Earlier this week I was speaking to a mentor about divorce in situations where there has been emotional and physical abuse. A question had been raised in my heart during the Divorce Care study.
I have been experiencing this feeling of (what I thought was) compassion that was getting in the way of my resolve to divorce Kip. "What is driving it?", he asked. "Is it worry about what others might think, or is it concern for his welfare?"
I had to answer "a little bit of both". How can I divorce a virtual invalid? (note: He's not an invalid per say, however, he does have a significant amount of alcohol induced dementia and may not recover)
My mentor then talked about a beautiful masterpiece (our marriage) that was torn into two pieces by Kip's violence, and how it seemed to him that I was using all this effort to try to make my half fit the half Kip destroyed. (yeah, that hit me)
...And then truth set me free. I remembered his mother telling me that the reason he was heavily medicated was because of continued violence in the hospital. How can I think of fighting my terror of him just to go put myself in danger??
...and the realization that my history of being abused was affecting my thoughts and actions. I was romanticizing his condition.
We prayed and each hung up the phone....and I read in Romans 8 as I was then encouraged to do.
With a wild hair I go to The Message to see how it is translated there.
Romans 8:12-15
So don't you see that we don't owe this old do- it- yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave- tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"
The romanticizing I was doing was "do-it-yourself" wisdom....that didn't come from Abba.
HERE'S WHERE THE BREAD COMES IN
The truth of what my friend was telling me, and what scripture showed me continued to take root in my heart until Saturday after I closed the store and went across the street to buy some groceries. I approached the aisle I had avoided for almost a year since I realized that sliced bread (of all things) was a trauma trigger. I had been making sandwiches for my lunch the night Kip snapped and unleashed all of his anger on my heart with his words, threatened to kill me and shoved me repeatedly into counters, walls, doors, and to the ground.
You know, and I know, that making a sandwich had nothing to do with Kip. I was just part of the background that triggered the memory. "the best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life..." echoed in my heart. It was time to let that truth displace the roots of fear that have controlled me and kept me from making any kind of sandwich for almost 18 months.
So there I am at the grocery store on a Saturday night, gingerly approaching the bread aisle. (do the other shoppers have a clue about how fast my heart is racing?) It seemed like it took forever to choose a brand that I never purchased during my marriage to Kip. It then, took the same amount of time to resolve to *not* purchase ice cream. (I wasn't successful with putting orchid #6 back in the flower dept, though...baby steps?)
And on the way home...I wept. I was numb, going through the motions, while I made pimento cheese, numb as I spread it on the bread, and then, for a brief moment, filled with sorrow as I toasted it on the grill press.
Just to be able to eat it, I had to cut it in a way I never have before. Victory? Yeah...sort of....keep reading.
Afterwards, no amount of anesthetic activities (episode after episode on Netflix, York Peppermint Patties, mind numbing electronic solitaire ...) made it work. So, I stayed numb until I fell asleep.
5:00am. I'm awake after a school based nightmare. Do I go to Abba with my fears? No. I watch another episode on NetFlix and doze.
My 9:30, time to leave the house for church alarm goes off. I haven't even showered. Somehow I made it to church. I'm offered communion, everyone else has finished. I see the bread, and my heart melts. The numbness melts away.
My body was broken making a sandwich. Jesus was broken like he fortold during the Last Supper when he took the bread and broke, giving thanks. He suffered, and He gave me hope by becoming the Bread of Life. Here was life being presented to me after an evening and morning of choosing death.
Romans 8:7-10
Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells-- even though you still experience all the limitations of sin-- you yourself experience life on God's terms.
I'm surrendering again. I still have wounds that need to be sacrificed. I still need to remember how helpless I am without Jesus.
...and there's still an awful lot of bread left, and it still looks a bit bigger than life. (even though it isn't)
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