bloom + flow

Tag: divorce

  • lessons from the sower: a journey of faith (pt. III)

    lessons from the sower: a journey of faith (pt. III)

    When I turned 18, one of the first things I did was get a tattoo. It was of the biblical definition of love. In red. In the shape of a heart. I felt like I’d carried love on my back for so long it’d started to feel like a burden. I needed any and everyone to know that if I turned my back on them, it was only because I needed to remind them of what love was. What it looked like. What it felt like. 

    The Man with the Glow shared his light and his love without expectation of return. Not even because he knew what I needed, but because he knew what he wanted to give me. When he found out that I had gone to school for Cosmetology, he asked if I could teach him how to cut women’s hair. He was barbering while in college, for extra money, and cutting longer hair would expand his business. I agreed, but only if he’d take it seriously. He agreed. “Great! Then your final exam will be to cut mine.” At the time, I had waist-length hair. He said he was scared to mess it up. “Then don’t,” I shrugged. 

    About six months after having to move out of my house, I found a roommate and got an apartment. I wasn’t a stranger to roommate situations, so we set a few ground rules. No rah-rah after midnight she stated. No problem. Clean up what you or your guests mess up, she suggested. Done. Pay your portion on time. Normal stuff. The only rule I had was that there were certain groceries—my chips and my pizza, that were off limits. Anything else, I am more than willing to share, just let me know it’s been shared. We agreed. 

    After a particularly long day of teaching, then tutoring, then running the after school program, then having a cut lesson with the Man with the Glow, I was spent. And it was cold and rainy out. Plus, I just realized that I didn’t have any money left after bills were paid. But I was grateful bills were paid and I had frozen pizza and chips at home, so I worried not. I just wanted a hot shower, and chips and pizza. That’s it, that’s all. 

    I got back to the apartment, and my roommate’s boyfriend was in the shower. Fine. I can wait. I would just eat first. I went to the kitchen to munch on my chips while the pizza cooked. I climbed on top of the counter to reach the cabinet over the refrigerator, where I’d put them to make sure that they were not easily visible. No chips. I opened the other side. No chips. I climbed down and opened every cabinet door. No chips. Checked the freezer for my pizza. No pizza. I didn’t need to check my purse to know I also didn’t have any money. 

    My roommate walked into the kitchen just as the realization that my hopes for my evening had been crushed. “Hey. C didn’t want my vegetarian food, so he ate your pizza and chips. I will replace them when I get paid,” she said nonchalantly. 

    My head tilted. My eyes blinked. The rage of frustration began to creep up my back, onto my neck, and out of my throat. “What was the one rule I had? Do you remember?” 

    Her head tilted. It was her eyes’ turn to blink. “Excuse me?” 

    “When we moved in, I had one rule to your three. Do you remember what it was?”

    “Yea, you had stuff you didn’t want anyone to eat but if they did, to let you know. I’m letting you know.” Her voice was flippant. Her face was polite. The incongruity was not purposeful. 

    “No, it was that my pizza and my chips were off limits. And anything else could be eaten as long as you let me know.” 

    Her eyes blinked again. “How’s that different?”

    “The difference is that one leaves me with my favorites as the fruit of my labor. I don’t have a credit card to spend at will for someone else to pay. I don’t have a job that will allow me to go in whenever I want to get extra hours just because. And I don’t have a boyfriend funding anything the other two won’t cover. What I have is all I have.”

    “Damn, girl, calm down. Matter of fact, me and C are going out tonight. You should come. Drinks on me because you definitely need it. Get dressed. Bathroom is open now, but fair warning there may not be much hot water left so make it quick.” Her mouth flashed a smile.

    The hot water warning broke the levies, but only a stream trickled out. 

    “I’m not going out. I’ll be in my room.” I turned on my heels because I knew hot, frustrated tears would come soon. 

    “Ugh! You are no fun. You’re always sad. Always in your room. Always doing homework. I thought being your roommate would mean we’d be friends. Hang out. Partayyy.” Her smile widened as her shoulders shimmied the last of her statement.

    A heaving sigh released like a balloon deflating. “I wasn’t looking for friends. I was looking for a safe space to stay. I’m working on a Master’s degree and it’s important to me to finish and finish well.” The truth escaped with quiet assurance. 

    Her mouth chuckled as her eyes narrowed into slits. “I see why your man left you.” 

