouard is headed our way - the headline on the local news/weather website says that it is "zeroing in" on our area. I am not sure what it will bring our way - but we would appreciate your prayers for our safety!
If I post less than usual, please understand, I am hearing real laughter instead of reading LOLs for the first time in a long while!

Can I Blog This Road?

I am at a crossroads, an intersection, a fork in the road.
I have struggled to blog about this because this is so personal. It is so unbelievably painful. There is a line I will not cross here in what I share, but at the same time, this is real life, and perhaps someone else can learn from my experience, or more likely my mistakes. Perhaps there is something in the sharing that will bring a word of encouragement from the lips of the Father to the ears of my soul.
At the same time, let me make this simple request - please do not sermonize. Share what you feel may be of benefit, and leave out pat answers, long recitations of scripture, and formulas that say, do this to know what God wants for you.
I told my husband this morning that I wanted to put our house on the market and go our separate ways. This morning he agreed with me. Throughout the day through many painful, tearful conversations, I have explained in great detail what has brought me to this conclusion, as he has insisted that he loves me and doesn't want me to leave. I can think of nothing better.
I left everything that really mattered to me when we moved here almost two years ago now (aside from him and my kids), in a last ditch effort to improve my marriage because it seemed he was really having a hard time living for so long away from his family, and yet nothing has changed between us. I am so lonely for companionship. I am far from being a saint myself, but I know that for 20 years I have been the one hauling our relationship like the weight of a dead elephant up a hill. I have been trying to be a better wife -thinking somehow if I took care of him better to the envy of other men that know us, he would see what a catch I am and a light bulb would go off.
All of the things I said today have been said ad nauseum and fallen on deaf ears. I am not sure which road I will choose. I think I have to choose sanity, peace, a place where even if I am alone it is by my own choice, and not because I have been abandoned again. I have had a whole life of abandonment. I'm all done. Would someone please give me my "get out of jail free" card???

Divorce: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Having divorced parents stinks. I can feel like a completely healthy and whole adult and then WHAM - unexpectedly something happens that makes me feel like a piece of garbage that my whole family is trying to scrape off of their shoe. You are like an enemy who has infiltrated their ranks - and the worst part is that everyone thinks of you as the member of the other family - essentially leaving you without one at all. Some stinky moments:

• knowing your whole family was taking a cruise because one insensitive person decides to call and tell you they won't be home for a while just so you know - and hey all your siblings are coming, but you aren't invited - then being told you weren't invited because you have a baby and we knew you wouldn't come - would it KILL people to invite you anyway and let you turn the invitation down????
• whole extended family attends a cousin's wedding you aren't even invited to
  
• finding out months after the fact that my cousin and his wife had a baby
• finding out months after the fact that another cousin's wife is expecting
• seeing family pictures of events that you weren't even invited to - theme remains - invite somebody even if there is likely no chance they'll come so they at least feel like they are part of a family - but I'm not holding my breath - I was rarely invited when I lived right there
• calling people you haven't heard from in months and being told - "hey, I was thinking about calling you" - after 20 years of this you pretty much know they never had any intention of calling you or inviting you into their lives
• knowing that one of your parents travels all over the free world - but can't afford the gas when you ask them to come see you
• having your parent and step-parent rush hours away to see a sibling because they need them - when they have never spent more than 30 minutes at your house regardless of your need
  
• visiting the house of one of your parents - only to find that none of the pictures of your children have ever even made it into frames in favor of all the other grandchildren - and the one collage you made years ago that hung behind a door down a dark hallway isn't even there because they were painting and OOPS - it never got hung back up - and pretending to be so stupid that you didn't see the nail is no longer there and the hole is spackled

Oh - I could write a book - and the pages would be riveting. It must be nice to have a family is all I can say. I'll get over it - I always do - but today I am having a hard time with it. I am trying so hard to make the family I want with my kids - but ya know - sometimes I would just like to have a mom or dad of my own.

Turning it Around

I had a good friend tell me once that my husband and I were so blessed with the gift of laughter. It is one of the things I remember loving about him the most when we first met was that he always made me laugh. Of course, I was very young, and as we had children and the responsibilities of life crept in, for several difficult years, I didn't find him so funny anymore. Our marriage was headed directly for divorce-ville, at Nascar speed. Somewhere along the way, God changed me, and I learned to laugh with him again and this has made all the difference in our marriage.
This morning he woke me up about 10 seconds before he had to leave for work (2 hours before I had to get up) and needed some help. I couldn't even get my brain to acknowledge that I was awake, and in a bit of a huff (hair standing straight up on top of my head) I said, "Why did you ask me for this last night?" which we all know is totally unproductive. His answer was, "Well you were too busy laughing." I let it go at that point, knowing that we were both being irrational, assisted him the best I could and let him leave. About 15 minutes later I called and was clarifying some things about what was happening after work, and he seemed calmer, so I was asked him if he didn't know that no matter what I was doing, he could interrupt me to help him, and what was up about the "too busy laughing" comment. He started to crack up and said, "You're NOT allowed to laugh! Bwaaahahaha!" obviously realizing the ridiculousness of what he had said.
This laughter is a gift from the Lord. It turns things around over and over again. Thank you God! Help us chuckle our way through old age - together!