A Grief Delayed: Diminished Love

GREETINGS 

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"Greetings!"
We meet again after the unspeakable -

the big "D". Not my choice.
In your voice, my stomach hears the pitch 
one half-step from our prior relationship.
Your face, the slight muscle twitch of distaste, 
like brussels sprouts dissolving in your mouth.
In your patchwords, are you hiding? 
Pretending not to cringe at my shattered glass?
Like a woman charged and held for questioning, 
behind glass in the visitor's room, I am convicted. 
Untouchable.
Your eyes beg for me to lay the table pads,
and cover the still beautiful but wounded wood.
Only then can you feast without seeing the hot pot burn. 
My mouth waters for communion feasting, 
where the wooden table needs no covering of wounds,
and longs for the sweet, fresh crumbs of Sunday and His voice grace tuned.
His face, peace, without brussels sprouts.
 "Welcome!"

The Crack in the Windshield - Providential Perspectives on Divorce

It is time for the Lord to act, for your law has been broken. Psalm 119:126

Brokenness is an important concept in scripture.  Commandments are broken, hearts are broken, covenants are broken.  And the reminder we hear often, "His body is broken...for you."  

A few years after divorce, still feeling wounded but on the mend,  I sat in a dark auditorium listening to an orchestra play Dvorak's New World Symphony.  I wondered: why am I so anxious not to meet or converse with my ex-husband and his girlfriend?  Is this rationale, now that time has passed?  What is the reason for this anxiety?  Maybe I am still in "secret-keeper mode" - afraid I will say something that gives away some of my ex-husband's secrets. I am not jealous, although maybe I am jealous on my children's behalf for his time which he now spends with her rather than them.  

Maybe it’s as simple as a strong human desire to avoid looking straight at the brokenness. I would prefer to see either wholeness or see God’s faithfulness in the broken situation. The windshield is cracked, but I try to drive onward.  I expend emotional energy avoiding looking at the crack in the windshield.  

Is there a better response? When I think about my ex-husband and his girlfriend, I don’t know what to pray for.  So I prayed that the Holy Spirit would show me what in the world to pray for. As the New World Symphony spun out, this thought came: yes the crack in the windshield was my reality, and seeing it cannot be avoided. But I needed to look not only at the crack, but out the entire field of glass to see the incredible beauty of the landscape of life given by God, created by God, and overseen by God.  The providence landscape over the dashboard. 

On my journey, I can see the snowy mountains, the children doing well in school, blue skies and green pastures and yellow daffodil fields, the tender care of a new man in my life, and brown dirt fields hosting thousands of white swans.  I can see young men who pick good movies, know how to handle technology, and play in orchestras. I see the blessing of having enough to pay for music lessons, young women with good grades despite moving between two houses, and a sister who married a good man.  I see a large warm house and a reliable vehicle.  I am blessed by weekly hours of worship, the table set before me, and communion of the saints. That is the view from the driver’s seat out the windshield, the view of God’s excessive faithfulness.  

That vision provides the answer to my ex-husband and girlfriend question - God has this!  God knows why the girlfriend may be needed in his life. God will lead me to speak with her in time and give me words that bless her in some way.  Maybe my boys will see how I treat her and, knowing the tears I have shed, learn from observing. Trust me, the Father says. This anxiety over interactions is merely a matter of my lack of trust in God.  Doesn't it always come down to that?

The Prodigal Son: Freedom from the Bondage of Sexual Sin

The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 was my ex-husband's favorite Bible story. That knowledge still grieves me. He was touched by the image of a God who sought and welcomed home a wayward son, but he never walked the path back home. He never grabbed hold of the grace and feast offered by his heavenly Father. 

When I finally saw Rembrandt's "Prodigal" painting in person at the Hermitage, I was struck by how diseased and decrepit was the son - his head and face are shaved, his shoes and clothes are shredded, and he is covered in sores, including the bottoms of his feet.  His knees are on the ground with his face buried in his father's robes. This is not a son who made a few wrong turns; this is a man who has truly "hit bottom," as we say today.

