Used by vs useful....want to?

This weekend I attended an event with our church youth group.  I love taking kids on trips like this.  It pulls them out of their normal and allows for environments where conversations that are great to share with them can happen more readily.  The speaker was the chaplain from a college and she was great!  She said many things that were profound, profound because they were simple and to the point.

She was telling a story that she was using as a metaphor to talk about how God interacts with us through pain.  Maybe you have heard this before from the Christian community that when we are experiencing pain that God will use this pain for good.   In the story she was telling she quoting a gentleman that had experienced real, catastrophic pain in his life and when someone said those words to him he responded that he is not in one good relationship where the point is to be used by the other. She was saying that God doesn't cause pain in our life so we can be used by him.  Then she went on to talk about her marriage she said that she loves her husband and in the process of life she looks for ways to be helpful/useful, but if the only reason for her marriage was that she could be helpful to her spouse it would be a crap marriage.  

This metaphor she was using to explain pain and a real relationship with God really hit home with me.  As I look back at my marriage and how I tried so desperately to show my wife love, I was constantly looking for ways to be useful to her.  I was extremely observant of the things and details that bugged her and that sapped her energy and I would just do them.  It doesn't really matter what those things were what matters is that our marriage devolved into a relationship like this.  My sole purpose on the planet was to be useful (I called it servanthood love, sounds better but doesn't change the reality)  to my ex, in a way simply used by.  I look back on that and I think that must have been very unfulfilling for her, I know it was for me. 

The more distance I get from our marriage the more I am able to see how unhealthy we were.  Do I think we should have got a divorce?  No.  But I do think we should have gotten some help, lots of help.  First of all, we should have been more open and honest in our conversation about our struggles.  Second, we should have gotten counseling long before the actions that were made that made it impossible for us to reconcile, let along seek health.  I think counselling should be viewed like actual doctors appointments, non negotiable.  We all need outside voices to help us take an honest look at ourselves and our relationship.  I know we should have been growing together in our faith.  We should have had more lovin' time.  We should have had an adventure together once in a while. 

Too bad!  I think we could have been really good together, like epically good.  One for the story books good!  Because we fit, we weren't the same, we were good at different things.  When we hit a sweet spot accidently(like my golf shots) we made each other better.  Together we were excellent at caring for and about people.  And most importantly we loved our daughters in a way that was transcendent and imminent...other worldly and every breath in every day.  We had other things that we were great at, one we lost somewhere in the pain of our journey was laughing together.  We both loved to laugh(still do).  

It's funny how everyday things in life continue to teach me lessons and reveal my involvement in the catastrophe that my marriage turned into.  I hope that although I don't believe God caused this, in fact I think the opposite that he gave us many, many opportunities to turn it around and pursue health, that he continues to place me in situations where I can be useful and just step back and say "want to?"  Want to help this young guy at work have a good perspective on parenting together, even when you don't agree?  Want to talk about your story and politics with a relatively new friend even though it costs you and makes you vulnerable?  Want to pursue teenagers and be real with them? Want to pray with people, recognize pain and more than anything else realize theirs nothing I can do except stand next to them and cry with them.  Want to.....  yeah in the midst of my everyday and ordinary life...yeah I want to.   

Peace

The fifth stage of loss is acceptance.... My marriage, my family, my life as I knew it once is over.   I think I am to the place that I am beginning to be okay with that.  After this year that seems to be almost hysterically funny, but not ha, ha funny.  I have felt s strange sense of peace, is that the right word?  I think it is.  Peace is a good feeling. 
I know I said I was going to be done writing here, but that last ending seemed incomplete. I think this is better. 

good bye for now

What do you blog about and what do you not blog about?  How deep do you go before you cross a line?  I probably have crossed the lines here a few times...yet I have been cautious to not cross the big ones here.  I have made some fairly big strides in the last few weeks I believe.  So I think it is time to stop blogging for now. 
So tonight I sign out and continue to move forward one step...one day at a time.  for now I will not delete this account but perhaps soon enough. 
Muah and good bye.

Bizaro world where to accomplish a goal I need to give up on a dream.

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life?  How do you go on?  Then in your heart you begin to understand, there is no going back.  There are somethings that time cannot mend.  Some hurts that go too deep.  That have taken hold."  --Frodo Baggins

I know deep down in my heart that this is not completely true.  However, I also know that when tragedies of this magnitude occur there are parts of you that die.  The question I am trying to figure out is what do I do with the parts of me that survived.  I want these parts to thrive and to write a story of great joy for the lives of my daughters and those with whom I am blessed to be a part of their lives for however briefly. 

 So the question remains how to accomplish this?  The short answer is one day at a time.  The little bit longer answer seems to be to stop holding onto the hopeless scenario where my family could reconnect.  Where my ex would come back and together we could work through our old issues and move into a new life.  A new marriage.  I mentioned that I am trying to do that in my last post.  It is harder than I thought it would be to be honest.  Mostly because the belief I once had that love can overcome anything.  And the current belief that I currently have that there is grace in this world to smooth over every wrong doing. 

Yet, I guess if I want to achieve my goals I need to give up on my dream.  That's so messed up, normally you sacrifice to achieve your dream, not the other way around.  Yet, I do know that to accomplish just about anything that is worth doing sacrifices need to be made. 

Maybe I will win the powerball tonight and all my problems will be solved1  Ha!

To change a belief requires pain and action.