    Sorrow and anger pushed for a greater share of mind space. Neither won. Defeat took lead as I quietly retreated to my room. I flopped onto the edge of my bed and closed the door just as my roommate’s boyfriend walked out of the bathroom with plumes of steam rising off his golden skin. Just as angry tears got caught in my throat, my phone vibrated. I wasn’t going to acknowledge it, but I needed a distraction. It was the Man with the Glow. He was asking me for a favor. Part of me wanted to tell him I was tired of being used for the day and maybe he should try again tomorrow, but I remembered how patient and attentive he’d been during our cut lesson earlier. He didn’t deserve that.

    He wanted to use my address to order pizza. They didn’t deliver to where he was. I didn’t ask where he was or why. I knew the city enough to know that’s not uncommon. I said it was fine and gave him my address, then laid down. “At least someone gets to eat today,” I mumbled to myself. Immediately, I thought about how, if I’d never sowed that seed, I’d still be in my house with my own bathroom. I’d probably have food, too. Even if I was miserable every day there versus just frustrated by people every so often here. 

    Twenty minutes later, I heard my roommate and her boyfriend leave. Thirty minutes later, I heard a knock at the apartment door. I laid still. I wasn’t getting up for my roommate or her boyfriend if she forgot her key. Another knock. I thought it could be the pizza man, but it was more rhythmic than the pizza man had ever offered. Then, it turned into a Clipse lunch table beat. I still didn’t know who it could be, but I was fully prepared to tell someone they’re at the wrong door when I trudged to check the peep hole. It was the Man with the Glow. He had three pizzas in hand. I opened the door with caution. 

    “Here ya go,” he smiled that smile that lit up rooms while handing me a pizza box off the top, “I hope you like pepperoni. I forgot to ask. I met the pizza guy downstairs. You didn’t tell me you live right across the street. You could probably see them making the pizzas.” 

    I stared at him in silence, my hands holding the box up without fully accepting it into my hands. “You didn’t have to get me one.” 

    “I know I didn’t have to, but what kinda person would I be to use your address and you not get something out of it. That’s rude. I’m not rude.”

    My eyes grew juicy. “I appreciate you. Thank you.” 

    “No thanks needed. Enjoy!” And there he went. Smile and glow and all. 

    A root grew that day. 

    For months, about once a week or so, he’d use my address to have pizza delivered and give me a box or two. I never told him that he was the reason I ate most days. I didn’t tell him that the times he left two boxes were the times I didn’t know how I was going to eat between paydays. Every box of pizza became a leaf. 

    One day, he asked if I ate anything other than pizza. He invited me to IHOP’s free pancake day. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was our first date. And the stem grew longer. 

    Then, after a cut lesson, we went to the beach and walked and talked so long that I lost my phone and we ran out of beach to walk and didn’t even know either happened til they did. We lamented the dating scene together. And sometimes, he’d help me grade papers after a cut lesson. Branches stretched up, up, and out. 

    After my divorce was finalized and Master’s degree earned , we sat on my apartment balcony as the rain poured from the nighttime sky. I told him I had to tell something important and he replied the same. I let him go first because I didn’t have the courage to say that I had feelings for him, but I didn’t want to ruin the friendship that was in full bloom. He shared that he was joining the military and would be leaving soon. I told him I was happy for him, which I was. It was for me sorrow loomed. More leaves.

    I had two job offers. One local, one distant. I took the offer to move an hour north to teach once I knew he would be gone. On moving day, he came to help. Despite being sick. Despite my parents and sister pestering him with incessant curiosity. Despite my ex-husband showing up and trying to show him up. Despite my former roommate’s ex-boyfriend being flippant toward him. He showed up. He helped. He deflected when needed and protected when wanted. Buds formed. 

    I started my new job and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. It was like East Side High from Lean on Me. I was exhausted and frustrated and lonely. My new roommate was better than the last, but she wasn’t my person. She wasn’t him. I didn’t know what to do with that. I would talk to him for hours until I glowed right along with him. And then fear would envelop me and I would avoid him for weeks. Branches stretched just to be pruned. 

    Then came the time for him to process into the military. He was 15 minutes away and I wanted to be in his space and have him in mine. We went to dinner. We talked. At the end of the night, we hugged differently. Like we didn’t want to let go. The buds bloomed into a vibrant yellow and would not close. 

