Grief

Before you go into this, I ask that you read this post with a soft and respectful heart.

There's this quote that Jason and I used to ponder when we were working on what was left of our marriage and it goes like this:  

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

We'd come back from a counseling session with instructions to find something in common. We bought kayaks, floated around local ponds and ducked through tunnels of pond shrubs, picking spider webs off our faces and necks. We also tried local pub-hopping to find the perfect nachos as if finding the immaculate conception of peppers and cheese would be the expected miracle that would save our marriage. You know what we discovered? We both liked kayaking, we both liked nachos, and we both knew our marriage was over.

There are some decisions that are easy to make like wearing thongs under yoga pants and bare feet with sandals, but most of the time, the bigger the decision the more murky the water.

I believe that God hates divorce. Bloody hell, I hate it too and I guarantee if you ask Jason how he feels about the subject, he'd agree. But sometimes, when all we have to see through is pond water, we can only make our best guess with what we have in front of us, and in our limited human vision, we are only able to move forward but for the outstretched guiding arm of grace. What am I trying to say? We are fucked, but we're not fucked forever and ever because life and love doesn't end at divorce just like it doesn't end at cancer and in fact, sometimes the first time a person ever fully lives and loves is at the beginning of their dismal diagnosis.

Divorce is a very real and a very painful terminal illness and it causes a grief that often has no closure. But the gaping hole left over can always be filled with beauty and grace if we so choose, the way tulips spring out of the dirt above a buried coffin.

Please pass the nachos.