So I have been reading a book lately called Love Does, it isn't a very deep book and a quick read.  The message really is don't take yourself or life so seriously and just go and love.  Which is simple to say and the author does a great job saying it in pretty creative ways through some of the adventures and stories he has.  However, as I have let this message wash over me it is starting to become like the gospel message.  God loves me unconditionally, so much so that he sent his son here to show me how to live, love, and eventually to die in a way that provides me access to be in a relationship with this God that loves me so.  This message is pretty simply.  Sometimes I struggle with all the details, yet I get it and furthermore believe it.  Once we believe in simple messages like these, they can change the way you live.  They for sure change the way you think. 

For my whole life I believed that love could overcome adversity.  In other words when a relationship began to have cracks forming in it, yet there was enough love; love would fill in the cracks and heal it, or at least it could.  I have "loved" two women in my life.  One was in college, I fell in love with her, yet she had reservations or baggage...probably both.  Even though I was doing my best to "love" her, she proceeded to hold me at arms length and essentially "date" other guys while we were dating.  You could call this cheating I guess, it felt like that to me, but we weren't technically exclusive.  No matter the wording I felt betrayed.  In the end, she came back and tried but it was too late the damage had been done to our relationship.  The cracks were too big, it was necessary...probably the right word is easier, to just walk away.   I wrote that off to youth and her baggage, love was ultimately still powerful. 

The second woman I loved was my ex.  When we dated it was fun.  We clicked.  We met the needs that the other needed fulfilled for the most part and we travelled the path young lovers take.  We proclaimed our love and then together decided to get married.  As I look back there were red flags, but those things exist in every relationship.  Let's just call them trials and tribulations.  In many ways I liked the trials because as we persevered through them I thought we were getting stronger.  I know enough about human relationships to know there is truth in what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  The unfortunate reality of life is that somethings do kill you. 

I have been living in hope for two years.  At first it was the hope that my wife would see the value in our relationship, that she would turn back from the path she had begun down and we could find each other again.  Since the divorce I have lived in the hope that she would come to the realization that we might not have been nor may ever be "perfect" for each other.  But we love each other, have a family together, and the fact that God bonded us together would overcome the reservations.  Then love could overcome this reality. 

So when do you start to doubt what you believe to be true?  How many times does it take for your "beliefs" to be proven false before you stop believeing in them and start believeing something else.  And then let that thing change who you are and how you think?  These questions could lead to bitterness and resentment.  I do not want any part of those feelings effecting the way I think or live.  Yet, the questions remain.  The truth is love doesn't conquer all, only two people refusing to let love die can. 

I think it is time to set down hope and move forward.  I am not sure what that means for me.  I do think that I need to be done allowing these false hopes control the way that I interact with her and the world.  She left me, then divorced me, is currently dating the same guy for 9 months...some would say get a clue.  It's hard to give up on a thing that you believe.  It's not like changing the color of your wall or buying a new car, it truly does require me to change the way that I think. 

So for Christmas this year since I won't be getting any other gifts I will be giving myself permission to put this relationship where it belongs- in the ground.  I have tried to do that a couple of ways symbolically this year, but now I think I am ready.  Honestly, it's not what I want, but like the song says, "you can't always get what you want".  When this year ends I will be doing my best to bury my feelings for my ex as well.  Wish me good luck.    

Most wonderful time of the year?

This is the time of year for family...traditions, meals, gifts, snuggling under blankets watching movies, playing with new toys, etc.  And tonight even though my daughters are in the next room sleeping peacefully I feel lonely.  I am sitting on my couch with my small but nice Christmas tree setting off a serine glow.....alone.  I miss my family, I miss my wife, I miss my marriage.  

I don't want to go through this season alone...again.  I did that on my birthday for the most part it was depressing.  I don't want to date...I want to reconcile my family. 

This is all so messy and so often sad..... 

It's not all bad, it's just at times its sad. 

when do you know you have healed?

When do you know if you are healed?  When I have hurt myself physically there is a set period of time while my body heals itself.  With some of the more severe that time was longer and some even required physical therapy.  The pain that this divorce and the actions leading up to it and some since have made a different kind of wound.  As I get further away I am starting to realize a few things. 

I thought this would forever change me for the worse. 

I thought this experience would damage my soul in a way that was unrepairable.

I thought I would be trapped, by self doubt, sadness, frustration, confusion, etc.

I thought a huge part of me had died.

I thought I would be worse off. 

I think I thought wrong. 

This will forever change me, but it doesn't have to be for the worse.  I am a more understanding, empathetic, kind person now than I was before...which is saying a lot I think.  My soul was damaged but as it heals I am finding the extent of what I am capable of and just how strong I am, oh yeah and faith is real.  I have self doubt, sadness, frustration, confusion, etc.  but these things are not trapping me.  There may have been bars made up pf these things for a while but those bars are starting to crumble.  A part of me has died.  When I married my ex I gave her my heart, I believe that we were bonded together in and through Christ, so when that is torn apart, not all of you can survive because of the way the bond works.  Yet, in the midst of that, a part of me is still alive.  Even though I miss my old life, my old every day thoughts, the way I used to make decisions,  the life I lead now isn't so bad.  In fact, I am really starting to like many parts of it. 

When do you know you are healed?  I'm not sure.  But as I check in, I can tell I have walked a long way down the path of recovery.  So maybe the best answer is when you start believing in hope, not as a concept but as a way of life. 

I could be all wrong though, I am a almost 39 years old, entry level employee, with few friends, a small house, a small bank account, old cloths, a bed that is kind of depressing for personal reasons, who sees his daughters far less than he would hope dude.  But, I am starting to actually smile, like a real smile, soul deep smile once and a while.  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it! 
  

