This one is for me.
Separation feels so full of void when my entire being is turned towards connection. A void that I don’t know how to fill – because what I want is the true connection back from that which I’m separated. From whom I’m separated.
Why must this be connected to a person? Who has not chosen me and who I would not choose again but who I must continue to live life with, in the most precious form – raising children. So incredibly disconnected in the most intimate responsibility of one’s lifetime.
I’ve become more myself through this process. I’ve had to. This can sometimes deepen the grief because the more myself I become the more aware I am of just how much I prioritize connection over everything else I know exists. And with the recognition that my connection to my whole family is gone, comes a wave of grief, anger, and mourning over what is eternally disconnected. I cannot do anything to connect us in a whole way, even when all my Spirit longs for connection for those I love. I felt the shift when we signed our divorce papers. It was a spiritual disconnection – one that ushered in my awareness of the spiritual connection that had existed between us.
I actually didn’t realize it existed until it was gone. I had been unconsciously yet deeply aware of Adison’s state during our marriage and even in our separation, and I prayed for him and his heart, directed by this discernment and awareness. Even in our darkest days of separation, I woke in the night with my soul urging to pray for him. And then it stopped when we signed simple divorce papers. That’s all it was – a piece of paper. Signing it broke our spiritual connection. What a thing. I am an outsider to his life, including that life that exists between him and my children. Our children. I hear stories but don’t see pictures. I know their time together is important, but I don’t see it alive before me. It’s theirs; not mine, and not ours.
His family, his mother, and his grandmother. They were my family. I needed so much support when Adison broke the news of his behavior, but I felt the loss of it instead. My connection to his mother, who was so much my mother, was gone when I decided to leave Adison. Again, I'm now an outsider.
I gained more awareness of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it’s imbalanced with the connection that I feel with people, and I wonder if God forgets that he made me human. I would wish that the connection with God is enough, but to be human is to need humans. I need family and I needed them then and I need them now. I love my time alone with my children, but that is because I have no choice. I would love to be raising them in the company of other women who have gone before me on this path. To lose the connection with these women has taken a deep toll on me.
I want to be more for my children but I don’t have the skills to take myself further than I am. I’m at another impasse and I grieve again. I think of his Aunt, who is now living on a farm, I hear. She lived in a prison of grief for so long and I consider this when thinking of my future. That one day I might have freedom, in this world, with nature as my signal of how to behave when free.
And all of this is about Adison’s family because his family was like nothing I’ve experienced before. They smoke and drank and swore and laughed easily and yelled easily. They were alive in front of each other. My family was so different. We were alive behind one another’s backs, it seemed. We didn’t have alcohol in our family home. Didn’t allow smoking or swearing or non-Christian music. We rarely saw our parents laugh together. It wasn’t a quiet home – us sisters filled our home with laughter and yelling and non-Christian music. But all life was done as individuals. I didn’t know my mother well growing up, didn’t know my oldest sister well; neither of them knew me too well, either. I wanted to be different for my youngest sister but I don’t know if that helped. I was too quiet and only engage in peaceful things. I didn’t know rage or despair like the other women in my family seemed to. My Dad called me the silent one. I still am in many ways, though I am starting to learn about rage and despair in my own way.
I don’t think Adison could be alive in front of me. He went behind my back. I didn’t recognize this was abnormal because it was all I knew. I tried many ways to get him to the dinner table and to have him home on weekends. By the end of our 5th year of marriage, I figured he hated me, and I failed as a wife to entice him to be at home. He was gone for work 6 weeks at a time by that point. Home for only 1 before leaving for 6 again. I wondered many times what kind of family makes that kind of decision. But then I would say it’s just a season, that this would set us up for the future. Ah, the irony that brings now. It did set us up for the future, just not the future we expected or wanted.
I’m jealous of the artists that can say all the unsaid things in their art. I don’t have a medium, only writing, and it’s to myself. I am the silent one. Full of considerations and thoughts and longings and fears that aren’t spoken and may never be spoken.
I had grief in the marriage. I journaled almost daily but looking back I wrote nothing about my marriage, except for this one sentence: “I don’t feel alone, I feel left alone”. I had grief I never acknowledged and constantly buried. I had grief that I didn’t make him happy, that he didn’t enjoy being home, that he was afraid of disrupting his good reputation, that he was silly with money. Now I’m alone because I’ve been left alone. I can say that it’s honestly better to be alone and left alone, rather than feel left alone while in the company of someone you love.
I wanted him home for dinner
so badly almost every day of our marriage. In some ways it was a relief to have
this expectation removed with divorce; to know for certain he wasn’t coming home for dinner
because this wasn’t his home anymore. I wanted him there but didn’t expect him.
Alone because I’d been left alone. That, I can tackle. I now enjoy being alone.
