I have been going through some difficult days. Things I won't discuss here but suffice it to say maybe one of the very hardest times of my entire life.
I've learned a lot in the last few weeks and this morning, as I was sitting here pondering it all, I came to a few very difficult conclusions.
I suppose I could file this under the "Things You Lose in Divorce" series, and I might just do that. But this morning I am just too tired to organize it. I am just going to write and let things land where they land.
It's been very very hard watching my life disintegrate and the fragments dissipate into the wind. There isn't anything left of any plans or dreams I had two years ago. It's been whittled away like a pencil for 8 years now when I think about it. The dreams I had as a married man were stripped from me when I got divorced. The dreams I had as a father were cut in half when I got divorced. That left me to dream dreams just for me and some new ones for Morgan. Now almost all of those are gone too. My career has vanished, as it has for virtually every other mortgage banker I know. I have been so beaten up by this last defeat that I am, for the first time, afraid to dream anything else. I have no vision for the first time in my life. I am afraid to have one. I've lost plenty in the past. I've had failures and defeats. I have never before been one to shy away from picking up and starting over. I've always been an optimist and a believer. But for the last ten years I invested myself in this career, watched it blossom in spite of hard blows, and actually had built a nice plan with this vocation as a lynch pin. All that is gone now. I can't really remember feeling this alone in my life. These are the days when I feel the most divorced. This morning I was listening to Steven Curtis Chapman on Focus on the Family and he was talking about the strength he and his wife are finding in the middle of the tragedy of losing their youngest daughter. It's that bond that I so desperately sought while I was married. It's that bond I sought when I was looking for a wife in the first place. You can have all the money, power, fame, material things, whatever. Give me one person who cares about me more than I care about myself and I can make it through any storm. When the wind whips, and the rains beat down, and the boards come flying off the house, the only thing that stands is the foundation you built it on. Mine has been gone for a long time now. and when such a large chunk of your foundation is damaged and broken, the storm can make some serious inroads into the destruction of the home. Marriage is the last best stronghold of hope and strength in your life. When it's gone...what do you really have? My Christian friends would tell me that I have Christ and my faith should be all I need. well...so why did God make Eve? Nobody was closer and more intimately friendly with God than Adam, and yet the Bible says God saw that Adam needed a soul mate. He didn't impose it on him, it wasn't a novelty or an experiment. God said "it is not good for the man to be alone" and He created him a best friend. There are all sorts of examples in the bible of God doing this but there is not ONE archetype for Him ever doing the opposite.
When the chips are down everyone takes care of their own agenda first. I'm not even upset about that...it's human nature. But divorce has stripped away my life raft. There is a depth to which your spouse cares that no one else ever will. And right now when I need it most, it isn't there.
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