    The following weekend, I went to visit him. He asked me what’s taking me so long to be his girlfriend. I stared sheepishly. I said I didn’t know because I didn’t know what else to say. I knew it was because I was scared of forever. I knew it was because I didn’t know if I could trust someone else with my heart again. Not like last time. But that this didn’t feel like last time. His eyes twinkled, he bent toward me just enough that his words had nowhere else to go but in my ear. “Don’t tell me you’ll be my girlfriend unless you’re willing to be my wife.” I blushed. “Fair enough.” 

    I sowed a seed for my husband–a mustard seed of faith wrapped in a crisp $20 bill. Both tears and rainstorms watered it. It found light from the man’s glow, my smile with him, and our energy combined. It found fertilizer in the mess of life and the ones that weren’t worthy. The seed found bloom in love. Biblical love. It took a year or two to fully mature, and once it did, the tattoo faded as if I’d never again need to remind anyone was love was. What it looked like. What it felt like. They could see it in us. 

  • lessons from the sower: a journey of faith (pt. I)

    lessons from the sower: a journey of faith (pt. I)

    I am the daughter of a preacher-man, and grew up in church, but not necessarily Christian. That is, my lineage and presence of Sunday placements didn’t make me a believer any more than being factory-built and sitting in a garage makes one a car. But I’ve told you that already. If I’m honest, I’ve been more self-reliant than faith suggests. So, the religion of my childhood sort of became a fail-safe measure. I activated it only when all else failed. There was never a “pray until something happens” sort of approach; it was more like “pray if everything fails.”

    Over my lifetime, there were times when I knew God had to have looked out for me. That, or I had a guardian angel. After all, God looks out for babies and fools and, for a pretty smart person, I have done very foolish, very childish things. 

    While I don’t always count my first marriage a foolish decision, I do consider it unwise. Regretful? No. It brought me to this path, and for that reason alone, I’d do it all over again. But, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to tell you about a real-life story about a sower. So, let me set the stage.

    First off, I was unhappily married to my first husband. During the week, I was teaching, tutoring, running an after school program at my church, and on the weekends, I was a hair braider. I had also just started working on my Master’s degree. I know. It was a lot. That’s not the point, though. I’m setting the stage, remember?

    Anyway, my marriage was challenging, but we vowed we would not get divorced. We’d love each other through it or stay together for the sake of it because we didn’t want to be another statistic or, as children of divorced parents, perpetuate it within our families. We agreed. But, it’d become so much work to even muster the energy and effort to go home. It was like fighting the world, then coming home to hell. My spirit grew so heavy. 

    We tried talking. That led to arguing. We tried having a baby. Yes, I know. Again, not the point. That led to failed fertility treatments. We tried individual therapy. That didn’t help in a holistic way because he didn’t go. He suggested marriage counseling with our former youth pastor, Rev, who now worked for the same church I did, but my (then) husband never showed up to the sessions. Towards the end of the sessions, my husband and I were basically roommates. I wore the ring, but I did life alone, with the exception of both our names being listed on the mortgage. So, in one of my last counseling sessions, I asked about what seemed to me to be the most logical next step: What I’m to do if divorce seems the only option unexplored. I was met with a novel question in response: Have you been released to get divorced? 

    I blinked in rapid succession. “Released?” I was genuinely confused. My grandmother and mother both had been divorced. No one ever mentioned being released to do so. I’d asked many divorced people and read about divorce at length–like any researcher worth her salt. In all the primary, secondary, and even tertiary sources reviewed, my bibliographical annotations did not, in fact, include a pre-divorce release. 

    “I have to be released to get a divorce?” I asked Rev incredulously. At this point, I was tired of trying. At the same time, the shame of publicly admitting that my marriage was a failure and potentially a waste of time, paired with the guilt of breaking the promise I made myself that I would not be another divorcee in this world made me hope that there was another chance at redemption.

    “Have you prayed to God, in earnest, about what you need and want in your marriage?” Rev asked. 

    “Yes, if the tears I didn’t want to shed are any indication.” 

    Then, he reminded me that the Supernatural Day of Giving was coming up. On Resurrection Sunday, the congregation was invited to sow a sacrificial seed to remember Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. To show a deeper kind of love and a higher level obedience to God’s will. I reminded Rev I didn’t have any money anyway. Rev’s parting words were to seek God. 

