Divorce is Not a Dirty Word

When I opened up more about my divorce on my personal Instagram, I was shocked by the amount of positive feedback I received.  

As a Christian, the "d" word is evil, at least that's what I grew up hearing. You don't talk about it, you don't think about it, because you need to follow through with the commitment and the covenant you made on your wedding day, regardless. Heavy on the regardless.

So naturally, conflict brewed when I realized I wanted a divorce.

I'm not sharing names and I'm not getting into great detail, because that's not what this is about. I have long forgiven my ex-husband for his mistakes, and he has paid for them, dearly. I'm simply sharing my point of view in a story I've kept quiet about for a long time. Despite my frustrations, I am not here to point fingers — though it may seem like that because I've had my fill of the church's view of diVoRcE, and for that, I apologize in advance.

All I ask is that you remain patient with me. I'm still healing. This is still relatively fresh, and I'm doing my best to share what happened without dragging people through the mud, especially my ex-husband. It's not my place, and none of my business. He's been through the mud already.

Without further ado, buckle up lol.

**T/W mental health, suic*de, self h*rm**

On the outside looking in, my divorce was sudden and without explanation. 

Behind closed doors, it was a different story. 

I was a victim. My peace was robbed from me, my security ripped out from under me, my trust shattered. My marriage bed was defiled because of the years of emotional ties my ex-husband had made with private stolen photos. As someone who was a tech whiz and worked in IT, he had access to these photos — women who entrusted their device with him, women we knew, who watched us say our "I do's" and who shared meals with us around our dinner table. 

There was an unspeakable weight — many elephants in the room, crammed into the two bedroom apartment we rented. They were addressed one by one, as he admitted only to what he got caught doing. This piece-meal disclosure of each woman he stole photos from went on for six months. Legally there are about 17; overall, I stopped counting at 25. This is why I was diagnosed with PTSD.

During those six months, I lost many friends and my privacy was invaded. Detectives searched our apartment for digital storage devices. I had to call the cybercrimes unit at the police station to get my laptop and hard drive back before I started my next college semester that fall. Photos of me on my ex-husband's phone were disclosed to the detectives. I grieved. For my lost trust and defiled intimacy, and though completely unrelated, I grieved for my patient who died — I no longer had a job.

The one person I thought I could count on for anything was the problem; my lifeline, the person I was with one spirit and one flesh, turned out to be unstable. I had no one to turn to.

Deceit was heavy, and years in the making. While I fell in love with his heart first, I still didn't know it. It made me doubt my intuition and my worth, and it made me feel invisible. Did he think about those photos when we were intimate? How often did he look at them? Was I not enough for him? Did I not satisfy him enough because he was looking at other women? Did he not trust me enough to tell me the whole truth? Am I trustworthy? Am I worthy?

I contemplated self-harm, like an itch that needed to be scratched. I wanted a permanent break from suffering, because I would have gone to Heaven, and the nightmare would have been over. I even had an idea of how I wanted to do it, that journal entry was titled "Barbiturates."

I am not proud of my thoughts during those hard months. 

I felt like an imposter anywhere I went — anytime I laughed, anytime things were "good" or when I had to answer the question, "How are you?" because I knew once I said that I wasn't okay, the dam would burst. "I am not okay" didn't even begin to cover how I felt.

And while people rallied around my ex-husband while he faced the possibility of years in prison, I was fading away, withering into nothing. Like a fighter jet in a flat spin, destined for deadly impact.

The biggest assumptions about my decision to get a divorce was I made it too quickly, that I did it outside of biblical counsel, and I got it simply because he was in legal trouble with sexual motivation. This is simply not the case.

It's hard to describe exactly how I made my decision and what my process was. I hardly had the words at the time, even though I knew the reason why, which was this: A future with him was impossible because he broke his vows, and I was spiraling downward, fast. We were young, both under twenty-five, had no kids, no property, and by the time I made my decision to file, we hadn't even been married for a year. 

Above all else, after prayerful deliberation, I made my decision because God gave me the green light. 