24 hours of solitude and what did I learn?

I have spent the last two days sitting in a deer blind from before dawn to after dark.  I had a few moments when I had deer in front of me, but for the bulk of that time there was very little to hold my attention.  So where does your brain go when it is unfettered by daily tasks or to-do lists?  Well I don't know about you but mine floats to the large questions I have about life.  So what are the larger questions that a man who has drastically altered almost everything about his life in the past 12 months have?  What's for breakfast tomorrow. 

Ha! Well in some ways that is true you see for a long time now I have been living looking backwards and living minute to minute for the most part.  I think for the most part that is okay.  I think when you go through something that traumatic the way to heal is one hour, one step, one day at a time.  Healing is a seasonal thing.  I do not think that this season is over, yet I do think that at some point you have to start picking your head up and looking forward a bit. 

So:

1.  Is this job that I am currently doing good?  I am not asking am I doing a good job, I am.  I am asking "if" this is what I should do for this next season? 

2.  What should I be doing financially?  Goals, purpose, etc?

3.  To date or not to date?  I think I am still in love with my ex, so I believe that the answer to this question is no.  I have never been able to put someone in harms way for my own good.  That's why when I was at parties or bars and everyone was coupling/hooking up I was the one taking care of the sick, cleaning up or listening in the corner.  I could never just put myself first and disregard the others feelings no mater their state.  Even though this was frustrating at times when I was a hormonal teenager/twenty-something kid, I like this about myself.  And now that I am a much more mature hormonal almost 40 something male I do not want this life experience to rob me of that. 

4.  How can I be growing?  Personally, physically, emotionally, mentally and most importantly spiritually? 

5.  How am I taking risks, being vulnerable, etc? 

6.  Who am I helping?       

In conclusion, I am a mess.  I have been living away from my ex for almost a year in a week or two.  I know things about the limits of humanity that I can't unlearn.  I have been officially divorced for about 7 months.  I am coming up on my one year anniversary at my current job.  I am two weeks from being 39.  I am 6 months into a 30 or 20 year mortgage.... I can't actually remember which I signed at this minute!  My memory is still foggy from the crap and so clogged with part numbers and fun facts about my new job, that I forget  even big details like the term of my mortgage.  (I knew how many months my wife and I had left in our previous mortgages.)   I have been knocked to the ground, but I'm not dead.  I have been regrouping and who knows what this next round will bring. 

the fragility of the world

My daughter was a premie.  She should have died in the womb.  The doctors told us she would.  IN fact the doctor wouldn't let us leave his consultation room until we began the mourning process.  We left went home and started to mourn the baby we had tried so desperately to have, who was still alive inside of my wife.  Long story short about 10 long weeks later I was driving like a mad man to a hospital, running through hallways, hopping on one foot putting a surgical suit on, entering a room along with a Neonatal rapid response team and watched the surgeon make her incision on my ex's abdomen for an emergency C-section.  Then they removed the baby quickly handed her over to the team and I sat between my wife who was cut open and bleeding with some of her insides on the outsides and my 3 lb 8oz infant daughter being worked on by 5-6 people trying desperately to get her to breath so I wouldn't have to watch her die within my arms reach.   The had to intubate her and put her on a vent.  Then they wheeled her away and she was gone.  I wasn't sure I was going to see her alive again.   They put my wife back together, stapled, and taped her shut.  I think that day I discovered how fragile life actually is...

I never really knew how fragile marriages are?  I grew up with parents who fought through and stayed together.  My grandma lost her first love to WWII but she stayed with her 2nd husband until he died in a room in the same hospital my daughter was born in.  My other grandparents stayed together until Alzheimer's stole my grandma's mind and eventually her life.  Aunts/Uncles/cousins for the most part.  Friends.  Not entirely, but in many ways I guess I was sheltered from the reality of the truth about this type of relationship.  I guess as I got older it began to dawn on me a little as acquaintances, a few family members, etc. walked the road of divorce.  I knew my marriage was less than perfect, but I also knew there were no perfect marriages and I just assumed you stayed together and fought together to keep your family intact.  I thought that if you have two good people, two people who don't believe in divorce, don't give up on really anything in life, love each other and love their family that divorce just wasn't an option. 

I talked to a friend this weekend, they found out something tragic about their marriage.  I could hear the confusion, rage, frustration and below that I could hear the hurt, pain, betrayal but what struck me to tears was the confusion...the shock.   I was transported back to a few sleepless nights.  Nights I spent racking my brain and heart.  Why?   How did we get here?  Am I so worthless to her?  So easy to throw away?  How could something like this happen to us...to me? 

The truth of it all is everything is fragile, even though we try to blind ourselves to that truth.  Houses burn down.  Car accidents happen in the blink of an eye.  Cancer steals lives in every condition.  Stock markets fail.  People lie.  Companies go bankrupt and/or downsize.  Friends leave.  Spouses betray.  Children turn their backs on their parents.  To coin a phrase shit happens.  The Bible says that our lives are but a wisp of smoke or a blade of grass.  Our lives are but blips in the world, in time, in the galaxy. 

Yet, I believe that we are each valued and priceless.  We will fail, we will betray, we will be let down, we will be hurt, we will lose, but we will also love if we are lucky, we will recognize grace, mercy, an identity not rooted in success, money, power, etc but in kindness, love and an entity that has perfect love for us and is capable of grace in the midst of that perfection. 

So yes everything is fragile, and will fall apart...but we have hope, we have access to strength we cannot fathom the depths of and best of all we are loved. 

I am loved!