I had wanted space after the counseling appointment and he wanted his transgression to be ignored. His counselor told me, “now that Adison has confessed, he is free from his sin, but unfortunately, now it is on you. You have the choice to forgive him, as Jesus forgives us, or live in anger for the rest of your life”. I was stunned, ignored the counselor and instead turned to Adison, who wouldn’t look at me.
We left that appointment and I gave him my wedding ring outside on the sidewalk and said, “don’t fight for me”.
He had moved out to a friend’s apartment a week prior to that counselling appointment. I hadn’t wanted to show up to the appointment because the whole week he was gone he wouldn’t talk to me. I had presented a list of behaviours in our marriage that I wasn't comfortable with and wanted to change things. I had a hard time thinking straight while in the same room as him, I told him. He said I was right, that it was all his fault, and he packed up and left that night, and didn't call.
I look back at that week and can say that was the hardest week of my life. Buoyed between two horrible realities. Women around me comforted me by saying, "God's making a great story for you". I accepted that. When I did walk in to that appointment, Adison was already sitting on a couch with tears in his eyes.
For 30 minutes he walked through, almost bullet-point, the different things he had done behind my back in the last 3 years of our marriage. He would pause to cry, I would ask “is that all?”, and he would check his phone to read what he had typed on the notes app, and continue on with his bullet list. By the third time of asking him if “that was all”, I decided to stop asking. I didn’t think it mattered to continue. I was shaking and confused and embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I was wearing a baggy shirt, Blundstone's, and a men’s button-up and thought if I looked more feminine I could take this situation better.
That’s when the counsellor began his speech of Adison’s freedom and my new cloak. I couldn’t wear it, though. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I rejected them. I turned to Adison and asked him to look at me. This counsellor didn’t know us – not me and not him. After a few moments and my repeated ask of his eyes, he looked at me. With his eyes looking at mine, I was able to say, “I forgive you, I know you’re not a bad guy”. His head immediately fell to my chest and he sobbed. I hugged his head silently, holding him there. I don’t remember anything else of that meeting until I gave him my ring on the sidewalk.
I don’t think I cried. Not for hours, maybe for days. But I can’t remember. My first time crying I can remember is when I called my little sister to tell her. I had spread out the family phone calls over two days and had left her for last because I couldn’t bear letting her down. When I finally did, all my grief came. Over the next few weeks I would get out of sight from my kids throughout the day to cry. I would finish, dry my eyes, come back and play with them, feed them, go for walks and live our normal life.
This is 2014. I am in 2020 now. Why do I remember these details? The outfit I was wearing. Word-for-word what the counsellor said, though I can hardly remember half the things Adison listed that day. Watching Thor after the kids were tucked in bed that first night - I wanted to see rage and destruction played out in front of me because I couldn’t connect with it in myself yet. Painting a verse to bolster me for what might hit me the next day. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew God was with me more than I ever knew in my life before. I painted, “return to your rest, oh my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you”. He has.
That first night I went into our empty bed and my mind went ballistic over how empty that bed truly was now that I knew what Adison had shared. It was my first night going to bed with all this knowledge and I was afraid of the silence. I asked Benson to come up and read beside me while I fell asleep. He lived downstairs in our 4-bedroom townhouse. Lived there for the last several months at this point. The three of us were best friends, Benson, Adison and me. Benson and Adison worked together everyday. They were home for dinner more often than not because Benson was the best cook in the house. Every night we would eat well and drink our favourite beers and thought we were the luckiest people to have this type of set up. Well, I thought that. Adison had confessed his secret behaviour to Benson before he moved in. That confession is, in fact, what made Benson move in to our house. He knew we’d need the help.
It took Adison months to confess to me, and I was hurt by the thought that my two best friends had known my life was about to be turned upside down and ripped apart but kept it to themselves for months. But I was afraid of the empty bed. So that night I asked Benson to just read his book beside me while I fell asleep. He came up and very nervously sat on the edge of the bed on the side opposite to me and read a huge Jack Kerouac novel. I asked him to list some couples that we know that were really in love. We came up with a couple and then I fell asleep. He left just before I fell asleep. I could never have guessed that night, that a few months later we’d fall deeply in love with each other. I kept that Jack Kerouac book for a few years and giving it back to him was a letting go moment for me, though I’m certain he was clueless about this. I loved him more than I’ve loved anyone, and this love opened me up to my new life as someone who can love deeply and patiently. My kids get a better mom because of this love.
This love was also a huge betrayal towards Adison and this opened me up to a better understanding of the other side of hurt – being the one who hurts. I had never meant that. I thought Benson was for me and my future, I wasn’t thinking of Adison and his. This destroyed bits of each of us, not the least of which the friendship between Adison and Benson. A friendship that existed before I came into the picture as Adison’s wife, and ended after Benson confessed to Adison that he was in love with me three months after our separation. It was a year in which none of us could see very well and acted in such short-sighted ways that seem alien to us now. I can only truly speak for myself, of course, but I imagine they’d feel the same.