    For the next two weeks, I wrestled with that decision. When payday came, I paid my bills. That left nothing. I did hair and that gave me enough to put gas in my car, get groceries, and have one crisp, fresh-from-the-bank 20 dollar bill leftover. Those were my favorite and I’d hold onto them as long as I possibly could. My only weakness was the comfort of hotcakes and sausage, though, remember? So, anyway, I was holding onto that $20 until I was so sad that the only thing that could cheer me up was my favorite breakfast. 

    The week before Resurrection Sunday was a doozy. One day, I came home to find out he’d given our dog away. She was disloyal, he said. Another day, I came home to find him asleep on the couch, back screen door slightly ajar—just enough to let flies and ants in. The jars of both peanut butter and jelly I’d just bought were open, as was the bread. An entire gallon of milk—the one I’d just bought—was also open. The fridge was wide open and the food inside was tepid to the touch. Most of the groceries I’d just bought had to be thrown out. I didn’t have money to replace them—I only had $20 until next payday, remember? I felt so defeated. It’s easier to be mad than be sad, though, so I immediately started yelling. I tore into him for being irresponsible and wasteful. He jerked awake and told me that my nagging was the reason no one would ever want to be with me. He said I was awful at even attempting to understand what he’s going through, and I always expected perfection. He reminded me that I’m not perfect and said, if we’re honest, I’m not even that great. He listed a litany of my faults, many of which he knew were hot buttons for me.

    I tuned him out because my hurt was too loud. I told God that if He can fix this, I’d give Him my last $20. Hotcakes and sausage couldn’t comfort this. I went to my room, showered, and slept. Saturday, I slept some more. I don’t even think I ate that day. I was just waiting for Sunday. I needed to get to church. It was the only place I felt any peace anymore. 

    Sunday morning, I still wasn’t totally on board with giving my last $20. But, I was going to go to church anyway. Service was just what I needed. I felt better. My spirit felt lighter. Then, I froze. The call for those who wanted to sow a supernatural seed came. I kept thinking of the what if’s. What if I needed to top off my gas? What if I needed food on the go because I had to work late? What if my car overheated and I needed oil? Two weeks is a long time to stretch $20 but it’s even longer of a time trying to stretch nothing. I asked people around me if they had change for a 20. No one did. 

    I heard our pastor say no seed was too small—that God only needs a mustard seed. I sat there, thinking that the line was too long anyway and service was about over. Then, Pastor said that if there was anyone wrestling with what to give or how, to just listen for God’s direction, and we wouldn’t finish without giving everyone a chance to give what they needed. I thought about how I had tried everything I could think of and how nothing had worked, and how I wanted to try God, but didn’t understand why it had to cost me money—specifically why it had to cost me my last. Pastor said, “I hear you, God. Love cost Jesus His life.” I sat at attention. I could not understand why my every thought was responded to by a Pastor I did not know personally and who was more than 50 feet from me. It felt like more than just mere coincidence. Fine, I thought, I’ll do it. But I’m not standing in that line. Something told me to turn and look at the line. I slowly tilted my head. There was one person, and they were dropping their seed in the bucket. I’m not telling my business to a bunch of strangers, I thought. Then, Pastor said that we don’t need to know what the seed is for or how much. That’s between you and God, he said. Share whatever you feel comfortable, he said. 

    I didn’t have any excuses left, y’all. I got up, I stood silently at the mic. Head bowed. I prayed for all the things I needed and wanted. My heart grew full as I thought about the marriage I needed, the love I yearned for, and the friendship I so desperately desired. I almost felt like I was floating. As I dropped my crisp $20 in the bucket, I said in a voice just above a whisper, “I’m praying for my marriage. God’s will be done.” I turned on my heels, and plopped back into my seat. People around me rubbed my back with care, shared amen’s, and said they pray that God does whatever I need Him to. I sat upright again, this time with a gasp. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t said my husband’s name. I panicked. How would God know? Then, I remembered my prayer. God knows my heart, I thought to myself, God’s will be done. I sighed a sigh of relief. 

    The weeks that followed were crazy. That’s really the only way to describe them. 

    That same week, we argued every time I saw him. I started to avoid going home until it was time to go bed unless I knew he wasn’t there. Wearing the ring started to feel like a chore, and I sometimes forgot. One night, he was brought home drunk. His friends banged on the door, jarring me awake, and kept up until I opened it. They’d driven his car, but didn’t know which key was his house key. He woke up just before I went to work and we argued. Again. 

