All That I Am

Sometimes things happen that leave us questioning who we are, where we are on our path, and everything we thought we wanted or were meant to do with our lives. I had a moment like that this week. Something happened that left me questioning whether I am meant to help survivors of sexual and domestic violence. It left me wondering whether I am strong enough.

For many years now I've felt that the purpose of surviving the things I've lived through was so I could help others who have suffered. Then something happened and I realized how vulnerable I still am and I wondered who I was to think I had anything worthwhile to offer. Who am I to say healing is possible when I am still so wounded and weak?

I felt like a complete hypocrite, like I had been lying to myself about all that I am, all that I ever was, and all I intended to be. Tuesday morning was a very low point and by noon I was ready to give up the idea of serving survivors, speaking again, or getting my masters' degree and becoming a therapist. I felt broken and I really considered giving it all up - the blog, the work, the dreams. All of it - all that I am.

Then something else happened. At that low ebb, I received affirmation from an unexpected source - a lovely gift from a beautiful friend. She made me a wall hanging that represented a woman breaking free from the prison of her own mind, and she wrote me a letter telling me how much she appreciated my work for survivors and telling me that I am strong.

I didn't feel strong. I felt shattered. But her words were uplifting and healing at a time when I needed it most. I was reminded that I am not alone and that I don't always have to be strong. There will be times when I am vulnerable; the key is to surround myself with people who will not take advantage of that, people who respect me and will honor my boundaries. It is okay for me to have moments of fear,  sadness, pain, or doubt. I can admit those emotions and move forward anyway. I don't have to be perfect.

How freeing it is to realize that and to feel - maybe for the first time - that all that I am is enough. Thanks, my friend; you know who you are. Your gift to me means more than I can express.

She's a Survivor

My forty days of truth during Lent led me to make some important admissions about myself and my life. During that time, I started a new writing project, which I call my Truth Journal. On the first day, I wrote for two hours straight and then went to bed, exhausted, but feeling as if I had emptied my system of some kind of insidious, slow-acting poison that had been making me progressively sicker and more tired. Even though Lent has been over for almost a month now, I am still writing in my Truth Journal - not always daily anymore - but regularly. A part of that truth-telling led me to admit and understand that I had reached a long barren stretch in my healing and that I needed professional help to progress. So I began seeing a therapist, and in our session yesterday I came to understand that I need to work on healing and accepting and loving the person I was when I was sexually assaulted. That girl is still in there somewhere, thirteen years old and frightened, alone, and confused about why she became a target of so much hatred and violence. I couldn't let her speak then; I couldn't deal with her pain. Acknowledging that pain and the self-loathing that came from the assault is something I will have to do before I can get better.

Yesterday, I spent some time reading my Truth Journal and looking for clues about what the girl inside me needs, what she's saying. I didn't expect to find her, but she was right there, on the first page, in the first entry:

"I don’t know what to say. No one will read this so it doesn’t matter. I hate my life.

No, that isn’t true. I hate aspects of my life.

No, that isn’t true. I hate myself.

Because I hate myself, I hate my life. If I liked myself, I would like my life. I am the part of my life that is wrong.

Why do I hate myself?

Because I'm weak."

I went on to dig into these sentences and find their meaning. I think of myself as weak because of the assault, this life-defining thing that happened to me when I was thirteen. And it was more than one event - it was a chain of events; day after day of being touched, molested, harassed, and bullied. I told teachers and my mother, but no one did anything to help me. Then I lived in the shadow of that event for almost twenty years before I was able to even confront it and begin to heal. And because this happened to me - because my freedom and my choices were taken from me and my body was violated I felt permanently damaged. I was still in an egocentric stage of development and I wondered what I had done that caused or created the assault. As the years passed and I learned more about sexual violence and its causes, I began to understand that I hadn't done anything wrong; the people who hurt me were the ones who were wrong. I accepted that and I began to heal. 

Then came the abusive relationship. I wondered again what I had done to attract this kind of attention, to become the person who would always be battered and used. A part of me - that wounded girl who still lives inside me - believed that this was all she would ever be. She believed - believes - that this is what she is worth, and so she hates herself and her life. She is the one who longs to be loved and wanted, to be thought of as good and valuable. She is the one who can't find this validation in herself and so seeks it from others. She is the one who goes into relationships and gives everything, right away, so she will be loved. And she keeps on giving everything and asking nothing, thinking that this is what she is worth. Nothing. She has no rights. No one cares if she hurts. She is not worth intervention or protection. 

I see her, and I know what she needs - love, acceptance, and peace. I'm just having a hard time giving that to her. The truth is that I hate her too - she's reaching out across the years and she's trying to control my life, and she's weak and she's needy and I am tired of dealing with the issues she creates for me. I have been at war with her - with myself - for a long time. I have fought and kicked and struggled with her, but she's a lot stronger than she thinks; she's a survivor. She isn't going to settle for less than she needs, and I need to give it to her. I have to find a way to love and accept this part of myself, and to put her to rest once and for all.

