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.