I have grieved for years that no one came to our rescue, no one noticed the evil happening in my marriage and in my home. I am not resentful towards any one person for not holding my husband accountable - I understand that a person must sense a calling to speak the gospel into another's life and be gifted with the courage to do so. But I was, at times, resentful towards the Christian community in general that wholly failed to know and minister to my husband as he walked, lived, and worthiped among them. 

As a couple, we attended two Biblical churches over 28 years, rarely missing a Sunday even on vacation.  We joined couples groups and Bible studies and taught Sunday school. My husband was a deacon, a boys club counselor, and was asked to serve as an elder several times. There were many Christian men who came into my husband's life who could have been godly challengers - knights with the lance of truth.  I remember my husband's wild college roommate with a revived faith who came to visit, but he did not venture into the mess that was our lives.  I remember a pastor, and a Christian marriage counselor - neither had any impact because both were too "nice" to call out sin. 

A few brave souls with gospel courage ventured into relationship with my husband to offer healing and accountability, and for those few men I am grateful to the point of tears. I remember the first pastor my husband talked to about his early forays to prostitutes - who offered him accountability, hope and healing (my husband declined).  I remember the devout graduate school friend who regularly shared his Christian faith in a secular university department.  There was a neighborhood friend and a work colleague, both with vibrant faith who looked for openings to speak into my husband's life but were kept at a distance. There was a very young man, a friend of the family, who talked openly about sexual temptation and his men's accountability group, even among older, more cynical adults like my husband - I was profoundly grateful for his young, strong, witness.  And I remember the octogenarian neighbor we visited on his death bed, a WWII veteran who made it a point to ask my husband whether he was ready to meet Jesus - God bless you Wilbur! I look forward to thanking you personally in heaven. 

A few men have since apologized to me for not fostering a culture of spiritual growth, discipline and accountability among the men of our church.  Those apologies, although completely unexpected, have been healing for me. But the vast majority did not notice, did not invest, did not intimately befriend, did not hold my husband accountable. They wanted male church relationships to be high-fives with no vulnerability or soul care work. Ultimately, the church leaders said things like, "well, all men look at that sort of thing" and, as to marital unfaithfulness, "it is what it is." How painful is this message to the betrayed spouse.

I remember clearly God's last invitation to my husband before he spiritually turned on his heels to walk the road away from his Father's house. Together we listened to a powerful young preacher at a mega-church speak about freedom from sexual bondage and marital struggles. He ended with a call to repentance and inviting all who heard to an Easter baptism service at a local beach park.  My husband turned to me and said, "well, maybe we should go to that." Later that Sunday, a stranger ran into my husband among crowds on that same beach and recognized him as being in church that morning! The stranger said, "hey, I saw you this morning and I hope you can come to the baptism here next week?" It was my husband's final invitation to repent from that which was destroying himself, his family, and his marriage.  Was God's fatherly heart was broken? Did Jesus weep knowing his prodigal child would not be burying his head in robes of comfort and beg for forgiveness? 


Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1661–1669. 262 cm × 205 cm. Hermitage Museum

The Way God Cares for a Woman In Distress

The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the Lord. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves.” Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?” “Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil.”  Elisha said, “Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars..."  She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another one.” But he replied, “There is not a jar left.” Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.” II Kings 4: 1-7

This passage describes so beautifully how God cares for a woman in trouble. The unnamed widow is innocent in her suffering - her husband died leaving her in great debt and the creditor has no mercy.  Life has shown me that this is just how God operates  - you can count on it!