I often say that in healing we need to find the hardest thing - what ever it is we dread most and of which we are most afraid - and do it. So here's to working on my inner child; it is the part of healing I hate most and have refused to do. I hope I can find a way to bring her peace.

This story keeps getting better

This weekend was the long-awaited Clothesline Project that I mentioned in this post I made on March 30. It was an incredibly good day. The weather was perfect, the location was wonderful, and the people who participated were awesome. I was privileged to spend about 15 minutes speaking to folks about how we live in a culture that promotes sexual violence, what the real cost of that culture is in human terms, and what we can do about it. The speech is here, if you care to read it. It drew from several posts on this site and also tells my own personal history with sexual assault and domestic violence. But no printed words can convey what it meant to me to speak to those folks and connect with a woman on the back row who nodded her head in commiseration and understanding when I talked about how I lost my ability to plan and dream after I was assaulted. No printed words can tell you what it meant to me to have two very good friends attend and offer their support. No printed words can express how I felt when a lovely, white-haired woman who was there to hear her grandson's band perform got up out of her chair and came over to shake my hand and congratulate me for speaking out.

The day was good. The event was great. The work was life-affirming. Does it get any better?

Forty Days

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." ~ Matsuo Basho

This was Easter weekend, and that means Lent is over. The long fast is done, today was the feast day and Christians everywhere celebrated a risen Christ. The folks who gave up coffee or chocolate or meat or sex can now enjoy the breaking of the fast and the end of abstinence. Those who took up a holy practice such as prayer or servanthood can lay it back down if they so choose. For the past few years, I have not chosen physical abstinence for Lent, but emotional or spiritual abstinence. This year, I chose to give up lying to myself.

If I had known how hard, how scary, how life-changing it would turn out to be, I never would have had the courage to give up self-deception. But I am fond of saying to myself and my daughters that we should always do what we are most afraid to do. So I spent the last 40 days telling myself the truth about my life, about my relationships, about my needs. About myself. Ever heard that saying, "the truth hurts?"

It does. Forty days of honesty has been like lancing a new, infected wound every day. It has meant seemingly endless self-examination. It has meant admitting that I need help healing from my PTSD. It has meant facing the unhappiness I've been feeling and mining for its source. It has meant releasing someone from my life without knowing that the person would be safe or happy or healed. It has meant acknowledging the long-lasting guilt I carry for the dissolution of my marriage and giving that resentment and hurt to God in a ceremony of smoke-and-fire carried out a thousand miles away. It has meant admitting that my own foolish pride keeps me from telling God my wants and my hurts and accepting that his forgiveness is more important than my own.

Now Lent is over. Easter is here. Christ is risen and the stone is rolled away. I can go back to my old way of coping; I could turn from the cold truth and seek sanctuary in the many warm, comfortable lies in which I have wrapped myself for so long. In a way it seems safe, but wouldn't it be like turning around and picking up the shroud, walking back into the darkness of the tomb? The purpose of Lent isn't only in sacrifice - the purpose is that we rid ourselves of that which keeps us from being in relationship with God. The purpose is that we emerge on the other side of the wilderness as different people; honed, tempered, with our wounds drained and healed, and our souls so intertwined with Christ that we do not know where we end and he begins. I stand on the edge with so much possibility before me and all the past dark behind me, and I know which way my feet should - must - take me.

Life lies ahead, not behind.

A Better Story: Speaking Out

On April 14th, I will be speaking at the Clothesline Project in Bristol, Virginia. This opportunity came at a pivotal time for me. As some of you know, during the season of Lent I have given up lying to myself as a part of my efforts to live a better story. Total self-honesty has presented a real challenge! But in telling myself the truth, I also found myself understanding my own motivations better, and as a part of that, I began to pray about my work with and for survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. When I told myself the truth about how healing it is for me to share my story with others, I began to pray for more opportunities to do that. The next day, I received a message from the RAINN Speakers Bureau, calling for members to assist the Bristol Crisis Center with their Clothesline Project, which is designed to break the silence about and raise awareness of the prevalence of sexual assault and domestic violence in our area.

The event will take place at the farmers' market on State Street in Bristol. There will be music and refreshments and booths with resources for those who attend. Survivors will be encouraged to make tee-shirts that relate in some way to their experiences with violence. We hope to form a living clothesline of survivors and their friends, who will put a human face on the epidemic of domestic and sexual violence. It is easy to listen to statistics like "one in four" or "one in three" and just ignore them; after all, they are only numbers. It is much harder to look into the haunted face of someone who has suffered and continue to ignore that suffering.