I’ve had the primary duty of raising the kids, so my grieving process has extended far past what I’d like or expect. I still wonder at many of the details of those years and can’t believe that they actually happened in my life. I still sometimes catch Adison’s eyes and want to know him, but then we have an unpleasant interaction and I wish I never knew him. I see Benson less frequently and feel I know him less each time, with my desire equally fading.
Divorce isn’t done with me and I can feel it has things to say in my life. This document will be the room it gets to speak. I long for it to be done, and for marriage - love - once again to have the podium in my heart. But, divorce knows that and wants to speak so that I can finally invite it off the stage, learning all I need from it's holy presence.
Divorce is a truth of the soul in the life of a Christian. Marriage and divorce are two realities we wager with. Marriage to the Spirit of God, and divorce from his flesh. Marriage is the eternal covenant and divorce our daily burden. Marriage the whole truth. Divorce the daily bread. Hearts longing to embrace the Father, the Friend, our God. But held back, in part, by life on earth.
This is a truth I see because I have felt both marriage and divorce. When you are married without knowing divorce, you think of it as *the* big failure. Something your efforts are directed at avoiding.
I know divorce. Like someone who has buried a loved one knows death. These burdened ones know what the world looks like upside down. They can see above the soil and beneath it. They exist in life and in death. In eternal and in darkness. This is Jesus.
Above the soil and beneath it. Divorce has given me sight for darkness and ears for what’s beneath. Things no person in their right mind would ask for. But this is Jesus.
Jesus experienced the first great divorce (hey, C.S. Lewis). Separated from the Father and surrounded by people on earth. Consumed with eternal while flanked by darkness. Held back, in part, by life on earth. His freedom was death. Our freedom is his resurrection. A holy gift of having the Spirit as our eternal reminder, our heart’s companion and friend to unite us with truth. One who knows the depths of the soil and the heights of what’s above and is able to be with us as we journey in and out of each.
Divorce is what God hates, the Bible says, and Christians reiterate. As one who is divorced, I know this powerfully well. Not that God hates that I’m divorced, but that God hates the separation of the eternal from the eternal ones. All people have experienced this divorce that God hates. We are born into it. We have yet to know marriage.
I had wanted space after the counseling appointment and he wanted his transgression to be ignored. His counselor told me, “now that Adison has confessed, he is free from his sin, but unfortunately, now it is on you. You have the choice to forgive him, as Jesus forgives us, or live in anger for the rest of your life”. I was stunned, ignored the counselor and instead turned to Adison, who wouldn’t look at me.
We left that appointment and I gave him my wedding ring outside on the sidewalk and said, “don’t fight for me”.
He had moved out to a friend’s apartment a week prior to that counselling appointment. I hadn’t wanted to show up to the appointment because the whole week he was gone he wouldn’t talk to me. I had presented a list of behaviours in our marriage that I wasn't comfortable with and wanted to change things. I had a hard time thinking straight while in the same room as him, I told him. He said I was right, that it was all his fault, and he packed up and left that night, and didn't call.
I look back at that week and can say that was the hardest week of my life. Buoyed between two horrible realities. Women around me comforted me by saying, "God's making a great story for you". I accepted that. When I did walk in to that appointment, Adison was already sitting on a couch with tears in his eyes.
For 30 minutes he walked through, almost bullet-point, the different things he had done behind my back in the last 3 years of our marriage. He would pause to cry, I would ask “is that all?”, and he would check his phone to read what he had typed on the notes app, and continue on with his bullet list. By the third time of asking him if “that was all”, I decided to stop asking. I didn’t think it mattered to continue. I was shaking and confused and embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I was wearing a baggy shirt, Blundstone's, and a men’s button-up and thought if I looked more feminine I could take this situation better.
That’s when the counsellor began his speech of Adison’s freedom and my new cloak. I couldn’t wear it, though. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I rejected them. I turned to Adison and asked him to look at me. This counsellor didn’t know us – not me and not him. After a few moments and my repeated ask of his eyes, he looked at me. With his eyes looking at mine, I was able to say, “I forgive you, I know you’re not a bad guy”. His head immediately fell to my chest and he sobbed. I hugged his head silently, holding him there. I don’t remember anything else of that meeting until I gave him my ring on the sidewalk.
I don’t think I cried. Not for hours, maybe for days. But I can’t remember. My first time crying I can remember is when I called my little sister to tell her. I had spread out the family phone calls over two days and had left her for last because I couldn’t bear letting her down. When I finally did, all my grief came. Over the next few weeks I would get out of sight from my kids throughout the day to cry. I would finish, dry my eyes, come back and play with them, feed them, go for walks and live our normal life.
