And then I thought of divorce.
Divorce - especially in the Christian community - is it's own unique brand of loss. If you peel back all of the layers of emotions surrounding divorce, what you'll find at the core is shame. Brene Brown defines shame as "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection." Unworthy.
The unique pain that comes with the loss of a marriage is the intense feeling of shame in the midst of crisis. There you are - in the midst of the most painful experience of your life - feeling like you've failed at the most important endeavor of your life - feeling like the rug of life has been yanked out from under you - reeling from the loss of identity - wondering if you'll ever smile again - and then being blamed for being in crisis. Blamed for not trying hard enough. Blamed for not being able to make it last. Asked to try harder, to be braver. One of the most painful parts of my divorce was having a long-time friend urge me to think of my children - the subtext being that the only way to be a good mother was to remain in my marriage. I was devastated by her admonition. I heard rumors about myself - I had started "going to bars," I had been unfaithful, I wasn't mentally stable. All presumably an effort to make sense of the dissolution of something that had seemed from the outside to be going well. It's easier for people to have something concrete to point to than to ask themselves if things are perhaps different than how they appear. It's safer and more comfortable to assume that someone has gone off the deep end than to wonder if it's possible that this same fate could come to you despite all of your best efforts.
Shame. Insult to injury. We would never blame someone for having a child in a wheelchair or for losing a parent, but we're comfortable questioning the character of someone who is losing a marriage. Here's the thing I would like everyone to understand - no one is more devastated by the ending of a marriage than the people in that marriage. No one has tried harder or poured more energy into that relationship. You cannot point to Facebook posts as evidence that this thing that is ending was what it appeared to be on social media. I promise you that the person best equipped to determine the health of a relationship is the one who is living it. The details surrounding the ending of a marriage are not for public consumption. But it would be so much easier on the person in crisis if the loss didn't have to be justified. If people would trust that you have exhausted all possible resources and aren't simply treating your marriage as something that's disposable. If people would realize that you actually ARE thinking of your children as you navigate this minefield.
Let me stop right here and tell you that I am one of the lucky ones.
The overwhelming majority of the people in my life were amazing and supportive and loving during this time in my life. No one told me "God hates divorce." Instead, they left toilet paper and goat cheese and a bottle of wine on my porch. They invited me to join their book club. They brought treats for my children for each holiday and special occasion for an entire year. They showed up on my porch with Twelve Days of Christmas presents for my children. They sent money so that I could buy presents for my children that first Christmas. They sent ornaments and Christmas decorations and even a tree. Someone covered my December rent - I still don't know who. They invited me to their family dinner when I didn't have my children. They let me sit on their couch and stayed up late helping me hash out the details surrounding the ending of my marriage. They brought me breakfast in bed. They recruited women I had never even met to send me cards of encouragement and notes telling me that I WAS worthy of love. They brought grocery gift cards before my job started to help me bridge the gap. They bought me appliances so I could wash our clothes and keep our food cold. They took me shopping for razor blades and wooden spoons and throw pillows and silverware. They brought over furniture they were no longer using. They showed up on my porch with a paper sack of earrings because they heard I didn't own any jewelry. They took me shopping so I could pick out my own earrings. They took me shopping so I could buy my children new school clothes. They took me to breakfast when I was lonely. They made music with me to help me process. They painted canvases to help me decorate my new home. They flew me out to swim in the ocean and ride on zip lines and talk nonstop for three days. They tirelessly responded to frantic text messages as I tried to come to terms with this new version of my life. They cried with me as I missed my children and grieved the time I will lose of their already brief childhoods. They kept including me in old traditions even though I was only half of the couple the traditions were forged with. They held out hope for me when I couldn't feel hope. They kept showing up over and over and over in a million different ways.
They were my lazy river - the steady stream of love that carried me along when I was too tired to keep swimming, that allowed me to lean back and trust that God was carrying me through to a new land flowing with milk and honey. They helped me trust that Egypt was behind me, that this desert wandering did not mean that God had forsaken me, that the promises of God were meant for me still.
All I can do is cry with gratitude when I think of these acts of kindness. This is the model of how to walk someone through a divorce. Just keep showing up. Remind this person that they are worthy. Be the hands and feet of Christ.
I have friends who have endured this same loss and who have not been met with the hospitality I experienced from my friends and family. Friends who have been told that God hates divorce instead of being brought breakfast in bed. Who have had shame heaped further on their heads in the midst of this already painful and disorienting time. I confess that, before I lived it, I used to sit in the judgment seat myself. I used to hear that that mother from church had "started going to bars" and feel sorry for her children, used to believe that she had abandoned her family and gone off the deep end. I used to wonder if my friend had had an affair because I wasn't privy to the pain in her marriage and couldn't think of another reason her life would be unraveling in such a fashion.
Shame on me.
Ironically, it wasn't until I had shame heaped on me that I could see through these lenses. It wasn't until I required grace for myself that I was able to see how stingy I had been with grace for others. I now find that my ministry is to help fellow women shake off this mantle of shame that we wear when we've been divorced. The shame runs deep. It can be pervasive. It can make us feel guilty to find happiness. It can whisper to us again and again that we are lesser, unworthy, forever unclean, undeserving of a seat at the table. But that is not the voice of Truth. The truth is that we are more than our marriages, more than the sum of our failures, more than the failure of our marriages. Divorce cannot define us, just as no crisis can become central to who we are.
Jen Hatmaker says, in her book Of Mess and Moxie, "I cannot think of a greater burden than imagining God's perpetual disappointment." I stopped mid-paragraph when I read that so that I could write this. Because that sentence is the essence of the shame that comes with divorce. It's the gnawing question - Is God disappointed in me? - that feels confirmed when well-meaning friends tell you to think of your children. And it is the question that is quieted and exposed as a lie when friends invite you into their homes and love on you.
Women, let's be better to one another. Let's be the ones who leave the toilet paper and goat cheese.
