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Divorce Journal – Starting Our New Chapter
When you choose to serve others, especially under the titled ‘Coached 2 Love,’ then transparency is a must. Love has multiple faces. Likewise, the relationships that are inspired by the pursuit of love has many outcomes. One of the most dreadful is divorce.
No one gets married with divorce in mind as the desired outcome. At least none who take the vows of marriage sacred. The parties invested in the success of the marriage extend beyond the persons taking the vows or the attendants that stand with them. Usually there is a community of supporters, including family, friends, fraternity and sorority siblings, classmates, neighbors, and co-workers. The outcome of the marriage has an impact on all of those who poured in their feelings, time, and prayers. So, when a marriage ends it has an impact on the entire community.
If a marriage brings a community together to celebrate, then it stands to reason that a divorce should also bring one together to mourn. Unfortunately, the painful process of separation and divorce drives the partners into seclusion or excessive behaviors that make them hard to approach. And no one has the right to judge how someone processes the sting of divorce. And, no one has the right to deny the congregation of believers their opportunities to heal too.
I recorded a number of videos, journal entries, in an effort to both process the decision to divorce my spouse and begin the long journey towards healing. The idea was not my own, but that of a relationship consultant that happened to sit next to me at a networking function. Coincidence or not, she challenged me to combine the goal of leading others in conversation about love while sharing my own challenges to obtain the heart’s desire.
And I was immediately afraid. I was afraid of hurting the woman that I had spent seven years with. I was afraid of hurting her daughters who I call my own, or my sons, which had already seen their father loose at love. Our families, friends, fraternal and sorority siblings, and so many others were of concern. Yet, fear has never had the final say over my actions and this challenge would not be any different.
Recording the journal entries were at times cathartic. It is my hope that in sharing these journal entries others will find meaning or understanding for their own relationships. It is too late for there to be a different outcome in my marriage. Perhaps, someone will find the strength they need to fight for their marriage, so that it will not end in divorce. It may simply provide clarity for the community that stood with us through our courting period and on our wedding day. I trust that in sharing these videos others will benefit through the outpouring of my emotions.
I decided to start with one of the final videos that was recorded. This entry was completed shortly after a judge granted the petition for divorce. The range of emotions that I was experiencing should be evident as I struggled with finding words to describe the experience and what I hoped to come next. Clarity was not the goal, it was only authenticity. Truth is that divorce has never been that clear to me and there is great ambiguity with starting a new chapter.Divorce Journal – Starting Our New Chapter
“Forgiving the Church” by Clarence White
“I don’t want you money or your honey,” is the proclamation that one of my favorite pastors says to members and visitors during the altar call. The point he is making is that men can feel safe with their families, specifically wives and daughters, and any financial contributions made to the church that is under this pastor’s leadership. But, why is such a proclamation even necessary in the church. The answer lies in another popular phrase that I first heard from a pulpit, “hurt people, hurt people.” I would say some of the deepest hurt that people carry, than recycle occurs in the church.
Let’s agree so the sake of avoiding a lengthy discussion that pastors and church leaders are more than capable of hurting people. We should also agree that their positions of authority carry a tremendous responsibility for branding or representing what the church should or should not be. Forget about, as we often do that the ‘church’ (lower case “c”) is really the body or entire congregation, and not the physical structure or the leadership. I mean the body of Jesus Christ is the church. Therefore, hurt in our churches can and will come from pastors and leaders, but will also come from the body as a whole.
How do we forgive an entire church, denomination, religious or doctrinal structure? How do we over look perversion or intentional misuse of power from the leadership? How do we get past the imbedded hierarchy that contradicts almost every principle that Jesus Christ taught? How do we over look denial or rejection or abandonment from a church that we have supported with tithes and offerings of all our talents? We begin the process through modeling the nails of grace and mercy and love that bound our pre-risen Savior to a cross.
Forgiveness is a serious matter. And for some of us, we have accrued large debts against the church, which come from all sorts of disappointment. However, now is the time of perpetual jubilee, where all debts are forgiven and all captives are set-free. After all, Jesus Christ paid our debts on the cross, so how can we now hold anyone else hostage for the debts they owe us? We must not be the lender that becomes slave to the debtor through holding grudges. We have the opportunity to for-give grace, mercy, and love. In the process, we can restore the church to a place where a family’s money and honey is never in question.
We look forward to continuing the conversation with you Thursday, January 16, 2014 at 7pm CST on Coached 2 Love Radio – 347-237-4648.
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