Look through the symptoms to the root

I have started watching House MD on Netflix, it is an interesting show.  This cantankerous doctor with a back story, that has wounded him, is a brilliant diagnostician. He is like the Sherlock Holms of doctors.  I have noticed two things one he is constantly trying to decipher all the symptoms and/or causes seeking to almost get them out of the way to get to the root cause.  The other thing he has said often is everyone lies. 
As I look back at the marriage that I shared with my ex before the last year, I think we had good things and bad things going on..like every marriage.  But if I look at it from here, at a distance, I notice that we had a broken defense system.  What does that mean?  It means we never really figured out how to get through the bad stuff together.  So when they came we reacted to them, often times individually.   Yet, we didn't have the ability to walk through them together.  To use the metaphor here, our body had no real immune system.  So when the little crummy things of life happened bumps, bruises, illness we would wipe some salve on it or take a pill and then move on.  Which at first is not that big of a deal.  But eventually something big happens and the anemic, battered body that you bring to the table when something big happens cannot get through it. 

Okay let's climb out of the metaphor before I get too lost in it.  We never really learned how to communicate, we surely never learned how to conflict.  Part of that stemmed back to issues we brought to the table individually.  Our conflict styles did not match up, we would have needed to work very hard and extremely intentionally to accomplish healthy conflict.  We didn't do that.

We never took the time to really figure what we loved to do together.  We knew what we loved to do individually and sometimes we would include the other on our terms.  But we never spent enough time or energy figuring out the things that would create an environment of health as a regularly communicating team outside of the ordinary daily details or conflict.

I think we were so focused on growing up ourselves and raising our daughters that we stopped even thinking about growing our relationship.  

It's funny when we started dating we were headed in the right direction.  We didn't even kiss for months because we knew that this gets in the way of communicating and we wanted to focus on getting to know eachother not just focus on the next time we were going to kiss.  We prayed together, trying to include the other in our intimate relationships with God.  We read devo's and books commenting on the things that stood out to us.  We spent much of our time in groups, so we intentionally set apart a night a week where we could be alone on a date just us.  In my mind the way we began was on a pretty solid foundation.   We even attempted to do this when we were first married, but careers, expectations from family, friends, and probably most importantly the unmet ones from each other began to pile up between us.

To slip back into the metaphor, our main arteries to the heart of our marriage began to clog.  It was subtle at first, then a couple of big blockages landed infertility and unmet financial obligation.  In some way we knew these things were there, that they were slowly killing us, but as long as we didn't "mess" around with them we were "okay". 

So we had "lots" of symptoms, but what was the root cause.  Because the truth is we are both lovely, intelligent, hard working, caring, people.  We have supportive families who love us and loved our spouses, they aren't perfect but humans never are.  We share many stories, memories, bonds, got through infertility to have two beautiful daughters, worked hard in our careers and stood out among our peers.  We even love each other. 

Love- well that is an interesting thing.  Now we may be on to something.  There is a piece of scripture from the message that goes like this: The eyes are the windows into your body.  If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.  If you live squinty eyes in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar.  If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have.  This is not a scripture about marriage but it applies so well here.  We choose over and over again to live squinty-eyed, greedy to put it bluntly.  It wasn't that we didn't love each other, the problem was we loved ourselves more. 

The root problem was we were human.     We avoided awkward situations and uncomfortable conversations....we were selfish...  in the end that's what tore us apart.  It wasn't the symptoms though there were many.  We forgot to open our eyes wide in wonder and belief that this other person was more important than we were and that they were worth sacrificing our own self love for any day of the week.   The funny thing is that didn't have to kill us, to be honest it still doesn't.  But we will probably carry on making the same mistakes and falling prey to the same symptoms again and again.  I believe that we could fix us, the us that we never gave a fair shot, the us God put together to make us more whole with Him, the us that loves our daughters to infinity.   But we won't. 



 

Sometimes the small wins add up to something big

Yesterday I talked to some folks about how we can allow failure to define us.  As I was telling them that failure need not define us and fear of failure need not hold us back, I thought about me.  Have I done this?  Sure.  I allowed the fear of how my ex would react hold me back from confronting the ways that I felt we were slipping away.  I tried in my letter writing ways to reconnect, yet when those ways were ignored for the most part, I should have stood up and took a swing.  Instead I leaned back and let the ways that she continued to drift away just progress on like a fall leaf in a stream.  I understand that it was not just my job to keep us together, but someone had to, why not me?  I guess I knew I wasn't meeting her expectations of a husband a long time ago.  I also think that I was hoping that my strengths would out weigh my weaknesses in her eyes.  Obviously, in the end the scaled tipped the wrong way in her heart anyway and we are where we are. 

Yet, now I am in that everyday sort of fight where you roll over in the morning turn the alarm off and say I am not going to let the "I'm not good enough" lie I was told to define me and I am going to choose to believe that my identity resides in the one who loves me, created me and leads me.  Sometimes that works all day, sometimes that works until I put my feet on the ground, sometimes that works until I drop my kids of at the ex's and her BF and family are there and my youngest runs in with such excitement she forgets to give me a hug or say good bye.  Sometimes in the midst of being an afterthought for her I hear those old messages again. 

My youngest child's new question for me is why don't we see you hardly at all?  I hate this question, because she has been following it with do you miss us when we are gone?  Yes!  Do you cry sometimes?  Yep?  She gave me a stuffed animal to sleep with, I have been sleeping with it every night.  Some may see that as pitiful, not me.  I love my girls from the beginning to the end of who I am and I miss the hell out of them when I can't be with them.  A gift of love from my little one to remind me that she loves me is just what I need when I turn off the distractions and try to find sweet dreams and an anchor that will remind me I am not who my ex says that I am. 