• God will send a godly counselor if you cry out.  God will provide trusted advice through His church and its leaders, if you seek and listen.  Believers ministering to other believers, stepping up and saying as Elisha did, "how can I help you?" This is God's loving provision for you. 
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• God will use what you have on hand - a talent, a person, a book, an ability, or a few assets like the small jar of oil. When your spouse has pushed you down, look around at what or who God has provided to take care of you in this season.  In my case, an old friend sent me an insightful book. And God brought me to a new mentor at church  - a woman who had already walked through what I was about to face.  
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• God will protect your children.  The widow's central fear is for her two sons.  For those of us who have looked down the barrel of the divorce cannon, we too are often more afraid for our children than for ourselves.  We have absorbed the pain in secret for a long time; we have formed scar tissue over the shrapnel beneath our skin.  But we are desperate that our children not be harmed by the brokenness of divorce.  I had to be reminded many times that God loves my children more than I do, and He will take care of them ("you and your sons can live!".  
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• God will use Christian community to take care of you.  The widow went to her neighbors for empty jars - the assets they could contribute in a time of famine. Amphorae were plentiful and disposable, but also reusable because the sediments from oil or wine settled in the pointed bottom. They were designed to be set upright into sand or a rack in the slanted hull of a ship. In my time of need, God provided Christian carpool moms from my neighborhood, women who could help with child transport, picking up a repaired car, sitting with me at school concerts. (Some things are so much harder without a second parent!) These were the gifts of my neighbors, like jars that God could fill with blessings. Who knew? It was just a carpool before the trouble started, but God knew what I needed long before I did.
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• God wants to bless you abundantly in your time of trouble.  Don't ask for just a few jars!  Follow God's guidelines and those of his prophets and things go better - the widow gathered a lot of empty clay jars from neighbors but she didn't know why. By trusting the prophet's advice, she had enough to pay off debts and supply necessities for herself and her boys - her daily bread. On some days going through divorce, I felt numb and directionless.  But I leaned into the advice of counselors when I was confused, and that leaning kept me from falling and making grave mistakes.
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• God works behind closed doors.  Sometimes His miracles are large and public, but more often, as for this widow, God provides in quiet, private moments. I treasure the private moments God tenderly cared for me within my home - through a song, a verse, or a conversation.   
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• God will use your children in healing and providing for you. The widow worked side-by-side with her sons. Amphorae, with a handle on each side, were often designed to be carried by two strong men when full. In divorce, our children are not our support system or our friends, but yet they can work alongside us through the healing process. Young children may sense the need for hugs. One of my older sons said, "I think you won't take so long to heal, mom, because you are stronger than most."  What a word of encouragement! And my teens had to learn to do things their dad had done, like mow the lawn and fix the computer, and help me lift heavy things.  
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• God will use your own efforts and that of your children. The widow did not sit idly by and hope that healing and money floated in like a cloud.  She contributed effort to the task - she and her boys were partnering with God for the miracle of debt repayment.  She labored with her sons using the assets they had.
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• God will take care of you in front of your children. Their lives will be blessed by seeing God's care in action.  By making her two sons part of the work team, they also experienced God's private miracle of healing and provision  - the entire family was rescued!  

Sink into God's loving care for you and your family during the difficult times.  Remember Peter 5: "And God will exalt you in due time, if you humble yourselves under his mighty hand, by casting all your cares on him because he cares for you." **

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Paris: Remembering The Brokenness and Teaching Our Children.

Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Deuteronomy 4:9

My youngest child had a history assignment to report his memories of a significant family event. He chose our family's home exchange in a Paris suburb and wrote down his memories from the trip.  The next night he was asked to interview me for my memories of the same Paris trip. He was learning that history differs by who is remembering and who is reporting. 

Our trip to Paris fell in the weeks just between my husband's awful (third-time) disclosures and the day I concluded that separation seemed the only option to protect myself. In responding to my son's interview, I was remembering both extraordinarily painful things and warm family times during those Paris weeks. I discovered that the color and clarity of my story depends upon how far up the mountain I am standing when I look backwards over the valley. How I report my story also depends on what is appropriate for the listener. And our story always depends on whether we have experienced the Great Lion walking next to us on the climb; either it is His Story, or I am still pretending it is merely my story.

• From this vantage point, what I remember about Paris are late night e-mails with relatives, planning how to begin the separation process, how they would take care of me, how to protect my husband from himself, how conversations might go. It was a time of preparing to walk through the coming days with grace, strength, and the support of family. 

• I remember talking with my eldest son in the lunch room at the Louvre' and letting him know for the first time that his parents weren’t doing so well.  

• I remember Rembrandt's "Bathsheba" painting at the Louvre' and how Rembrandt captured the fear and submission to exploitation in the expression of the commoner Bathsheba who has been summoned by the powerful king David.[1]

• I remember entering Catholic mass at a French cathedral and singing the American protestant hymn, Amazing Grace (in French)! 