    It had gotten to the point where I would go as far through my day as I could without crying, cry as much and as hard as I could just to get it out, and then clean up my face at the church before the after school program started. I got found out by my principal, who also happened to be Rev’s wife. She found me finishing up my cry session in one of the empty classrooms because there was an event that was still letting out, so I couldn’t cry in my car without being seen. I’d thought everyone was in the gym and I had time. She hugged me and it reminded me that I hadn’t been hugged in months. I sobbed even harder. She had known me since I was a middle schooler, and knew that I’d been different—that my light had dimmed, she said. She didn’t want to pry but wanted to know why I was crying. I told her everything. I closed with frustration that, after sowing my seed, things got worse instead of better. Without judgment, she hugged me again, and told me to anoint the house. 

    Again, confusion. I knew, in theory, what an anointing was. What anointing oil claimed to do. But, again, if I’m honest, I didn’t believe it. I also had nothing to lose. She gave me a vial of oil mixed by the women of the church according to the biblical recipe. She handed me a purple prayer cloth. That same night, I did exactly what she said. I washed my hands, and then placed anointing oil on them. I prayed over the threshold that no negative energy or evil spirits were welcomed. I prayed over his pillow that nothing bad slept, rested, or felt peace. I prayed over his work shoes that they only would take him into good, positive situations. I prayed over the television that only things that would uplift us were viewed. I prayed over the room I slept in that only peace and joy would enter my space. Then, I prayed about how thankful I was for Rev and his wife’s presence in my life, how frustrated I’d been about my seed, how confused I was about everything that had happened. I told God that I needed His light to show me the way. When I finished, I didn’t even realize I’d been crying until I felt the dampness of the carpet beneath me. But again, my spirit felt lighter. I slept peacefully for the first time in months. 

    He didn’t come home that night. Or the next. When he did, he came home late and drunk, only this time he’d driven himself. I heard him come in. He rustled around. Slammed some doors and cabinets. I heard him smack his teeth a few times. Exclaim WTF a few times. I rolled over, covered my head with a pillow to muffle the noise, and drifted back to sleep. I was jarred back awake. This time, he was banging on the door to the room where I slept, yelling for me to tell him who was in the room with me. I yelled back asking why he thought someone was with me. IN response, he yelled for me to open the door before he opened it for me. He jiggled the knob and cursed at me about it being locked. He hollered about knowing there’s someone else because why else would I have the door locked. I said because I never knew if he’d be alone or not when he did come home. He snorted and reminded me that no one wants me. He said he’d ask one more time. “JESUS,” I yelled, “ain’t nobody in here but me and Jesus. Now let me go to sleep. I’ve got work in the morning.”

    I don’t know why that made him so upset, but he immediately started yanking at the door and yelling for me to open it. I had just gotten out of the bed to finally open it when he ripped the door off the hinges and frame, rushed past me, and began searching the room. “What took so long?” he asked. “Had to hide someone?” 

    “Jesus doesn’t have to hide,” I retorted. 

    He stood up and walked toward me, narrowing his eyes. I almost thought he was going to hit me. But, he got to a certain point and stopped. 

    “What’s with all the crosses?”

    “What are you talking about?” I had truly forgotten in my grogginess and the intensity of the moment of the anointing from a few days ago. I really didn’t know what he was talking about and my face matched my lack of recognition. 

    “The crosses! On the door and the pillow and the TV and the couch. Crosses every-fucking-where. Who did that?” 

    My eyes widened. “You see crosses?” Y’all. I put them in the air. The oil was on my hands and I just drew air crosses as I prayed through the house, like Rev’s wife told me to. I couldn’t even see the crosses. 

    “Yea! I can’t sleep here. Not now.”

    By this time, I didn’t even know how to react. I still wasn’t sure what to believe. “Why can’t you sleep here? How do you even know—you just got home after what, like 3 days since I’ve seen you?”

    “The crosses! I’ve been back and forth two days now trying to get some sleep. Now tonight. I can’t rest. I can’t get comfortable. I can’t. Sleep. Here.” His nostrils flared and he clenched his jaw between the fragments of his statement. 

    I just stared at him in wonder, my hand clutching invisible pearls. “My God.”

    “That’s all you do now is talk about God. I’m sick of hearing about God. Tell you what, since you sleepin’ with Jesus, you and Him can get the hell on. Find another place to lay your head. I put this place up for rent and the tenant moves in soon.”

