Krickettlady Lane

I never thought I’d be divorced.  In fact that seems to be a word best left unsaid.  The whole time I was getting a divorce, I thought that I was literally carrying around a Scarlet “D” on my clothing.  It was as if everyone could look right into my soul and see that I was going through, something against God’s law.  I was ashamed.  My divorce lawyer actually told me the very best thing at the start of everything.  He said, “There are no winners in a divorce.  Everyone loses.”

Four years later, I can see that to be true.  I can remember all the nights of crying out to God.  Really, there are still mascara stains on my pillowcases.  I still remember many of the heated discussions on the phone over the settlement.  (You strangely learn all these new words in legalese.) The frustrations over not understanding how people can act like strangers or like they hate each other when they had once pledged to love each other.  It doesn’t make sense.  It seems like there is always one person who is trying to make it work, and one who is not.  It only takes one hard heart to ruin a marriage and sometimes there are two.

There were times when I could actually feel a pain in my chest.  It was like my heart was being ripped out and there was no anesthesia.  I didn’t even know how to make it stop.  I wanted to stop loving him. But I couldn’t.  I could only cry and feel the pain in my chest.  You can’t stop loving someone, and I often wonder if he felt the same at times.  But it doesn’t matter.  Because God reached down and loved me anyways.  Despite what everyone said about God’s law, and still says, God had mercy upon me and held my hands all those nights.  Sometimes I think I crawled up into his lap. Sometimes I would even escape to the bathroom at work and say the Serenity Prayer as fast as I could for a few minutes.

There came a time when I began to smile again and laugh, naturally.  It wasn’t forced.  Maybe it was even better than before all this happened.  I became stronger.  Day by day by day….  At least I was prepared for people’s questions.

I had a sort of elevator speech prepared.  That was until one day a friend of mine said “How are you?  No, really, how are you?”  I almost felt appalled.  I suddenly wanted to scream, “How do you think I am?  My heart is still being ripped out?  Don’t you see it?!”

She was genuinely concerned and so it wasn’t fair.  But I felt absolutely raw all the time.    I was tired and my head hurt almost every day.  The chaos in my life was getting to me, even as I was trying to re-group.  Then the divorce became finalized.  It was a relief.  I hated to think that I actually felt better that it was over.  I felt guilty.  But long before it had been decided that he was not going to have anything with me another.  I don’t feel guilty anymore and I don’t have hatred.  Isn’t it O.K. to think that the pain and uncertainty is over?  I think so.  I was just glad to literally feel like a weight had been lifted.  It was no longer hovering over my shoulders.

You know, I think I cried so much that I rarely cry anymore.  Nothing can feel that bad again.  God is using me by bringing other divorced people to my door that I can talk to.  It’s like a secret club.  You get a certain amount of Street Cred just by having made it through with some values intact.  Sure, others are great comforters, but you can see it in the eyes of another brother or sister who has suffered.  That connection is valid, and maybe my words carry a little more weight.  Funny, no one in this club is claiming innocence, mostly bewilderment.

I don’t believe divorce is an option.  However, it happened to me.  I had to forgive myself and so does God.  God has taken this tragedy and made me a better person than I was before.  I survived, and then I thrived.  I’m not saying this to be an example of what you can have.  I say this as someone who went through years of emotional and spiritual rebirth, and then some. Praise God for Calvary and Redemption.  And thanks for my friends and family, now I can be that to someone else.