• I remember the conversation with my husband in our tiny Euro-kitchen where I asked him: “What do you plan to do to help restore this relationship?” I remember with sorrow his answers: "I can’t believe you think I haven’t done enough;" "I can’t answer that because it’s a trap;" "I’ve been married to you 28 years and I can’t think of one nice thing to say about  you;" "It’s really mostly your fault that I went to prostitutes and now that I've confessed it all to you, I don’t know why you are having such a hard time;" "it’s so unfair that you would ask me that question." I ponder his answers when I doubt the assurance from the Holy Spirit on the path taken. 

• I remember the plaza around Notre' Dame Cathedral glowing with evening lights, displaying the persistence of the Church universal through the French Revolution when the Enlightened populace tried its best to discard the Church.

• I remember the exquisite red Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the 15th Century French poem counseling the princess depicted about becoming a lady of virtuous character; 

• And I remember trudging up worn pilgrim steps and cobblestone streets on Le Mont Saint-Michel to the medieval monastery, carrying a backpack of sadness and hearing the chorus of nuns singing over me.  It was a total body and soul wash of blessing. Their voices gave assurance that God would continue singing over me in the days ahead.[2]

But to my son, I recalled other memories: 

• Together we climbed 669 steps of the Eiffel Tower to survey all of Paris;

• Our home outside of Paris came with a cat named Lola; the song Copa Cabanna ("her name was "Lola") kept running through my head. 

• The Museum Carnavalet told the history of the second world war and celebrated the few thousand brave Frenchmen who rescued Paris while omitting the hundreds of thousands of American troops who actually liberated Paris.

• Our discovery of Croque Monsieur and Croque Madame and delightful warm, drippy, chocolaty crepes filled with bananas.

Did I avoid teaching my memories to my child as Deuteronomy requires?  But Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”[3]  He only tells you your story.  The rest is His Story. 

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1.Rembrandt, Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654)

2. Zephaniah 3:17. The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” 

3. C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

4. One of the Cluny Tapestries, The Lady and the Unicorn

An Epiphany: Who Will Wrestle Against Sexual Bondage

 "I will fight for you; you need only to be still.  I know how weary you are, My child. You have been struggling just to keep your head above water, and your strength is running low.  Now is the time for you to stop striving and let Me fight for you." 

Jesus Today, Sarah Young (2012) 

Exodus 14:14  "The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still."

A Christian friend who has gone through many trials recently said, "I used to pray for strength. But God always answered with tests that increased my strength. Now I don’t pray for strength anymore." Amen, brother!

As the wife of a sex addict, I struggled with the alone-ness of being the only one praying for my husband's healing.  I wanted to hand him two aspirin so he would call me in the morning and announce he was healed. It was a burden to think that I should help, but did not know how to wrestle with him. I knew I should be a witness, but had no voice with him. Eventually God made an appearance; it was an epiphany teaching me a lesson I will not forget. 

Epiphany, derived from a Greek word meaning "appearance," is a moment of sudden intuitive understanding or flash of insight. Sometimes it refers to the appearance or manifestation of a god. It can also mean the appearance of someone sent by God. In Genesis, Jacob had an epiphany - he saw God face to face and went away changed.[1] 

As I became weary of fighting the battle, I began to pray that God would send a fellow Christian,  a trained disciple, to confront my husband. I prayed that He would send someone to challenge what my husband was doing to himself and his family. I hoped someone from the Church, a male leader perhaps, would step up and call out the evil.  In Genesis 32, Jacob has just learned that Esau is coming towards him with an army of 400 men.  The text says that Jacob was "in great fear and distress." [3] Then Jacob went to be alone and ended up wrestling with God all night long. In my own place of fear, I asked God to send someone to wrestle with my husband, to leave him with a limp but also healed, transformed, and equipped for kingdom service.[2]  I searched the horizon for a Christian knight to show up on my time table - before it was too late!