You see I know in my heart that I am great!   I am smart, I am caring, I am a great listener, very perceptive, an intuitive empathizer, I have a great laugh, can hug with the best of them and give a killer massage among other skills and talents.  I am not weak, or a non-person, a small man, crappy husband, shitty salesman, bad conversationalist, worse arguer, unskilled or dumb.  I know that!  But sometimes its hard to remember, it's hard to not let my failure define me or the ways I was judged leading up to that epic failure not become my reality.  Today I am further along the road than I was last week, last month, last year....the voice is still there, but it is quieter for the most part.   I'll take that as a victory!

Pandora's box

Have you ever heard of the story of Pandora's box?  Pandora was given a box and told never to open it.  Of course in the end it was opened releasing envy, sickness, hate, disease, etc.   This divorce, the catastrophic things that happened leading up to it, and the wreckage that exists since has been a plague for me.  I have had to confront each of the evil spirits that "escaped" from the box on this journey.  Envy: I have been envious of people with seemingly healthier marriages/relationships than me, of the people my ex choose to reveal her inner most being too instead of me, of my ex and her time with our daughters, of the new BF(though it pains me to say that), etc.  I have felt sick both physically and emotionally over this whole affair.  When this was all going down my heart would begin to pound, I don't mean beat faster than normal, I mean pound I felt as if it would jump out of my chest and it literally caused me pain. It has happened a few times since when I allow my brain to reenter/probe those memories and emotions again.  The emotionally sickness is ongoing, I'm not sure of the total repercussions of them yet.   Hate....I can honestly say that I have never hated another person in my life.  Yet,, I had to come to this conclusion, I had to make the choice not to hate.  Because quite honestly there were people in this scenario that I reallllly wanted to hate.  Like a lot!  So even though I didn't fall down the rabbit hole, I had to stand there and let hate wash over me, tempt me if you will, and there were parts of it that felt right or at least just.  But it was just too easy, I knew there must be a catch and I believe if I would have succumbed I would have lost myself forever and it would have been a slippery slope from there to who knows where else.  Despair- I believe that this has been the most life threatening thing that has happened.  There were moments when I wasn't sure what to do, the pain and sadness came close to swallowing me whole.  I still have moments where these emotions sneak up on me, but for the most part I am becoming numb or at least aware enough to head them off before they overtake me.  Regret- I am not sure if this is evil?  Yet, I regret giving up, I regret making choices and taking actions that helped make it easier for my wife to believe divorce was a better option than marriage to me.  Judgement- Here again I am not sure this is evil.  Yet, I think when you allow something to control how you see yourself you have given it too much power over your life and that has evil written all over it to me.  I know I am judged.  At work I am the tarnished pastor who has run to a weld shop.  With others I am the damaged goods of a divorce.  At church I am someone who either screwed up bad or deserves pity.  To my ex she now treats me nice hoping to keep the peace(I think) as well as assuage her guilt over the pain she caused.  But just behind it are these reasons she left me, the things she said to me in anger, the way she treated me, the times she lost her temper, who she choose to spend time with and what she did when she was there, etc.  And perhaps the worst judgement of all now is me.  I wasn't good enough, man enough, strong enough, rich enough, safe enough, loving enough, smart enough, selfless enough, bold enough, courageous enough, good looking enough, intentional enough,...when it comes right down to it I know that I wasn't enough and I failed.  Failed at the thing that I was most passionate about and cared the most about in my life.  If I cannot succeed at that, what's worth fighting for or believing in? 

The rest of the Pandora's story is different depending on who tells it, because what was left in the box was hope.  Hope is a curious thing.  I can tell you honestly I had hope for our marriage, right up until the last day, when I walked to the court and stood behind my wife and her lawyer and listened to her answer the 4 or 5 questions that tore our family apart for good. (Two secrets:  She wanted to talk afterwards and I couldn't, I couldn't have her see me cry.  I almost ran to my car to weep and then numbly drove back to work where my co-workers graciously, for the most part ignored me and my puffy red eyes.  The second secret is even this hasn't completely killed my hope.  I know I'm an idiot and a glutton for punishment.  I believe that my ex was my person, she didn't complete me like some stupid rom-com, but she was, she is the person God bonded me to and that's it for me.  I am eternally bonded to her, no matter who she is dating, sleeping next to, etc.)  In spite of those secrets, hope is strange.  You see I have hope, not that everything will be better or normal...I wish yet I am not that naïve.  I have hope that this will not destroy me. No matter how idiotic my heart is yearning for a dead relationship.  No matter how painful this is or how little of "me" remains in the wake of all this.  No matter if the only great things in my life continue to be almost exclusively the time I spend with my daughters and the time I am looking forward to spending with them.  I have hope that I can learn to smile again.  Right now I smile with my mouth and it feels forced.  I grew up smiling from my soul and it would radiate from my whole face.  I can remember catching people of guard with my smile, not because it was striking or handsome, I am too scared for that, but it was authentic and I believe magnetic.  I just hope that my smile can spread from my mouth to my eyes and then maybe seep into the more important places.  There for a while my girls were yelling at me to smile, so I have tried to be intentional about it, but it's hard.  My heart hurts and is sad all the time and that's where my smiles came from.  So yeah I have hope that I learn to smile sometime.  Beyond that I hope that God lead's my path, path through this mine field , path of sorrow and grieving, path to substance again, path to feel like I have worth, path away from the judgments, the temptations of thinking about the life that ex is continuing on with, without me, about what she is doing with her Bf whether that be with my girls and his kids or when they are alone. (Especially when they are alone, I really hate that I have to think about this!!!!!) The path toward peace and contentment with where and who I am.  Essentially the path of life instead of death.    

made it through but in the process realized... another anniversary.