This is 2014. I am in 2020 now. Why do I remember these details? The outfit I was wearing. Word-for-word what the counsellor said, though I can hardly remember half the things Adison listed that day. Watching Thor after the kids were tucked in bed that first night - I wanted to see rage and destruction played out in front of me because I couldn’t connect with it in myself yet. Painting a verse to bolster me for what might hit me the next day. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew God was with me more than I ever knew in my life before. I painted, “return to your rest, oh my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you”. He has.
That first night I went into our empty bed and my mind went ballistic over how empty that bed truly was now that I knew what Adison had shared. It was my first night going to bed with all this knowledge and I was afraid of the silence. I asked Benson to come up and read beside me while I fell asleep. He lived downstairs in our 4-bedroom townhouse. Lived there for the last several months at this point. The three of us were best friends, Benson, Adison and me. Benson and Adison worked together everyday. They were home for dinner more often than not because Benson was the best cook in the house. Every night we would eat well and drink our favourite beers and thought we were the luckiest people to have this type of set up. Well, I thought that. Adison had confessed his secret behaviour to Benson before he moved in. That confession is, in fact, what made Benson move in to our house. He knew we’d need the help.
It took Adison months to confess to me, and I was hurt by the thought that my two best friends had known my life was about to be turned upside down and ripped apart but kept it to themselves for months. But I was afraid of the empty bed. So that night I asked Benson to just read his book beside me while I fell asleep. He came up and very nervously sat on the edge of the bed on the side opposite to me and read a huge Jack Kerouac novel. I asked him to list some couples that we know that were really in love. We came up with a couple and then I fell asleep. He left just before I fell asleep. I could never have guessed that night, that a few months later we’d fall deeply in love with each other. I kept that Jack Kerouac book for a few years and giving it back to him was a letting go moment for me, though I’m certain he was clueless about this. I loved him more than I’ve loved anyone, and this love opened me up to my new life as someone who can love deeply and patiently. My kids get a better mom because of this love.
This love was also a huge betrayal towards Adison and this opened me up to a better understanding of the other side of hurt – being the one who hurts. I had never meant that. I thought Benson was for me and my future, I wasn’t thinking of Adison and his. This destroyed bits of each of us, not the least of which the friendship between Adison and Benson. A friendship that existed before I came into the picture as Adison’s wife, and ended after Benson confessed to Adison that he was in love with me three months after our separation. It was a year in which none of us could see very well and acted in such short-sighted ways that seem alien to us now. I can only truly speak for myself, of course, but I imagine they’d feel the same.
I’ve had the primary duty of raising the kids, so my grieving process has extended far past what I’d like or expect. I still wonder at many of the details of those years and can’t believe that they actually happened in my life. I still sometimes catch Adison’s eyes and want to know him, but then we have an unpleasant interaction and I wish I never knew him. I see Benson less frequently and feel I know him less each time, with my desire equally fading.
Divorce isn’t done with me and I can feel it has things to say in my life. This document will be the room it gets to speak. I long for it to be done, and for marriage - love - once again to have the podium in my heart. But, divorce knows that and wants to speak so that I can finally invite it off the stage, learning all I need from it's holy presence.
Divorce is a truth of the soul in the life of a Christian. Marriage and divorce are two realities we wager with. Marriage to the Spirit of God, and divorce from his flesh. Marriage is the eternal covenant and divorce our daily burden. Marriage the whole truth. Divorce the daily bread. Hearts longing to embrace the Father, the Friend, our God. But held back, in part, by life on earth.
This is a truth I see because I have felt both marriage and divorce. When you are married without knowing divorce, you think of it as *the* big failure. Something your efforts are directed at avoiding.
I know divorce. Like someone who has buried a loved one knows death. These burdened ones know what the world looks like upside down. They can see above the soil and beneath it. They exist in life and in death. In eternal and in darkness. This is Jesus.
Above the soil and beneath it. Divorce has given me sight for darkness and ears for what’s beneath. Things no person in their right mind would ask for. But this is Jesus.
Jesus experienced the first great divorce (hey, C.S. Lewis). Separated from the Father and surrounded by people on earth. Consumed with eternal while flanked by darkness. Held back, in part, by life on earth. His freedom was death. Our freedom is his resurrection. A holy gift of having the Spirit as our eternal reminder, our heart’s companion and friend to unite us with truth. One who knows the depths of the soil and the heights of what’s above and is able to be with us as we journey in and out of each.
Divorce is what God hates, the Bible says, and Christians reiterate. As one who is divorced, I know this powerfully well. Not that God hates that I’m divorced, but that God hates the separation of the eternal from the eternal ones. All people have experienced this divorce that God hates. We are born into it. We have yet to know marriage.
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