    My eyes grew juicy. I didn’t expect to be homeless.

    Satisfied that the tables had turned, he smirked, leaned the door against the frame, and tossed a gruff “sleep well” over his shoulder. 

  • free choice, free will, and divine intent

    free choice, free will, and divine intent

    Because we live in a society that has perverted the protocol of the Creator’s intended order, we have generations of folks who know what marriage calls us to do but not who it calls us to be. Why? Because they don’t have to. We are creatures of comfort, not beasts of burden. We, as a people and as a population, do not seek to change until change is no longer an option, but a necessity for survival. The world has led us to believe that what we do and how it looks from the outside looking in matters more than who we are when no one but God is looking. God gave us free will. The world shows us free choice. That mismatch throws us into crisis. For that reason, we struggle with what to do and who to be with free will when free choice abounds. 

    In an episode of Drink Champs, DMX shared that God did not give us free choice; He gave us free will. These are different. Think about that. 

    We were gifted with free will. That is, humans have the ability to think, reason, and make their own decisions independent of what God wants for us or what fate might dictate as our destiny or of any prior event or circumstance. Free choice, on the other hand, is the ability to make decisions based on one’s own beliefs and desires. You might be sitting there scratching your head like, “how’s that different?” The difference lies in the intention. It’s the why, not the what, that matters. Free will means you can do what you think is right. If your heart is in the right place, God will honor your action—it’s tied to the idea that if you are a believer, God offers you agency to move how you need to in this world. Remember, God sees our heart. Free choice means that you did what you wanted to. Full stop. And we know all the world’s a stage. 

    In DMX’s elaboration on this point, he talks about two people who murdered someone. One person killed another because that person killed his dog. There was a provocation—a moral wrong that needed to be made right. Another person killed someone in the commission of a robbery. We already know two wrongs don’t make a right. While it might not be the best example out there, you get the point. And it makes sense. Plenty of us do the right thing for the wrong reason. Plenty also do the wrong thing for the right reason. Why else would we also be told that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Good intentions aren’t always right. That’s why it’s so important to be sure that we’re sure that we’re walking closely with God so we know His heart and can allow ours to be molded accordingly. If we’re acting in accordance with the fruits of the Spirit, we’re less likely to just go by what we want, anyway. Acting in love, goodness, and self-control alone are more likely to produce action borne of necessity than desire. 

    Confusion abounds in this debate because we don’t know what we don’t know. Even many of us who grew up with the Word didn’t grow up in it. And, too, what we saw around us in believers and nonbelievers alike looked so similar that we couldn’t see the nuance, if there was even any to see. When I think about divorce, my own as well as those I’ve witnessed, it is through the lens of free will versus free choice. 

    If I am honest, I did not enter into my first marriage of free will. It was of free choice. I had a checklist—a timeline by which I measured my progress through adulthood. I was afraid of alone. That relationship was the closest thing to love I’d known at the time, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look and feel like as a precursor to marriage. I hadn’t had many examples of marital love-in-bliss by which to compare it. So, when I got married, it wasn’t with the purest intentions or with God’s Word as a foundation. We met in church—that’s as far as God got into it. Besides that, I didn’t want to be homeless, I wanted to save money on my car insurance and phone bill, and getting married showed some semblance of progress into adulthood. As I look back, I realize that I entered into marriage for the legal benefits it afforded me. It was a business decision, which is crazy to me now. I didn’t see it that way at the time, though. I also didn’t realize how logically I approached many emotional situations at that time. I didn’t have an idea of what waiting on God might look like. And, if I’m honest, I didn’t have enough faith to find out.

    When the topic of divorce came up before we officially said “I do,” we promised that we’d figure out a way to make it work. That was all I needed. That was enough to commit to forever. There was no mention of God or His will for us. There was no talk about what figuring it out entailed. Later, I learned that for him, figuring it out meant being roommates and “doing our own thing” if we had to just to save face and not admit defeat with a divorce. It didn’t mean fighting to save our marriage by learning to love better, purer, or more thoroughly. It didn’t mean meeting each other with humility and honesty to grow into a space of mutual respect and togetherness. Just as it had been when we entered into marriage, the idea the world had of our relationship meant more than God’s hand on and in it. Our intentions were wrong. When I moved into being more aligned with God’s gift of free will than my own free choice and my husband didn’t follow suit, God honored my decision to be released. I had done all I could. I prayed. I loved. I respected. I served. I submitted. In the end, I willed freedom. And at the end of the day, the day had to end, word to Glorilla. 

