A few years back I left my marriage to try to make sense of what "I thought" happiness was supposed to be. I woke up very early one Saturday morning to a voice that was as audible as someone speaking out loud, my inner voice speaking loudly to myself. I heard it say "I'm going to leave this guy" and knew it was the truth. My heart started to pound. These were not easy words to hear. As a woman, as a mother and a christian these words shook my world. 24 hours later I began to leave. This was no act of faith on my part. This was an act of will. There was no consolation for getting divorced in the Bible so I lost faith for a while because I couldn't move forward in it. I was frightened, at times terrified at what might befall me having made this choice. I literally I broke my own heart in the life I had invested so I wouldn't lose my mind. During that time I even went so far as to pose an option to myself like you could leave your husband or you could leave Christianity and stay married and maybe that would work but inside I knew it wasn't the answer to peace either. Consequently, I ended up leaving both.
How could I leave someone for my own happiness. For a lot of people this is easy. They just turn and walk away and demolish their past like it's nothing. But it haunts me, it revisits me over and over like waves on a shore. Like a silent movie with no sound I am straining to be at rest with what I have chosen. What is the matter with me? Why can't I let this thing go?! It feels like the most selfish thing I've ever done.
Such a fine wife I made. Why did I leave? I left because I felt alone. I was living inside of myself, functioning inside the relationship. This still small place cramped in the middle of this fantastic family. I was on the margins, the epitome of goodness. It was my display of devotion, and it was from the heart but it did not include me. I had had difficulty with Christianity from the beginning. I remember early on in the 1st and 2nd year encountering lose of identity in the most devastating way being swept into a cult. Another time giving in to depression caused by the divide in what I was trying to be and who I was on a very organic level, in the matrix of being that I am. So I counseled twice for those 2 things, counseled again when I found myself falling in love with my former husband and began to gain some insight into the issue.
At another moment time I was going to leave my family because I felt I was going to have a total breakdown. All the hours alone with small babies were so long and late into the night but God in his mercy changed their fathers work schedule that very same dayand I gained some relief. I never thought about divorce. It was not within my principles of faith, never in my conversations for many reasons. We were raising children having a great family life and divorce was not biblical. As for partnership we were somewhat at odds with each other over my artistic career, homeschooling and all my alternative beliefs that were challenges and him leaving the creative field for financial reasons and unobtained opportunities.
Finally, I chose to stop thinking about all I believed and made an "illegal u turn" in the middle of my life, pushed a grocery cart out into traffic as a distraction and left. Keeping what I knew of God as being an emphatically loving entity I pushed all of my beliefs aside in order to move forward and haven't turned back. It is my belief that He will bring this thing full circle and bring me back into relationship with new understanding. Not saying it has been easy or I never have doubts and wonder if this whole thing is going to fly back in my face like a grenade!? So far it has supported me this wonderful, purposeful, painful reconciliation of me to my own life. In the end I realized I never left God but left the rules and regulations of a Christian life in order to live my life. After all... it is mine to live.
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