Groceries

I really dislike grocery shopping.  If there is one thing that makes me angry about the divorce it is having to go to Winco and wander up and down the aisles trying to make sense of unit pricing and nutritional facts.  I worked hard for twenty years so that my wife did not have to work outside the home.  Yes, over the years she had a number of different jobs, and at times worked quite a few hours outside the house, but the primary job was always managing our household.  I know I may sound a bit chauvinistic here, but dammit, I have not stayed gainfully employed for twenty years so that I can schlep a cart up and down the aisles trying to remember what is not on the list that I should not have had to make.  It is frustrating and humiliating as a man.  It really makes me ask, “What was the point?”

The Next Big Thing

“What is next?”  I was asked by a friend.   The Mexico adventure is over.  Can I just coast along for a while?  Go to church on Sunday morning, the men’s life group on Saturday and hang out with fellow fathers during youth group?  I have a feeling that is not the plan.  Yes, I am attending DivorceCare, but that is only one evening each week.  I already feel like I am drifting spiritually.   The class has a little homework assignment each day that helps to keep me faithful to spend time with the Lord.

As I see the clear direction that my (ex)wife is taking, I wonder if reconciliation is really possible.  Ok, I know it is always “possible,” but when am I released from my responsibility to her?  Does her intimacy with another man release me?  Some would say yes.  Or is it when she marries him?  I don’t know.  The other day, I had to explain to a friend that my hope for reconciliation is not a romantic hope.   Instead it is a position of obedience to what I think the Lord desires.  I know(think) at some point He will say “enough.”  I suppose remaining faithful intellectually and physically, protects me emotionally.  Am I being stubborn?  Yes, but also faithful.   There are a number of people in my life who would or have said that I have no more responsibility for my (ex)wife.  At least one is ready to introduce me to the next woman in my life.

I have been lonely this week.  Wrapped up in myself, not reaching out to the Lord, not taking advantage of my support system, lonely.  I have not been resting in Him.  I find myself in a whirl of thoughts and emotions that are not productive.  This evening at DivorceCare they talked a bit about productive anger.  I thought this could be extended to other emotions.  They can be productive,  constructive, or destructive.  I need to look for ways to make sure that my emotions are productive.  If I keep holding on to them, or dwelling in them, they can become destructive.

An Opportunity to Minister

I started a DivorceCare class this week.  The first meeting was mostly ground rules and introductions.  It looks promising.  The class is set up in mixed groups that we will stay with for the whole thirteen weeks.   I can already tell that some of the things we will be covering are things that I have already dealt with over the last year.  I mentioned this to my counselor and he pointed out that it might be an opportunity to minister to others.

He has said things like this before, and I have acknowledged it as a possibility but not really been purposeful in watching for the moment of ministry.  I think I need to add this to symphonic themes that run through my life.

We’re All Going to Die!

I have had three sentences sitting in this draft post for a couple days now.  I sit down to write and realize I have nothing particularly new or brilliant to say.  I am still newly divorced.  I am still on an emotional roller coaster.  My ex-wife’s weekends without the kids, and her unwillingness to have any kind of conversation about what she is doing with her time still bother me.

I had a good conversation yesterday morning at Bible study.  One of the men, after listening to me talk about what it was like, suggested I needed to cut it off.  I had to explain my thinking in terms of showing love to my ex-wife and showing my children a godly response to her.  Testifying to these things encouraged me.  Denying my own selfish sense of justice is the right way.  Yes, I know that we need boundaries, and that day will come, but it will come at a time when I am more stable.  This same gentleman compared the divorce to a slow, almost certainly terminal, illness.  I got a whole different perspective from this little insight.

Think about it.  We are all terminal.   What is a healthy way to act towards someone we know is going to die?  And if we ourselves are terminal, how should our lives look?

Not About Sex

I wonder how many posts I can write about missing my wife before one of you tells me to get a life.  I miss nakedness.  I know that is really a guy thing to say.  But I miss those moments on cold winter nights sliding between cold sheets and snuggling up to be warm.  I miss those “Don’t bother me I am trying to get makeup on” moments after she showered.  Being naked and unashamed is one of the best things God did in creating marriage.  The average adult has over eighteen square feet of skin.  I always reveled in seeing how much of that we could get against each other.  And this is not about sex.  It is about intimacy.  It is about the wonder of how our bodies match each other.  How we are created to match.