Then I attended karate promotion night. In a dojo, the master teacher is called the "Sensei". A "sempei" is a disciple of the master teacher, but one who is ahead of you on the journey of mastering karate. In other words, a "sempei" is a disciple who is also discipling others.  On this night of promotion, Sempei Paul, donned in a white gi uniform and black belt, was asked to wrestle a young brown belt for the purpose of testing him for promotion.  Sempei Paul was to fight the young man in a way that challenged him to the very edge of his skills, to teach him what it felt like to fight for his life, but at the same time protect him from serious harm. To most observers, it appeared that Sempei Paul was very aggressive and intending to pummel the student, but the karate students present understood that the young man was also being protected by the expert, controlled, fighting skills of Sempei Paul. I have never seen this dynamic in a fight, before or since.  It left quite an impression on those of us who witnessed it. 

The next morning I prayed that God would quickly send a "Sempei Paul" into my husband's life - someone to aggressively wrestle with him, take him down, teach my husband that he was fighting for his life and family. I begged God to send someone who could show my husband the damage sin was causing in his life.  I prayed for a "Sempei Paul" who would not hesitate to challenge my husband, but would also show the protection of God's graceful promotion out of bondage.  God was leading me away from thinking that my husband's healing was my responsibility.  I was not to be the "Sempei" wrestling to promote him out of bondage.

The next afternoon God sent me an epiphany. I was standing outside the double glass doors of the downtown high rise building where I work, waiting for my husband to meet me.  Suddenly, standing at my right hand, was Sempei Paul himself, in the flesh, wearing street clothes.  He had come out of the glass doors to stand next to me. With surprise, we recognized and acknowledged each other. Then he crossed the street and was gone. I had never before and have never since seen Sempei Paul downtown.  I blinked and then my husband walked up. 

The message came to me quietly, slowly: "My child, you are not to fight for his soul. You need only be still." I am the Master and I can send a 'Sempei Paul' into his life whenever I deem the time is right. Now is the time for you to stop striving and let Me fight for you. 

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[1] Gen. 32: 30. 
[2] Gen. 32: 4 - 6.
[3] Gen. 32:6-7

Christmas, Divorce, and The God who Caresses Me With Tenderness

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 

Isaiah 40:1

[I wrote this in January 2015. I decided to post it this year while reflecting again on the holidays.]

This morning I attended church in  Alabama, not my home state. The church has grown to 34,000 members since its founding in 2001.  The music and technology were so flawless that bands from three different locations lead our singing simultaneously, streamed live on twenty foot screens behind the stage. The pastor’s invocation called on the congregation to "go with gusto after God today, grab for and seek God enthusiastically in worship."  It was a blessing being with my people, God's people, while visiting a "foreign" land.

Sadness continues for me - perhaps it has deepened. The marriage dissolution is not yet final, as we work towards finishing the court paperwork by the end of the month. And there are so many papers to be filed; it is hard to navigate through a complex court procedure in the midst of grieving and upheaval. For example, at some point we had to complete a very long “Child Support Order.”  This meant taking two paragraphs of our own simple language and cramming it into a 15-page court mandated form which included, among other things, a check in the box “neither spouse is pregnant.” Welcome to the post-Christian era.

Christmas and New Year’s was a sad time of many firsts for me and my teens.  We walked in the dark, with no play book for a broken family living in separate households. We struggled with when to engage and when to extract ourselves from dad, when to speak and when to be silent. We also recently lost our home church due to schism, so on Christmas Eve we attended a service in a small Episcopal Chapel in an old neighborhood settled by Scottish immigrants. The homily was sadly lacking [1], so in the late evening hours before Christmas morning I read Pope Francis’ Christmas Eve sermon:

• “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. God who looks upon us with eyes of love . . . God who is in love with our smallness . . . . Do I allow myself to be taken up by God? to be embraced by Him? or do I prevent Him drawing close? What is most important is not seeking the Lord, but rather allowing Him to find me and caress me with tenderness.  Do I allow God to love me?   . . . He is a God who made Himself small in order to better encounter us . . . “ [2] 

I don’t know which man of God was more theologically correct - Pope Francis or the Alabama mega-church preacher.  For a bleeding soul still in pain, chasing after God with gusto seems overwhelming, even impossible.  But a God who will find and caress me in my smallness says “comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.” [3]

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[1] See prior post about this Episcopal service: Christmas Eve and Cleaning Toilets (12/25/14)
[2] Pope Francis' Christmas Eve homily, 2014.
[3] Isaiah 40: 1-5 (KJV) (and the text from Handle's Messiah.)

