Today my divorce became final. I am no longer married.
It was quite a day.
My kids and I went fishing with Pop and Grammy.
My son caught his second fish. (Pop casted it, but Ranita hooked it and reeled it in. Two fish in as many days on the water is pretty impressive for a four-year-old!)
We saw loons, a bald eagle, and a group of sunfish. The weather was perfect. We sang songs and laughed. I wept a little.
By the time we got home, I was in need of a couple Tylenol. I am again in need of a couple Tylenol, but I'm going to walk the dogs and go to bed instead.
I was hoping to feel a sense of closure tonight. I don't. I just feel tired, worn-out, sick, and in need of a good cry.
I also can't help but wonder about the man who was once my husband. When he called the kids today, what was his motivation? Did he really want to talk to them only, or did he want to smear a little salt in my wound? Did he hang up the phone and feel sad, like I, or was he grateful to finally be rid of me?
Did he even realize today was the day?
Is he spending tonight in his parents' guest room, in the bed we've shared as husband and wife before heading to Maine for a vacation just like the one I'm on now?
Or is he with her?
I know these questions belong in his circle, not mine. Those who have been through it assure me that a time will come when I don't care about his circle at all.
I believe them.
Sometimes I already feel that way, though most assuredly not tonight.
Perhaps that is the saddest thing of all.
Addendum:
Just heard from my lawyer I'm NOT yet divorced. It will probably be another week (judges are vacationing, you know). Oh well. What's another week?
Time for some tough love, sis.
ReplyDeleteYour theology is a product of 40+ years of attending modern American churches, which are notorious for starting theology in the wrong place: Jesus as Savior. This is the same place the Arian and Manichean heretics start their theology. This in contraposition to the creeds, which always start with God as creator, and relegate creation, including us, to a “nothing in itself,” so that as Luther said (Bondage of the Will), “free will is a nothing.” Likewise, “sin is a nothing” (Athanasius), a creature’s return to nothing, certainly not natural in any way.
In giving too much credit to your ex for his “free will,” you are prone to think he actually has any legitimate basis for evaluating you. This leads to a number slippery slopes: Are you loveable/captivating as a woman? Are any men capable of loving faithfully? Are men, by nature, weak when it comes to sex—natural cheaters? Maybe its better to clam up in a turtle shell than risk love?
Looking through your posts, you clearly lack the ability to see that your ex was darkness: a creature turned upon himself, reverting back to nothing. God’s wrath, not forgiveness, is the only way that he will be preserved against his own annihilation. God is loving in all things (Psa 145), including His wrath. God witholds forgiveness from darkness (Deut 29, Isa 2) because His grace is ineffectual for darkness (Isa 26). God’s wrath alone preserves darkness, separating it from light as He has done in separating you and your ex, whom He joined together for a time not only to drive you Godward, but to gain wisdom and prudence by evaluating your marriage through careful inquiry.
You have been delivered, not dumped. Consider soberly how Prov 29:27 always described your relationship with your ex, and you will see what I mean.
Because you cannot see your ex rightly, seeing him by his maleness (e.g. shaving utensils and other signs of male presence), you have subtly reverted into a cynically moralistic rubric which sees his failure as categorically male, and reduced his sin to a mere transgression of the seventh word (commandment), an act of “free will” that equates him to every other man on the planet, as if all were capable of becoming light or darkness, of having a “righteousness of their own.”
The Scripture presents a different picture: irreconcilability between light and darkness from the beginning. Passages such as Malachi 3, John 6:35-65, and contrasting passages such as Matt 5:6 & Psa 106:3 vs Psa 36:1 expose the fallacies behind your thinking.
Keep clear of misandry. Judging by category instead of fruit is a failure to conduct a thorough inquiry into the matter (Deut 13, 17, 19), and judging “with evil thoughts” (Jam 2:4, Zec 7:10).
Many of your brothers are going through similar or even worse circumstances than yourself, especially in an age where misandry has become extremely popular. It has, with the Arian/Manichean heresies, raged hrough the churches with their heretical views of nature, sin, and God.
Take heed for you son’s sake. Those toxic thoughts in your head are very dangerous. I have lived with one who impenitently held on to such folly, and—by it--rationalized gross deceit, malice, spite, slander, contempt, and screaming rage. This has crushed me, and I can say it is better to meet a mother bear robbed of her cubs than a misandrist.
The despair you are now in is a result of desponding to God’s clear testimony that His righteous ones are an ever-brightening light (Prov 3), who genuinely love and serve each other. In writing your brothers off, you have denied your own nature, which naturally responds to a man whose light is from the same Father of Lights you love and serve. This is not good.
Please repudiate those dark thoughts in your head. They don’t belong to a child of light.