So yes I miss my wife.  When I lay in bed alone at night wishing for her to be next to me it is not for sex, but for the smell of her hair and the slow steady breathing as she sleeps in my arms.

Arrgghhh

Yesterday was my regular counseling appointment.  I usually spend the days leading up to my appointment trying to figure out what I should talk about.  Not to control the conversation, but to get the most good from it.  Often I try to bring in the general themes of what I have been reading, hearing and writing.  How my days have been, what my interaction with my wife has been like and anything else I can cram in.   He in turn finds a particular thread and pulls on it to see where it leads.  Yesterday the threads lead to some uncomfortable places, as they should.

First, One can only control things, not God created beings.   Women are not objects to be controlled or manipulated into giving me what I want.  And especially I cannot control my wife.  Fellow beings created in Gods image deserve every bit of respect and care that I can muster.  Like I said in an earlier post, this really kills my game, because it is no longer a game.  This is serious business.  It is not like I can go looking for a woman who wasn’t created by God.  I cannot classify some as objects and some not.  Ouch, Ouch, Ouch, conviction, conviction, conviction.

Second, being the one in the house with the kids, I have an incredible position of power.  I can exact vengeance and demand justice, or I can show mercy and grace.  The first born son wants justice.  It does not seem right that she should be at the house every day.  It does not seem right that she should be eating dinner with us.  She has divorced me, and justice demands that she stop trying to play house.  But what about grace?  I have been driving around with Colossians 3:12-14 on my dashboard this week, trying to remind myself of how I should be treating my wife.  I have not done very well.  It is incredibly hard not to punish her for what she has done.  Coming home to her is pain.  Watching her walk out the door at the end of the evening is pain.  My counselor pointed out that showing her grace and love during this time is “top tier” stuff.  My actions and attitudes can show her and the kids Christ’s character, or I can lead them down to bitterness and anger.  These things will have generational impact.   Staying available for reconciliation does no good if I am doing it for righteousness’ sake.   Ouch, Ouch, Ouch, Conviction, Conviction, Conviction.

Throwing Darts into the Whirlwind

I need to write.   Things swirl around me sometimes making it hard to concentrate.  Writing gives me a chance to throw a dart into the swirling mass and pin down some part of it.

I miss my wife.  As I say it, I realize it is not like she stopped being my wife all of a sudden.  Many of the little intimacies that come to mind where withdrawn more than a year ago.  This last year has just been the lingering death of a marriage that she withdrew from over the course of two or three years.  She would probably say it had been longer than that, but I think active, purposeful turning away has been no more than two or three.   So as I think about the things I miss, I realize it is twenty years worth of memories and shared lives.  Over seven thousand days of being one.

Now she has decided she is not my wife.  We have a legal paper that says we are not married.  But is that really all there is?  I know there are many different opinions about this.  I have chosen a way that I think honors the Lord most in my current situation.  I do not think that God so easily releases us from the vows we make before him.  I may not feel released to pursue another marriage until my legal ex chooses to re-marry.  I have to admit the fact she is already in a relationship gives me some reason to think it will not be long before she gets married.  I know there are some who would say I am released as soon as she has been with another man.  Again, I am not so sure.  Is that all the marriage vows are about is the physical relationship?  Short of marriage, how many relationships outside of ours am I required to forgive?  These are hard things.

Keep away from open flame

This morning my pastor asked me what I am doing to guard myself from inappropriate relationships during these early days of my divorce.  I am a walking pile of tinder, the right(or maybe the wrong) woman could put a match to me and I could find myself well on my way to being emotionally entangled before I have a chance to examine or withdraw.   I know this sounds a little passive, the moth and flame analogy is just as valid and implies a little more action on my part.

So, what am I doing?

First I need to constantly examine my motives in talking to or meeting women.  Being a single man at church I already find myself being a little cautious in how I interact with women there.  I do not to do anything that has a brother, husband or father wondering what my motives are.   Out and about, “in the world,” I need to be asking myself if I would have the same kind of interaction with this person if they were the same sex.