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

You Don't Have To DO Anything

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

I have learned through marital crisis that theology becomes real in the heart, not the head. I have a degree in theology; I have been steeped in Christian catechism, Christian preaching, and 17 years of integrated Christian education. And yet God touches me with true truth in the most simple terms. Throughout my conversion journey, childlike expressions made God's heart more real to me than Calvin's Institutes ever did.

Can you be converted when you are already a Christian? Can you have two awakenings?  It is a mystery, but that is my story.  After my re-awakening, I read of Blaise Pascal's similar path - a Christian upbringing, then a first and a second more overwhelming conversion experience.[1] Even now I still find there are no words to describe conversion; I can only concur with a modern writer who said, "although grateful, I did not perceive conversion to be a blessing. It was a train wreck."[2]  I too found conversion to be more like a crash landing  - scary, unexpected, leaving one bruised and battered but ecstatic to be alive. It is life changing, but never easy.  It is extraordinarily private, yet somehow outward-facing.[3]

To explain my crash landing conversion, I simply explained to folks that God was taking very good care of me. There were so many blessings, so many people, so many activities set in place in advance to help me dig out of the avalanche of betrayal trauma. God had a plan to carry me through rejection, separation, and divorce from my spouse, my church, my denomination, even my heritage. Post-conversion, nearly everything was broken or breaking. But God strips us bare for His good purposes.

By confessing simply that "God is taking very good care of me" I was describing in elementary school terms what theologians refer to as His "faithfulness" and "providence." Even now, the simple words are more true to my ears.

Yesterday, I walked alone on a cold ocean beach praying, asking for discernment about where the Lord is leading me next, asking Him to show me whether this heart tug I feel to help a church plant is God's call or my own self-centeredness. Honestly, I confuse the two all the time. I was also repenting for being a disappointing daughter who took His care for granted, didn't stay in touch, didn't listen to His words. I repented for tasks I had not done, for failures as a wife, a church member, a peacemaker, a follower, a friend. But then I was given the words very clearly: "You don't have to do anything." For some reason these words kept pushing through my thoughts -  I believe they were from the Holy Spirit. They didn't even make much sense to me at the time.  But for some reason these words brought comfort and I wept.

English speakers often ask each other, "How are you doing?" or "How's it going?" Spanish speakers say instead, "how are you being?" It seems to me that "being" is more in sync with the Christian life than doing or even going. (Although Jonah did have to go at some point.)

I really don't have to do anything to be accepted by God. This deep realization sets me free - free to go where called - not because of my religious "to do" list, but because God accepts me, which paradoxically sets me free to serve as I am gifted, with whatever talents and resources I have, wherever He leads. Today I am finally free to say, "okay God, it's not rational, but I will go where you call me to go." Who knows if I will be of much help, or if I will accomplish anything tangible? Who knows if I will be busy for the Lord or idle for the Lord if I go?  But now I am convicted: I don't have to DO anything to gain God's acceptance, just follow and listen and walk.

Later I realized the fullness of these words gifted to me on the beach.  Martin Luther, a budding lawyer and later a monk, found Paul saying the same thing in Romans 1 and Ephesians 2: it is only by grace that we are saved, not by doing anything.[4]  For Luther also, the weight of the world was lifted when God made clear to him that he didn't have to DO anything.  Just BE a child of the King.  And then Luther went. Some might say he accomplished a few things along the way.
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[1] B. Pascal, The Pensees (The Memorial parchment) 
[2] Rosario Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (2015). p. 25
[3] M. Scott Peck, a famous psychiatrist,  has an equally humorous description of  religious conversion, written before he became a Christian: "We are accustomed to imagining the experience of conversion or sudden call to grace as an "Oh, joy!" phenomenon.  In my experience, more often than not it is, at least partially, an "Oh Shit" phenomenon." The Road Less Traveled, 1978, Walker & Co., p. 417. 
[4] See, e.g., Martin Luther, "Freedom of A Christian" on the concept of grace. (1520)

Part 2: A Theology of Evil Springs Easily From Sexual Betrayal

Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. Prov. 24:14.