So I survived the week at the ex's, it really didn't turn out that bad... Well all up until the last night.  This was the first night I didn't collapse into bed exhausted I actually had some energy left at the end of the night, I may have had a Wicked Ale and my ex texted me about something to which I replied and then we just sort of texted back and forth for a while.  While we were texting I rolled up to bed as it was about time for me to cash in my chips.  I closed the door to my daughters room and noticed a poster.  It was a written note to my daughters from my ex in poster form and it was great.  I quickly ran to my younger daughter's room and sure enough she had one too.  They were just these little pieces of advice, but they were good.(minus the whole tearing our family apart instead of repairing the damage and reconnecting my ex is a great mom! Seriously!)  They both ended with something to the effect of don't let fear hold you back.  I am not sure what prompted me to do it, if it was that place , the nostalgia, the fun I was having with the girls, the fun banter we were having over text or what, but I sent a text to the effect of I wish I would have had the courage to not give up on our marriage. This sentiment is true. It was moment of vulnerability.  Which is okay for me to be, but maybe not with my ex so much... we have been winning this divorce thing and I don't want to be the reason we grow awkward or more distant.  

I got thinking about that moment and what might be behind that statement.  I think I just got tired of feeling like I was the only one refusing to walk away from our marriage, sick of being thought of and treated like yesterdays mistakes/trash, tired of being avoided and withdrawn from and so when she made another attempt to end it, I finally acquiesced.  If you have read this blog you know I am very much aware of my faults and mistakes; that I have owned, feel badly about and apologized for each of them.  Yet, where I know a marriage is made up of two faulty people, it is also kept together by two people refusing to quit.  My ex quit our marriage before I did.  I am not sure why she stuck around as long as she did, I think she was waiting for me to quit too?  One possibility that I pray is not true is she may have stuck it out if I would have done the same.  I don't think that's true given all the extenuating circumstances that surrounded our end, but it is something I will never have a complete answer too and will probably haunt me forever.  Was I just not strong enough....again?   

It has almost been a year since that fateful day when she told me we were done and I needed to figure out when I was going to move out. (Almost a year can it be that long...I can't believe it has only been one year...) So maybe I should put this down, how has this year been?    

Helpful:
Writing here, a few great friends who care, great family who love me all the time, running, good job that keeps me actively working- occupying my time, paying the bills and giving me something new to learn, beer at times, reading Bible, praying, up north, a church family that has given me space to transition and grieve yet allowed me to still employ the gifts and experience I have in the ministry world.

Not so helpful:
Down time for my brain to wander, my best friend moving away, seeing my daughters not nearly as much as I want to, other stuff probably the tangled mess this has made of me inside and out, too much beer, feeling sorry for myself, taking on other peoples judgments including if not most importantly my ex's. 

I wonder what a prison cell feels like?

So my ex is travelling for work and I agreed to stay at her house to hang out with my little ladies.  The idea was solid, and really it continues to be...but.  Yeah this whole journey has been full with yeah buts.  Life is messy. 

My girls board the bus here, their school clothes are here, their school routine begins and ends here, they are safe here... it was our home and it remains their home. 

On the way here they were telling me how they had a sleepover here this weekend.  With the Bf and his kids.  They all slept downstairs...all except mommy and BF.  Uggg!  I tucked my girls in, in our old bedroom and I had this sick feeling in my gut.  I couldn't help myself, I wonder what happened in here lately, what happened in here this weekend...two nights ago.  I don't want to think about it!  I try to block any route to this ugly scene in my imagination.  I have managed to do that for the most part, but going to sleep tonight... I dread that, because then I will lose control.  Night time tends to be bad at times.  Sometimes it's not, my guess is tonight will be one of the bad ones. 

I am here where many bad things went down, where I found out things about my wife, my marriage, my identity.... one of the last times I was here I left a note.  Something to the effect of, "I wish this didn't go this way."  I still wish that.  And tonight I can honestly say I am scared, scared of the ghosts that live in these walls for me.  I cannot bring myself to sleep in "that" room, so I will be sleeping in one of my daughters rooms or maybe the couch?  Or maybe I will just skip sleep...nah can't do that I have to work the rest of the week.   Tempting though.  

I guess I will just chalk this up as one more thing that I have done for my daughters, for whom I would travel to hell and back for.   If you are the praying sort...pray for me.  

first, first day of school

Tomorrow is the first day of school for my daughters.  Normally, I would have spent the weekend at Mackinaw Island as a last hurrah of the summer before with them. We would have eaten good food, played in the hotel hot tub, ridden around the island, and laughed.  On the way home we would have talked about what food they wanted to eat for lunch.  We would have picked out their outfits, I would have hugged them both, prayed with at least one of them, and sat in their room until they drifted off to sleep.  That is what my heart longs to do, that is what I know to be the right thing for me to have done tonight. 

Instead I am sitting on my couch typing this having called them on the phone and tried to pick up the few things they shared with me over speaker phone. About the weekend on the island and then the day spent not with me but with my ex and her BF's family.  Yet, they are excited about their first day and I am so happy for them.  And when I got off the phone with them I bawled like a baby. 