  • unfolding authenticity: discoveries from divorce

    unfolding authenticity: discoveries from divorce

    a long time ago, a supervisor told me that people are the most unpredictable product. but humans are creatures of habit, i’d proudly retorted. he ignored me, and explained why data on patterns and trends matters so much. because, while the behavior might look different person to person or maybe even over time in the same person, it can be traced back to pretty reliable motivations. the triggers are there, if we know where to look and for what we’re looking. people are who and how they are, he’d said, even when they don’t want to be. especially, he’d emphasized, when they don’t want to be. i didn’t revisit that until after my divorce. after realizing i had focused on all the ways i could repair what was never actually broken. 

    i first met my ex-husband in middle school at church. a friend brought him after our youth pastor taught us what evangelism could look like at our age. we crushed on each other a bit, but nothing really happened. he seemed too particular for my liking, and i may have been a bit too flitty for his. a couple years later, it didn’t much matter. the youth ministry sort of lost its luster. we all grew up; high school changed what life required of us, and many of us got jobs that required us to work sunday service and wednesday night bible study hours. so, when we crossed paths at an ice cream social at the university we both ended up going to, it seemed kismet. i thought the creator was orchestrating a grand symphony for us. 

    i didn’t rush it. i dated. liked. loved. even got heartbroken. i wanted to get it all out of my system before settling into forever with my fated. when we finally got together, it sort of felt more like completing an item on a checklist than the kismet moment in time people lauded it as. where they saw a good catch, i felt trapped. with him, i couldn’t be the version of myself i loved most, but i also had never seen any woman be that version in marriage, so i thought it was par for the course. i thought our married selves were meant to be different. more reserved. not knowing how to be married, we just did what we saw other married people do. as i consider it, we never really cleaved unto one another. we didn’t know how. so, we folded. we even folded the red flags in and called them tests. and i think we thought that, at some point, folding was enough. that, one day, it’d be easier to just stay that way. 

    you know how, if you don’t have scissors, but you need to only use a piece of a piece of paper, you fold it back and forth and sharpen the crease where you plan to separate the pieces? and how, after all those folds, and maybe a little moisture, the paper just sort of gives way? that’s how our divorce happened. we folded. and folded again. and again. back and forth. and by the time the first little bit of rain came, the fold wasn’t a fold anymore. 

    i was returning from a field trip with my students when i received the curious text that changed my life: i don’t want to do this anymore. at the time, i’d thought he was referring to his job. i had just recently resigned from my sales job to pursue my master’s degree and go into education. i thought he wanted to sit down and plan his own escape. when i later realized his truth, i tried desperately to save our marriage. it wasn’t so much that i thought it worth saving, but that i didn’t want to fail publicly. i didn’t want to admit that we’d made a mistake. i didn’t want to add to the statistic. and all i could think of were all the divorced women i’d known who never even found self-love let alone that of another person. i was scared of what was on the other side. i didn’t know if the grass could be greener.

    i later realized that he didn’t want a divorce. he was content with not wanting me as his wife and not allowing anyone else to have me, either. we were to remain married on paper. split the bills. share the house. and “do our own thing.” he knew me enough to know that i couldn’t, in good conscience, do ‘my own thing’ and still be married. i didn’t take my vows lightly. so, if we divorced, it’d be solely my decision. my financial burden. my public admission of failure. it took me awhile, and then just a moment.

    in the thick of that season, i could only think of how surprising his actions were. he suddenly seemed so callous. combative. manipulative. so unlike the boy i’d met in church all those years ago. i could not understand how someone who called themselves my friend first could ever treat me roughly as their partner. the pursuit of happiness, for me, is intrinsically linked to my ability to flow where the streams take me and to allow others that same pursuit. even if it doesn’t suit or serve me. for him, it was to control the flow—to dam or divert the streams at will, especially to suit or serve him. that’s what made me seem flitty—what made him too particular to me, respectively, way back when. i just didn’t think he’d be that way with me. but, it was never about me, and i won’t fault him for being his authentic self. it just served as a reminder: when people show you who they are, believe them. the first time. the best people, places, and things in life don’t often require you to fold. and even schisms as cataclysmic as divorce have their merits.