For those women that I already have a relationship with, I need to try to keep things at the status quo ante abruptio.  Whatever level of communication I have had, is probably where it should stay for at least the next couple months.  This is not particularly hard for me.  When it comes to text and chat, I only have limited patience for the medium.  I feel that it can create a false sense of immediacy and intimacy between people that otherwise would not be in relationship.  Phone conversations are not hard to limit at this point either.  I would not give a strange woman my home phone, and my cell is my work, so it is generally off limits also.  For women that already have my number(very few).  Time on the phone will be limited to short, purpose driven conversations.  No long rambling hour long conversations about the meaning of life.

This all sounds pretty good doesn’t it?  Some of it comes from a book called Reconcilable Differences that I read a while ago.

The other things that will keep me whole during this time are my time in counseling, faith, and my desire to be faithful to my (ex)wife and children.   In counseling, I have had to face a lot of the roots of my own behavior.   I find that a lot of behaviors that seemed worthwhile before, now have little profit.  This ties into my faith when my counselor asks, “How is that profitable?”  I hate that.     I also believe that I still have a very real responsibility to honor my relationship with my (ex)wife.  I know that any reconciliation would be hard.  I know that the kind of work required would be more painful than whatever I have gone through during the last year.  But I know that if I cut off that option by jumping into some other relationship too soon, I express a lack of faith.  It is also really important that the children watching me walk through this trial, see me go through it as a man of faith.  If I veer off the path for some temporary satisfaction, they will see, or at least be affected by it.  If the relationship is visible to them, and it happens before their mother has introduced another man into their lives, I risk being the one to dash the unspoken hope that mom and dad might get back together.  I am unwilling to do that(ok, I recognize some pride here).

I know this post is long.  I am not actually done.  Having written all this, my next post will have a story that begins to hint at how hard a task I may have set for myself.

Just a note to say I am not doing this very well

I know this is not a new song, I am just joining the chorus.  I do not like this.  I do not want to be in this place.  The woman I love will be sleeping with another man soon.  It makes me angry.  It makes me sad.  It hurts.  I express all these feelings angrily.  I do not want to be angry.  I have no good outlet.  I am alone and not alone.  My faith is out there waiting for me but I am having trouble standing on that spot.  All these other things keep pulling me away.   I looked in her date book last night to see what I could see.  This was wrong, I was caught.   I made a crack today about an old journal entry of hers, she knew I had seen it previously, but it reminded her of how invasive I have been in the past and made her question my current level of information.  I have been clean for a couple months, but it makes me want to delve some more.  See what I can find.

And I have a cold.

Arrgggh

That was easy

I have an easy button on my desk at work.  These come from Staples when you order office supplies from them.  When pressed, a voice says “That was easy.”  In some ways divorce feels that way.  Having worked up to it for almost a year, the actually signing of  papers was pretty mundane.  Except that is for the additional clauses that her lawyer threw in at the last minute to cost me just a little more! And my wife went along with it, including one little thing that she did not even read before she signed.  I called it to her attention and she clearly had no idea what I was talking about.    Her lawyer didn’t even blink.  I had little choice but to sign it.

Now I find my ex-wife over at the house every day since she moved out…to be with the kids…This is odd to say the least.  It is like she is camping in the backyard.  Remember when we were small and would camp out in the back yard.  We knew we could always run back in the house if we got scared.   This is what my ex-wife is doing.  She is out in the yard but keeps running back into the house to make sure everything is ok, she gets scared that she may have done the wrong thing and has to check in with the kids for reassurance.

I believe that next week the other man will be visiting.  I have made it abundantly clear that she needs to be discreet.  If she introduces him to the children, it will be a problem.  Now, I know there will be other men in her life, but this guy is the one that carried her through the divorce, providing monetary and emotional support throughout the process.   He is the poacher, and he is the one that my children do not need to be aquainted with.  I know…I cannot really do anything about it.  I even have moments where I wish she would just go public with her relationship.  It would certainly clear things up.  And when it crumbles (statistically) it will be even more clear.

Let me tell you how I really feel.