Blogging about all this is interesting.  Opening my soul to no one in particular, sharing the pain, the confusion, the frustration, the anger, the sadness, the betrayal, the loss.....I am not sure what good it is doing?  I know that at times it helps to put the tangled mess I feel inside down here, yet words rarely do justice to the feelings.  I believe this lack of being able to communicate my feelings in a way that is understandable is among the reasons that I find myself in this crappy situation in the first place.  Maybe I should be working on expressing myself verbally, instead of constantly writing everything down?  That may be true, yet this is what I have for now.  Since it is helping at least a bit I will continue for now. 

What's the point

So I have a curious question to pose or that I have been asking myself.  I wonder if I didn't have my daughters just how far down the rabbits hole I would slide?  I mean that as a broad term:  morally, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, etc.  I know that I have the Holy Spirit to guide me and I know He is active in my life, yet that voice is easy to drown out or ignore all together. 

I feel the icy cold fingers of depression grasping at my heart.  I cannot explain it better than that, it is a feeling of numbness and withdrawal.  I have a routine now that is pretty stable especially as I am about to enter back into the school year with my girls.  Get up, clean up, eat up, read up, work.  Come home if it is a girls night cook food, hang out, try to get them to talk and share( they seem so cautious to tell me about their days, which is weird as I don't pry or react strangely I just want to know about their lives.).  Then we either jump in car and scream to the south side of town to get home by the minute I mentioned to ex so she won't text me 5 times about where I am or we clean up and pretty much get ready for bed.  The school year night that I have them I also work at a church so I will rarely see my oldest before bedtime and my youngest will be in activities until it is time to scream home to get to bed.  If it is an off night, no girls, I run errands, sometimes real sometimes contrived to get out of house, I run, I eat, I watch TV, I go to sleep.  Repeat... Then weekend comes.  Here again Girls = fun.  Activities, up north, cousins, movies, games, etc.  If off, no girls, hopefully work on the am Sat, small project if I can find one around home, run, eat, drink, TV.  Sleep.  Church, parents, girls, eat, drive them home, TV or read and sleep.  REPEAT. 

The highlights of my week are the girls.  But especially during the school year its hard.  I get them what feels like so rarely, definitely not 50/50!, and when I am with them it is great but it is shadowed.  We are not the family we are supposed to be, we are missing someone, we are constantly rushed or meeting some deadline.  The shadow is hard.  Back to the icy fingers.

I have a hobby running and this time of the year hunting.  Which is great but both of these hobbies give me so much alone time and that is something I have a lot of right now.  I was talking to a friend who is a few steps behind me and he said that if his marriage falls apart as it looks like it is going to he would be perfectly content living up north alone somewhere.  I get this feeling, I am an introvert.  But we all need people in our lives.  There was a study done a while ago with babies in Russia.  I don't remember all the details but the results were that we need meaningful physical contact with other people a few times a day to stay sane for the most part.  It is good that I have a mom and a few daughters because besides them I haven't had a person in my life who was or is intentional about this in such a long time and now I wonder if that will ever change? 

I have had a few folks ask me when I am going to start dating.  I have told them this line about needing to be healthy by myself first.  What I wanted to say was I did that, I got married, I still love her and I always will.  When I said I do I meant forever., but I didn't say that.   Beyond that fact, I don't want to date.  I think about it and it makes me cringe.  I am so afraid of allowing someone to get to know me, the real me, and I am not even sure which version of me is real after all the wounds and scars of this travesty.  I know I am lonely, but it's not worth the risk of my or another's heart.  At least this hasn't made me selfish, I can still think of others.

To be very transparent I believe that divorce is a tool of Satan.  You don't have to believe in Satan or if that name drives you crazy, maybe if I said I believe divorce is evil.  It tore my family apart, my daughters are doomed to live this hop scotch life until they are old enough to get the F off the crazy train and even then they will have to choose how and when to see us both.  They get to feel guilt, shame, loss, sadness, anger, frustration, betrayal, confusion, etc.  My ex's and my union is destroyed, but you don't just divorce and that's it, sign the papers and you are good to go.  Nope!  We have entangled in the kind of permanent way that we will never be able to neatly pull apart.  Firstly we have kids together and that won't ever change.  But we also have shared so much life, survived trials, experienced joys, held each other in sadness, witnessed awkward, painful, embarrassing, horrible events.  Shared intimate moments not just the ones we were naked for, the ones where we bared our souls.  Even the pain we inflicted on each other has a way of bonding us.  Besides all that we stood in front of friends, family and most importantly God and promised in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, til death end us.  All of those things and more make it impossible, no matter the success stories that exist.  So I say it is evil.  Like many evil things them seem "right", "good", "just", "feels right", etc.  in the beginning or maybe for a while.  But all along under the surface it is causing havoc.  I can't speak for my ex, but for me...I am broken.  My heart is shattered, I am lonely, I am ashamed, I have no self confidence left(for example I ran a race, my ex happened to run it too she passed me at the very end I could have kept up with her I even considered passing her, but then I thought of what's the point, I slowed way down and thought about walking of the course), I am sad, I am furious, I feel weighed and worthless, I feel wronged, I don't know how to trust anymore, I assume the worst. (I was running past a parking lot the other week and I watched a woman jump out of her car and into a guys truck and start making out, I assumed they were having an affair not that it was some happy couple.)  I am jealous.  Yeah.... I am broken.  Divorce worked it's evil on me, chewed me up and the version of me that is left is worthless. 