Theology is reasoning or discussion about God.[1] Some study theology from a hilltop - a safe distance overlooking the battlefield. I have been studying God and his ways and words standing in the middle of a raging battle. This brings a certain degree of clarity unavailable in the comfortable high places. 

But in the middle of a war it is often hard to tell who has integrity, who is lying, what is good and what is evil.  In the journey of marital betrayal, we are called regularly to the praxis of humbly discerning what is evil.  Somewhere along this journey I concluded that I may not have had a proper concept of "evil."   I wondered if "evil" was not a "thing" to be chosen, but was more often a lack of something,  the absence of something.  I concluded that  evil is the space where God is not.

I have since learned that Augustine concluded something similar long ago.  

In a marriage with abuse or betrayal or pornography addiction, at some point the wife realizes that something is missing - there is a great and overwhelming absence of something that should be there. Some say it is empathy that is missing; some say it is intimacy that is missing. Some call it "projective identification" or the absence of dealing effectively with one's own emotions and forcing them onto your spouse in compensation. In Twelve Step programs, we are taught in the abstract that a sex addict is "not present" but we rarely grasp what this means or how to fix it. Emotional engagement with our husbands feels like plugging into a light socket with no juice behind the wall. 

Friends also experienced my husband as not engaged, dismissive.  One said he was almost overwhelmed by a sense of something missing when around my husband; it came over him like a wave but he didn't know what it was.  He voiced, "I understand almost what you've been missing all these years."  Another friend explained her view that the inability to bring forth empathy is a disease of something missing that effects everything else, much like a diabetic cannot produce insulin.

Emotional abuse does not necessarily involve tirades or tossing things; it is more often the "acceptable" sin of withdrawal and withholding and hiding.  An abusive spouse is withholding himself from the one person to whom he has pledged to give of himself fully. An unfaithful spouse must distance from the one to whom he made vows in order to satisfy his desires with another. There is also the absence of kind words, the lack of optimism, the void in encouragements.  These sound petty when described in isolation to anyone outside the family system.  At one point, to be able to explain what my home felt like, I started counting the times my husband said a compliment or word of encouragement.  I would go months without a single encouraging word.  In one year, I waited from New Years until Easter to hear a compliment in my own home - and that came from a guest who liked my blackberry crisp. At another point, I asked my husband if he would go one week without subtly putting me down in someway; he was not sure he could, and he did not make it one day.

In exploring the question of where is evil, Augustine answered: "Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'"[2]  Augustine observed that evil always injures people and relationships, and such injury is a deprivation of good. If there were no deprivation, there would be no injury. Since all things were made by God with goodness, evil must be the privation of basic goodness: "All which is corrupted is deprived of good." [3]

Good has substantial being; evil does not. Some have written that evil is like a moral hole, a nothingness that results when goodness is removed. Augustine observed that evil could not be chosen because there is no evil thing to choose. We humans can only turn away from the good. "For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil--not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked." [4]   Evil then is not something created, but spoiled goodness made possible by the free moral choice of rational creatures. Evil is not something present, but something missing. [5] 

In other words, evil is the space where God is not, or more accurately, evil is the space where God's goodness is not, and God is all good all the time. The author of "Not The Way It's Supposed To Be" writes, "Good is original, independent, and constructive; evil is derivative, dependent, and destructive.  To be successful, evil needs what it hijacks from goodness." [6]

I have written that my ex-husband sat on the other end of the sofa and told me he has a girlfriend.   When the words "I am seeing someone" cross the decades long covenant space that is those few feet on the sofa, I am amazed at the overwhelming pain.  Why should I feel this way? I have not lost anything, and he no longer has legal obligations of fidelity. In the words that traveled the space, there was an absence of caring that should be present when delivering difficult words of betrayal to anyone, especially one to whom you once pledged marital faithfulness.  Whether his lifestyle choice is evil is not for me to consider - that is now between him and God - but the space on the sofa between he and I where he decides to tell me for no apparent reason that he has a girlfriend is a space where God's goodness has been hijacked.  
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[1] Augustine, City of God, Book VIII.i.  
[2] Augustine, The City of God, XI, CHAP. 9.
[3] Augustine, Confessions, VII: [XII] 18.
[4] Augustine, City of God, XII, CHAP. 6.
[5] Greg Koukl, Stand To Reason, Dec. 20, 2012.
[6] Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way Its Supposed To Be.

