Who knew that grief is a shadow, hovering underneath the seemingly normal everyday, suddenly manifesting as something solid and immovable at the most unexpected moments?
Who knew you could be in the throes of grief while reading a book, playing with your kids, eating breakfast, and be completely unaware until your sister sends a text--How’s vacation?--and you burst into tears?
Who knew grief was a vacuum cleaner, inexorably sucking every ounce of energy, vitality, strength, and life from you, bringer of the greatest fatigue known to man, one that neither time alone nor time with friends nor sleep nor food can alleviate?
Who knew the last week of a marriage was actually a deathbed vigil, sitting quietly, waiting for the inevitable, remembering the past, grieving the lost future, simultaneously dreading the final moments and wishing they had already come and gone?
Are the final moments the worst? Will it all be easier once the final decree is signed, sealed, and entered into the legal records? Are these unbidden bursts of sorrow at their most crippling and inescapable now?
Is it really true that healing will come quickly once the legal bonds are severed, like a body heals once a cancer has been excised?
Or is it more like an amputation where the physical wounds heal, but phantom pains recur, reminding one of the lost parts, momentarily deceiving oneself that it was never really removed after all?
I pray it is the former.
I suspect it is the latter.
Your proclivity for reverting to nostalgia is truly hurting you by confusing your discernment, and not allowing you to clearly see your past. The Princess' Bride is a good movie, but it is a very bad lens for viewing history, particularly your history.
ReplyDeleteTake your cue from Moses, who looked backward to see the snake for who he was: a charming deceiver and a murderer from the beginning. So it is with your ex. Of course the man has qualities that make him look good, and seem like every other human being. But the core is obviously rotten.
Linked to your nostalgia is cynicism. You are tempted to see all men categorically as "male," as capable of charming you and tearing your heart out through treachery. This doubles the blindness, and only intensifies your pain with confusion. That confusion, linked with your natural and good desire to love and be loved, then creates even more pain, as you attempt to deny a part of yourself that is good and right. Your thoughts are sinking you in the Slough of Despond, and you do not belong there.
All these thoughts amount to a frenzied ping pong game in your head, a vacillation which prevents you from resting in truth, and seeing your past and present clearly through Wisdom's eyes. The thoughts blind you so that you cannot hate what is evil and cling to what is good, because your discernment between one and the other is hampered. Without being able to make clear distinctions, you lose hope, having no reason to believe that God, as a loving Father, acts in time and space to defend you against snakes and bless you with a loving stag.
Read the Psalms and Proverbs: let them speak for themselves. Learn to call a snake a snake. Throw off the veil of humanism, which shrouds the light of Scripture. The Word clearly testifies that darkness and light are irreconcilable. Those of the light walk amongst darkness and are often shrouded in this life, but they are not therefore darkness. The two were and never will be the same. Your ex is darkness. Look back through Wisdom's eyes, and you will see this.
You have been deeply hurt by a viper. Know that the God who crushes vipers will crush him, even before your very eyes (Micah 7). God has no tolerance for vipers, and does not ask you to tolerate them either. Muster your discernment and strength and learn to despise vipers (Psa 15). Doing so will resolve at least half your pain, namely the pain you are inflicting on yourself through nostalgia and the attempt to view the "good attributes" of a viper. It is one thing to admit that a viper successfully charmed you by deception; quite another to delude yourself with an illusory view of the viper as your sometime friend, who turned on you because of something you did or something you are. The viper was always going to leave you no matter what you did or said. That's just what vipers do. You, being a child of the light, are an abomination to the children of darkness, and vice versa (Prov 29:27).
I do wonder if one of the reasons you're engaging in nostalgia is that you doubt the radiant beauty God has lavished on you.. Surely you aren't so foolish as to believe that a viper was your only chance at unquenchable love?
Take a close look at Jeremiah 15:18-20. Like him, you are judging by the wrong criteria--by the words of mere men--rather than by the counsel of Word and Spirit, and it is inflicting on you a grievous, incurable wound. Speak and write words worthy of God's unadulterated truth. Let His Word exonerate or condemn, and free you from the viper's fangs. Your God is with you to make you a fortified wall, and to "to rescue and save you.”