Yet, I will solider on, I will hope for better(though I doubt it's arrival), I will try to put on a smile(maybe someday it will form without me having to force it), I will pray for healing, I will strive to be a good dad no matter what. I will keep forgiving my ex and seeking peace, I will restrain all of the feelings I have to pound her new BF's face in, and to not judge the Brady Bunch life style they are moving towards. In a sentence I will try to hold onto the tiny piece of me that is left and hope to God that I don't lose my grip.          

Tearing apart one flesh in messy

I am about to go on my first vacation as a single person...single parent that is.  I am looking forward to it, I am looking forward to 4 days off in a row. I don't  a lot of vacation yet as I recently changed careers and had to start towards the bottom of the ladder, so I am making a weekend long to make the most of my few days of vacation.  I think it will be fun...yet   there is something that is just not right about it. 

I was talking with a friend the other day and the word I used is I am in mourning.  Mourning what should not have happened, mourning the loss of so many things in my everyday and long term life, mourning what my daughters have to go through, mourning the roll I played in all of this, mourning a lot I guess.  It feels like the right word.  A while ago I was chatting with a man who had lost his wife to cancer and he was trudging through his own mourning process and he said that he thought I had it worse because my wife was gone and she choose to leave me.... ouch!  But yeah that's true.  I was reminiscing with some friends who are moving soon a few nights ago and we pointed out a few red flags, but overall we concluded it was just sad that it had come to this. 

I believe in a healthy marriage your spouse is constantly on your mind, the way you make choices, the things you decide to do, the where and then when you go places, in a mysterious way they are always there.  I think this is what the Bible refers to as one flesh.  Some people think that only refers to sex or a physical union, which is of course part of it, but I believe it is so much more.  This is how I lived, or tried very hard to live, for 13 years.  I constantly had my ex on my heart and my mind, she influenced my whole being. (I think she saw this as weakness in me...at least that's what she said to me during our not so great months.  I didn't have my own personality or I was a non-person...something like that.  it was mostly angry talk, but there is always some raw truth in angry talk.) It is very difficult and messy to untangle myself from that existence.  I find I am constantly catching myself doing this.  I have heard a theory that it takes 1 year for every 4 years you were married to be healthy as a single entity.  That means this road is at least  3 years long... That also would mean that my ex is jumping into a relationship way too fast.  I pray that she is an anomaly.  Because she doesn't go alone she is bringing our two precious daughters along.  Eventually, maybe, I will have to cross that bridge too.  (Maybe not...)  Regardless, I pray that I continue to have the strength and the patience to get to a healthy place.  Healthy for me and my daughters. 

The next post perhaps I will talk about the small voice I am hearing in the back of my heart about ministry...perhaps not. 
Good night!

being left again

Sidebar from the divorce journey:
So one of the things that I basically gave up trying to appease and win approval from my ex was I distanced myself from my friends.  During the days leading up to the divorce I spent quite a bit of time rekindling some old relationships.  It has been great.  To be around people who love me and have known me for eons.  Two weeks ago I found out my best friend and one of these newly rekindled close relationships informed me that he was moving to Florida.  

On top of everything else going down this feels a little overwhelming.  I am happy for their family unit and this new adventure, but I am sad.  Honestly I am heartbroken.  The pieces of my heart that exist have been ground into smaller pieces. 
This sounds and feels like whining.  And I guess that is what it is....but still.  At least this time I'm not being rejected, just left.

What bothers me

So I got to meet the BF this past weekend...long story short had a little incident that required a quick visit to the emergency room for one of my daughters while they were with my ex and her BF.  So I was able to slap eyes on him and stand awkwardly in a waiting room while the ex changed the girls before I took them.  We proceeded to do what guys do in awkward situations we ignored each other.  It was weird. 
My ex told me she was set up by some friends with this guy..... It feels like to me that this may not indeed be true.  I don't know why this matters, I guess it just bugs me to be lied to again.  My guess is a dating site.  Not that it changes anything or should.  Mostly I just feel...I am not sure the right word- angry(maybe), disgusted(maybe), jealous(maybe), bothered...that's not a complete word but in lieu of a better one it will do. 
I am bothered, bothered by this whole situation.  Not just the fact that my ex is dating doing who knows what with this guy.  Of that I am certainly bothered.  But it is more than just this.  It is more than being betrayed, more than being lied too, more than being judged, more than being rejected, more than being erased from one half of my extended family, and ripped from my home and majority of the time with my daughters.  All of those things suck.... hard!
Maybe a little window into my soul, with help frame this.  I love people, I grew up an eternal optimist.  I get sucked in by love stories, I am a hopeless romantic.  I love to treat woman....well.  I actually enjoy watching rom-com's.  I love to laugh.  I have lived most of my life with joy in my soul.  This is my identity, it is how I was created and how I was nurtured to be.  I am bothered because I feel like this identity is destroyed.  It took a lot.  I am not sure how or even if I can ever recover it and if I do will I ever be close to the same again?  I don't have to guess.....I know the answer.  That is what bothers me.         

I don't have a snappy title

So today I feel alone.  True I could go sign up for match.com and find a compatible person out there who I could spend time with.. but honestly I was placed together with my life mate 13 years ago and I don't know how to undo that?  I guess I will just move forward and try to figure it out along the way, but for now I miss my family, I miss the woman I promised to stand next to no matter what.  I feel like that vow has not expired even though biblically and legally it has because of her choices. I still want to and feel like I should be with my wife and my family.  Not living mostly alone in this house. 
Who knows?  Life goes on... 

I wish it didn't have to.... I wish it could be different, I wish I could go back in time and undo the junk and accomplish the things that seem so important to my ex so we could still be together...

If only........