Nothin' Pretty

Hold onto your hat. This ain't nothin pretty.

Life's been... well, a little on the overwhelming side lately. Frankly, I'm fighting cynicism and outright irritability like you wouldn't believe.

I got into a confrontation with my ex husband and his new wife. Ewww... It was miserable for a thousand reasons. I wasn't nice. Didn't feel like being nice and didn't care that I didn't feel like being nice. Still don't. I was surprised at the fury that is in me. Mama Bear had her claws out if you know what I mean. Divorce of any kind is disgusting, and mine is/was among the most gross of situations. I still experience nausea when considering what happened to my kids and me. Most people who know about it do.

It's strange because I have a beautiful life, a gorgeous new husband, and my kids have a new big brother and are about to get a new baby brother or sister. They're doing great in school, happy in our church, growing every day. We're happy. I hate how past wounds sometimes show themselves and seem to be as infected as if they just happened. Sometimes I feel like I'll be injured forever over this. Some people say that a broken bone still aches years and years later in bad weather or something. Seems like emotional wounds are much the same way, still flaring up so to speak at one time or another.

Had a great visit with my family this weekend, and got some much needed TLC from them. My sister's church showed the movie "Fireproof" and the pastor preached his beginning sermon of a study they are doing based on the Love Dare. (For those of you not in the mainstream church, it's a marriage enrichment thing.) The pastor used the passage I Corinthians 13, of course, since he was talking about love. Now, I was doing no small amount of teeth gritting having already sat through the scripted "Isn't it GREAT to be in the house of the Lord today?" and "Lord, bless us and be with us." and the misuse of Malachi 3:10, and the pastor's cheesy pasted-on grin. Bleah. I missed my church and the realness that is there. Thank God my pastors have the guts to frown if they're sad or tell me if they're mad. Or at least not to take glamour shots of themselves. I love you, Jim and Greg... Crocs and ALL!!!

Anyway, I was gritting my teeth, and fighting the nasty, cynical thoughts that raced through my mind as he read the familiar "Love is patient, love is kind, love believes the best, love endures all things..." I thought to myself: "How can that be? I tried so hard to "believe the best" to give another person the benefit of every doubt. I trusted again and again and still I was lied to, humiliated, decieved, and ultimately abandoned. What's the point? And how will my new marriage have any hope if this kind of crap is going on in my mind? Why did God let this happen to me?" But then... to my shock, pasty-grin man had something smart to say. He said everywhere you see the word love, you can insert the name Jesus. Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind, Jesus believes the best, Jesus never fails. This immediately passed my theological who-ha filter, since I know the scripture says God IS love. And so we can safely substitue His name there.

I began to think. Perhaps this passage, while it certainly is the standard we should strive for, has been under the wrong focus for me. The failure of other people to love me, or me to love them isn't what I Cor. 13 is all about. It's about Jesus and how He behaves toward humans, including me. Perhaps it isn't saying: "This is how you love. Now TRY HARDER!" Perhaps it's more like: "This is how God loves you. So, having been loved like this, you can deal with the failure of other people to love you and your failure to love them." Hmmm... So maybe it's more like God saying "So what if he lied to you and utterly failed you. I love you and will never fail you and never lie to you."

I don't know why God let me marry a man who would hurt me in such a way. I was trying with all my might at the time to do what I thought God wanted me to do. I don't know why He let me get ripped apart like that. I do know that the stark contrast between the way I was loved in my first marriage and the way God loves me practically screams to me. I have to wonder if I would have ever glimpsed the magnitude of the strength of God's love if I hadn't experienced the failure of human love.

Mere guesses at a question that will probably never be answered and really doesn't make sense anyway...

In all my frustrated cynicism, my irritability, meanness, and sorrow.... in all my happy moments, my blissful passion with my new husband and my joy at the smiles of my children... In ALL those moments I'm loved. Hmmm....

Maybe this was somethin pretty after all.