sueeeus

Recently I had dinner with a friend.  It was nice to have some grown up time.  I sort of feel like I over-talked.  It’s such a rare occasion, to spend any one-on-one time with another adult woman.  She’s also a relatively new friend.  Most of my friends have been friends for decades and we have history together so that when we talk, I don’t feel like I over-share.  Or rather, I feel comfortable sharing.    I don’t worry too much about over-sharing on my blog(s).  I have three of them, so that I can unload to various degrees with each one.  This blog is my tried and true, but I’m too cowardly to be completely raw and honest with or about certain things.  I have a separate blog for that.  I don’t bother with stats, so I don’t know how many people read that drivel.  I also have an intermediate blog, which is a bit more anonymous than this one.  I  had intentions for that one to be a real ‘break through’ venue, in which I actually made some progress with the issues I cycle through.  It’s just more of the same drivel, though.  If I were brave, I’d just merge the three here, where people who I know In Real Life can either roll their eyes or share their lovely words of friendship, camaraderie and encouragement.

I met this friend while church hopping last year.  I call myself a Christian, but I don’t call myself a religious Christian.  I struggle sometimes with the social expectations of labeling oneself as a Christian.  If you’re a [good] Christian, you should go to church.  If you’re a [good] Christian, you should tithe.  If you’re a [good] Christian you should marry, stay married, not get divorced, and of course if you are not married, you should not indulge in the lusts of the flesh.  Ahem.  I’m clearly not a [good] Christian.

walking the line

I tend to be of the mind that all that is my business, and it’s between me and God, and not a matter for a congregation.  Maybe part of the struggle I face is that the needles of Catholic guilt are deeply rooted within me.  I’m predispositioned to be on guard and feel as though I’m on trial.

There was a time in this rocky relationship when D said (also based on counsel from his church going friends) that God was not blessing our relationship because we weren’t married and we were having sex.  Fine, I told him back then.  I’ll be supportive of his convictions and abstain.  It never lasted, however, and he may try to say it’s because of me, but I’ll maintain that it was not.  I think he’s only interested in abstinence if marriage is on the table and the abstinence has a finite [and short] limit.  Since marriage is not on the table, the prospect of ongoing abstinence is quickly discarded.  I don’t know why I’m even writing about this.  There’s not a whole lot of crazy action going on around here anyway.

I suppose it’s because of something my friend said.  She’s since tried to assure me that she didn’t mean to be judgmental or religious, and she hopes that she didn’t jeopardize our friendship by saying such.  It was just a comment about valuing myself, and honoring myself, and that being physically intimate with someone while unmarried is a disservice to my heart and to my self.  I think there was also the bit about sin and going against God’s will sprinkled in there somewhere.

I actually agree with the aspects of valuing and honoring oneself, and respecting oneself enough to make solid and sound boundaries.  I also recognize how being casual with one’s holy of holies can certainly be a disservice to one’s heart and very self.  The struggle is the marriage bit.  It’s been a struggle for most of my life.  I’ve wanted to be well married for most of my life, but the opportunity didn’t present itself when I was young, and when my biological clock was thundering loudly, I took matters into my own hands and made a poor marriage decision.  Granted, I’ve chosen not to hold any regrets for that decision, because I am blessed to be the mother of two very fine boys.  I am, however, counted among the masses of the divorced.  Now I have a broken family, and perhaps in an ideal world there would be an opportunity to marry well.  I don’t want to just marry.  I want to marry well.  Or not at all.  Therein is my quandary.  I am in a relationship.  It is rocky.  I don’t know where or how it will go, but I don’t see marriage when I look into my crystal ball.

I’m on a path of rediscovery and awakening.  I’m working on unearthing myself from where I’ve been buried for most of my adult life.  I’m taking care of me, in very small steps.  I can’t imagine being a wife, because I can’t imagine a husband.  This is all stuff that rips D’s heart, and I can hardly have a conversation with him about it. I don’t want to hurt him.  None of this has anything to do with him.  I’m not rejecting him.  I’m choosing me.

I don’t think that being serially monogamous has been that destructive to my soul.  Yes, with each relationship there has been fallout.  I’ve had to pick up the pieces of my fragmented heart and patch them back together.  Scar tissue is strong, though!  This grisly tough battle scarred heart is still beating.  Will I become celibate if this relationship ends?  Probably.  Am I ready to be celibate now?  Maybe.  If we were happier in this relationship, then definitely not.  But we’re not all that happy.  So I don’t know.  Maybe.

Where does all this leave me now?  Sinner or not, I am a child of God.  I know that  his love for me is greater than my love for my own children.  What I am going through are the growing pains of life, and I am making and learning from my mistakes, just as my own children are making and learning from their own mistakes.

be still my bleeding heart

My life has been a road of many twists and turns.  The paths I’ve traipsed over the past few years have led me to face some of the most arduous challenges of my life.  I’ve made hasty, monumental decisions.  I’ve put myself into difficult situations.  Backed myself into corners.  Wasted time, wasted money, wasted emotions, wasted life itself.  I could say, “Hello, my name is Regret.”  But I won’t.  No, because I’ve been thinking about the wasted time, the wasted money, the wasted emotions.

I’ve been thinking about the ripples.  All the ways that lives have changed because of the roads I’ve traversed.  Good things come!  Good things happen!  It’s absolutely concrete.  While I could say that I wish I never wasted so much of my life chasing a mythical love, and I might wish I’d never said those two fateful words (“I do”), I have two vibrant and beautiful testaments to the perfection of that journey right before me.  Every day I am blessed by the wonder of these two human beings entrusted to my care.  And they would not be, had I not walked down that particular path.  And since then, for all the painful twists and turns that follow divorce, I can see how other people’s lives have changed for the better, all because our lives intersected at some point along that path.  This isn’t to say that I take credit for anything; it’s only to say that providence allowed me to be in a particular place at a particular moment in which I could (and did) do something that would (and did) help another.

It’s real.  It’s tangible. I can name names.

A child in Bali.  A village in Cambodia.  A single mother with two young children.  A battered wife.  A young mother with four children.  A woman.  A family.  A man (or two, or three, or seven, not that anyone’s counting).  If I even start to dwell on why or how I am here , in this country house so far from the madding crowd, I can turn my thoughts to any one of these people and quiet my anxious heart.  I don’t care how much money is gone.  I don’t care how many days, months, years have passed.  I don’t care how many tears I’ve cried.  Lives have changed!  Even one of these would be well worth any of the suffering I’ve put myself through.  I won’t dwell on the pain.  I won’t entertain regret.

True, I’ve been losing myself all along the way, bit by bit, so that I don’t even recognize myself any more.  I do wish I’d been vigilant from the start and given my self greater care.  I’m recognizing this now, and slowly but surely I am taking steps to restore myself to my self.  I’m going through the fire.  The refiner’s fire.  I’m going to be shiny and bright, when I get back to me.

Hello, my name is Hope.

I’m glad for this journey.