Part 1: The Evil Trinity of Sexual Betrayal: What Not To Say To Your Friends

...a wayward [husband] is a narrow well.  
Like a bandit [he] lies in wait, and multiplies the unfaithful among men.
Prov. 23:27-28.

This post concerns a question, one that women around the world ask their friends: why does it hurt  like hell when my ex-husband is with another woman?  Perhaps it is because we are experiencing the betrayal/abandonment cycle all over again. or perhaps we are experiencing evil in real time. 

When my ex-husband helps fix something in my house or takes the children to church we experience that as honorable. In a real sense, he is "honoring" the vows he took when our children were baptized, despite his past mistakes. Hopefully, when I decide to help him in some way, he experiences that as honorable despite my past imperfections.  My ex-husband has every legal right to date and the world will not condemn that.  There is a judicial piece of paper that makes it legal.  But a piece of paper does not heal the heart, nor does it neatly sever on one day what God has joined together for decades. When our ex-husbands date other women, it may not be unexpected, but we experience that as a evil - a continuation of the breach of his marriage and baptism vows. 

He and I sat in the living room and he told me he was "seeing someone." He wanted me to hear before he told our teenagers.  In response to this news, I felt burning hot and nauseated.  I gasped for air. I cried the deep, alto cry of loss. Some well-meaning friends theorized that the pain was intense because I was losing the love of my life (no - he doesn't qualify for that title) or because this wasn't in my script (not true - I knew it would happen but I didn't know it would FEEL like this.) Another said this is only natural for a sex-addict (true, but he has disclosed other indiscretions before.)  Popular culture often portrays the experience of a cheating spouse as somewhat bad,  moderately hurtful, or a stupid mistake. Media portrays dating someone as soon as you are separated as silly, or needy, or even healthy.  Let's call it out: these are all lies. 

Our Sunday sermon discussed the "evil trinity" - the world, the flesh, and the devil. Calling evil “okay” as the world does is not the answer. The world has trivialized the great ripping apart of a one-flesh marriage. God hates it when a man is unfaithful to the wife of his youth. Malachi 2:12-16.[1]  And the flesh of my ex-husband seeking to meet his desires despite his marriage and baptism vows will have the effect that evil always has - to hurt people and damage relationships. The legs of the flesh walk in the opposite direction of repentance.

The devil gets involved too. He subtly leads the sinner away from Jesus by encouraging him to rationalize that after separation dating is fine, or by whispering to the wife that she is worthless and worthy of being abandoned.  If we care about the sinner, we care that he is allowing the world, the flesh and the devil to draw him further away from healthy relationships and further away from the possibility of salvation from his bondage. My ex-husband has been imprisoned in darkness for so long that he is blind to the effect his unfaithfulness has on others. 

I believe my ex-husband telling me of his decision to pursue and date someone a few short months after separation was something I experienced as evil.  It was another tidal wave of betrayal just like disclosures of unfaithfulness during our marriage. Maybe other wives will have a less nauseating reaction to this recurring news, but I suspect that our family will experience every woman in his life as another betrayal of his vows. 

Many Christians believe the Bible teaches that no one should re-marry after divorce, or that only separation  - and never divorce -  is proper for Christians. Some Christians believe the Bible teaches it is only proper to re-marry if you were divorced because of your spouse’s unfaithfulness, but no other grounds for divorce allow you to remarry.  I believe there is more nuance to God's law and God's love for us on these issues. But still, the reason many believe this is God’s best intent for our well-being is that marriage creates fused flesh, and when it is torn apart there is still the deep “spouse-shaped-scars" that last until heaven. This is why hearing of an ex-spouse dating or getting remarried is so painful and may feel like betrayal all over again. It hurts like hell because it is a little bit of hell; it a further separating from God and alliance with the world, the flesh and the devil. 

Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. 

Proverbs 23:17-18.

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[1] See Blog Post of March 23, 2015, titled, "Part 2: God Hates Divorce: Fighting The Battle of Who Could Care Less."