I am divorced, though I rarely think of myself as a divorcee.\u00a0 It occurred so long ago that I wonder if it was someone else’s life rather than my own.\u00a0 Maybe it’s just another memory slipping from my grasp.<\/p>\n
Not that that would be a bad thing.\u00a0 Divorce is not pleasant.\u00a0 In fact, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.<\/p>\n
You vow to stand beside someone forever–for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health\u2014and then that someone asks for a divorce.<\/p>\n
Can’t very well stand beside someone who is kicking you out of his life.<\/p>\n
Thank God there were no children’s lives to shatter.<\/p>\n
One shattered life\u2014my own\u2014was enough.\u00a0 It wasn’t just the rejection by my husband that did me in, but the rejection by a large part of my community.<\/p>\n
My Southern Baptist upbringing was firmly anti-divorce, regardless of the reason.\u00a0 Many of the people I had known for years began to pass me without speaking.\u00a0 Even my church’s music minister, for whom I had long served as an accompanist, would not talk to me, though he had to know my heart was breaking.\u00a0 My best friend remained true, as did my parents and their closest friends, but there, the grace ended.\u00a0 I no longer seemed to exist to most of the church, so I left.<\/p>\n
Then there was the out-of-state cousin and his wife, with whom my husband and I had enjoyed many a vacation, camping in the mountains.\u00a0 The guy was actually my cousin whom I had known my entire life.\u00a0 They were upset when I called to break the news\u2014shocked and, I think, a bit concerned that if it happened to us, it could happen to them.\u00a0 They never called or wrote to me again.<\/p>\n
Just like that, the relationship ended.<\/p>\n
Goes to show it’s difficult to have a relationship with a nonexistent person.<\/p>\n
I was raised to place a lot of importance on appearances, on doing and saying the right things, on being at church every time the door opened to teach Sunday School, or to accompany the choir’s rehearsal.\u00a0 My marriage was supposed to be solid as a rock and completely Christ-centered.\u00a0 I was married to a preacher’s son, a strong Christian leader.<\/p>\n
Who wanted a divorce.<\/p>\n
I didn’t darken the door of a church for five years, eliminating from my life what had long been the focus of my life.\u00a0 Shattered.<\/p>\n
I tried to refocus on work, on moving ahead with my career, and I began dating a guy I met through work, a guy who went to church only occasionally, who freely used curse words and who drank alcohol.<\/p>\n
Heaven forbid.\u00a0 All three of those things were serious sins according to the Southern Baptist Manual.<\/p>\n
But the longer I dated George, the more I saw of his character and I liked what I saw.\u00a0 He didn’t condemn me for being a divorcee and for not going to church.\u00a0 He was amazingly honest, which I appreciated after being married to a man who so easily lied.\u00a0 George had more integrity than any man I had ever known.<\/p>\n
In spite of the well-stocked liquor cabinet in his apartment.<\/p>\n
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to reevaluate what matters, when they have to seek truth.\u00a0 So I prayed, seeking truth and comfort from the God Who had always been an integral part of my life.<\/p>\n
And He, in His great love and faithfulness, showed me that I needed to forgive those who had hurt me, not for their sake, but for my own.\u00a0 My anger and pain had created a deadly cancer in my soul.\u00a0 So I began to let go, using the phrase, “I forgive you,” as my mantra each time I thought of those who had hurt me.<\/p>\n
Gradually, my pain lessened.<\/p>\n
God also showed me that it’s what’s in a person’s heart that matters, that honesty and integrity matter more than what a person drinks.\u00a0 This created a new me.\u00a0 Since nearly every one of my coworkers drank, I had previously kept my distance from them all, avoiding their sinful activity.\u00a0 But now I saw the sin of the deceitful heart.\u00a0 And I saw my own sin, my failure to love these people well.<\/p>\n
My world is in desperate need of grace, love and understanding.\u00a0 Christ made these things available to me when He paid the penalty for my sin and for that, I am eternally grateful.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the fact that I have trouble remembering I am a divorcee has less to do with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease than it has to do with the fact that I have been forgiven.\u00a0 My slate has been washed clean.<\/p>\n
Praise God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am divorced, though I rarely think of myself as a divorcee.\u00a0 It occurred so long ago that I wonder if it was someone else’s life rather than my own.\u00a0 Maybe it’s just another memory slipping from my grasp. Not that that would be a bad thing.\u00a0 Divorce is not pleasant.\u00a0 In fact, I wouldn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}