God released me from the long and grueling fight. I battled opinions, doubts, made frustrating decisions and did the best I could to not dole out ultimatums, because initially I was very ready to make things work. I believed God would bring out a glorious testimony from our marriage, so I wasn't giving up. It was when God gave me the space to make a choice that divorce was an option I considered. He walked me up to a fork in the road, reassuring me that He would never leave my side, regardless of what I chose. His grace covered me as I made peace with what I knew was true. I was spent, and it became too much for me to carry. 

Starting over was the best thing to do. 

I share this not to gain sympathy, but to shed light on the tumultuous process that is divorce. I wish that it wasn't such a "dirty word" in the church. It was shocking to me, how many Christians told me that I wasn't doing what God wanted and that I needed to stay with him and work it out. That I made my decision without thinking about it. That God doesn't like divorce, as if they knew better. 

Yes, it's true. God doesn't like divorce. He doesn't like it because it is painful to go through, because it takes a lot of heartache and grief to arrive to the decision to separate from someone you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with, and consciously break the promise you made in front of God and your close friends and family. It's hard. It's embarrassing. It's even debilitating. That's why God doesn't like divorce. 

God also doesn't like sexual sin. Self-righteousness. Or gossip, yet there was a lot of gossip. The legal case and the divorce was talked about a lot. Oh, the irony. 

I didn't need people telling me what God wanted, because I talked with Him, and He gave me the choice. I didn't even need people to agree with my choice. I simply needed a safe place to break down, because the man I married was no longer my shelter. I needed someone to empathize, recognize, and acknowledge the pain I was going through, not to brush it aside because of the stigma.

Sure, there were good intentions, not to say that the church is stupid. My point is that in my experience, there was such a lack of grace from those who claimed to exemplify it, because I was now labeled a divorcee. So many stones, so many planks, not enough grace. This is not a jab at the church.

I will never say that I made the right decision. Only God knows, and I am but a small part in His workings, and my interpretation of what God wants will not always be right. But I will say that I made the best decision I could, and I made my decision in the eyes of God. Really, that is all that we can do.

I was reassured by God that I was secure in my decision when He gave me my warrior of peace, a man I am proud to call my husband, and then again when He gave us our son. As scary as it was to open up to someone new after such an intimate betrayal, my fear was not bigger than my trust in God. Just two weeks after the divorce was finalized, I was remarried, and it couldn't have been any more perfect.

At the end of the day, the opinions of others didn't and will not dictate or know the intimate relationship between my heart and God's heart for me. To assume otherwise is to assume oneself as knowing better than God. (Which is also something God doesn't like.)

We get so wrapped up in telling people what they need to do because the Bible says so, when we should be telling ourselves those things. We are too busy throwing stones, thinking we are sharing the Good News, as if we forgot the other part of that story, where Jesus, the only faultless individual who could throw a stone, didn't. 

*Yes, I just asked the age old question, "What would Jesus do?"*

Instructing others in how they need to handle a personal spiritual matter is best done when you love them through it. Be kind. Be gentle. Listen. It is not our job to make sure someone lives the way God wants them to — nor would you want that job because it's hard enough to do so ourselves — but it is our job to love others.

This is hard to share, still. The healing process is long, and contrary to popular belief, time does not heal all wounds. Tender work must be done to heal a tender heart. Time passes, separating us from the mess, but to heal is to do the work. 

Time will not return to me my sense of security, and it will not give me the peace that was robbed from me. Time will not give me the ability to make boundaries, and it will not wipe away doubts and opinions; it will not bring me wholeness. Oceans do not give us the ability to swim.

Like my grandfather always says, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him wear water wings. 

I guess the sagely piece of advice I have to impart is to be gentle. Cast assumptions aside. If you do assume anything, assume that you don't have the full story, because many battles are fought in private. Resist the urge to fix, to correct, to insert your opinion under the guise of it being biblical advice, especially in a time of crisis. The first thing to come out of your mouth should be this: "What do you need right now? I am here, I am listening."

Love them through it. Watch how your grace for others becomes transformative. The rest will surely follow.

~While "love is all you need" is a great sentiment, it clearly doesn't address the grave importance of toilet paper. 

Listening to: Adele's entire new album because wow my girl's done it again.