I am proud to be a part of this project and to help others heal by showing that it is possible to reclaim your life after violence. It is another part of my story that is worth telling, worth remembering, and worth sharing. Keep watching this space - the story is just beginning.

A Better Story

I bought a Kindle Touch a couple of weeks ago, mainly because I have limited storage space for books in my small house, and I refuse to give away or trade any more of my long-cherished volumes. Okay, so one could successfully argue about how many copies of The Lord of the Rings or Stephen King novels any person needs, but that isn't really the point. The point is I that love books - I love to read - but my busy lifestyle and limited space dictated the need to come up with a better solution or just stop reading entirely. Hence, the Kindle. The first book I purchased for it was Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Last summer I received a copy of Blue Like Jazz for my birthday, and I fell in love with Miller's casual narrative style and his deeply personal relationships with God, the world, and the people who inhabit it. A Million Miles quickly became a book I just couldn't put down. In it, Miller talks about what it is like to be given the opportunity to edit one's own life and how that opened his eyes to the idea that he wasn't living a very good or meaningful story. He began to live more purposefully, using some simple elements that he learned about what makes stories interesting. As I read about Mr. Miller's unfolding experience, I realized that I, too, had a similar revelation a while back, and that it had - for a time - changed my life.

About five years ago, I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and decided that my life had no purpose because I had been waiting for things to happen to me instead of making them happen for me. That realization made it possible for me to lose 130 pounds and go back to college as a way of reclaiming my life from the chaos and distractions that had taken over. I had lost my purpose. I had lost my way. In understanding that I could determine my own experience, I found or possibly forged a path that actually led somewhere. In the years since then I have once again become lost. Reading A Million Miles helped me remember what it felt like to live with purpose, to create a worthwhile story for myself.

This realization and remembrance dove-tailed perfectly with this year's Lenten sacrifice, which is to stop lying to myself. Until I promised to give it up, I never understood just how many lies I tell myself in the course of a day. I tell myself that my personal decisions only affect me. That is a lie; the people I invite into my life and the choices I make regarding relationships affect my daughters almost as much as they affect me. I tell myself that I am somehow responsible for getting others to make beneficial changes for themselves. That is totally untrue; if there is one thing I learned from marriage, it's that you can't change another person, and you are not at fault when they refuse to help themselves. I invalidate my own pain by telling myself it doesn't matter that I hurt - it doesn't matter that I'm lonely, that being a single parent is hellishly hard, that some relationships are causing harm rather than joy. I insist to myself that I can handle the stress of full-time work, full-time school, and full-time parenting on my own with help from no one. I tell myself that relationships can be rebuilt even when trust is gone. I demand this level of perfection from myself because I think I should be that perfect, damn it!

But the truth is, no one is that perfect. No one can gracefully or successfully manage a life like the one I tell myself I should lead. The truth, now that I am forced to admit it to myself, is that I am tired. I am sad. I am lonely. I need a break. I need help. I need support. I need to be able to trust for relationships to work. I need the space to be imperfect and to know that it is okay if I go to bed early sometimes, if I miss a meeting occasionally, if I can't meet someone else's needs or demands, or if I go down to the absolute last minute on a homework deadline. A better life-story would allow for these moments. A better life-story would build in fail-safes and support-structures that would take some of the stress and pressure away. A better life-story would still be filled with conflict but would also provide incentives to overcoming that conflict on a journey toward some meaningful goal, not just more of the same day-in, day-out cycle of struggling to stay level and then collapsing with exhaustion at 10:30 every night. A better life-story would acknowledge the wonder and beauty that God brings to my existence just by the fact of his never-ending presence and love.

Telling myself the truth means I have to admit that I am responsible for the shape my life has taken. It also means remembering that once upon a time, I told an incredible story full of conflict and the overcoming of it; a story of personal success and deep spiritual gain. Once, I lived in a better story. I can do that again, if I choose.

So here's to you, Mr. Miller. Thank you for reminding me that there is something more - that God wants more for me - for all of us - than empty experiences stitched together with threads of meaningless distractions. Thank you helping me realize that I do have the power to write - and to live - a better story.

The next installment will be coming soon.

What Truth?

Lately I've been feeling depressed. I’ve been blaming it on a whole host of different issues, but as each of those things changed or dissolved away with time, the unhappiness has continued - even grown - until it is the most prevalent emotion I'm experiencing. I’ve been walking in circles, trying to determine what is wrong and why, but the unpleasant truth has been sitting on my shoulder the entire time, whispering in my ear. I have ignored it, denied it, eschewed it, and disdained it. I have capitulated, listened to it, acted on it, and then decried my decisions. Finally, I have determined that I can no longer deny its authority or silence its voice. Truth is truth. Truth is; it needs no explanation, no definition. It requires only action, and it must be acted upon even if those actions cause pain.

The realization that I cannot continue this way has me thinking, and I have come to believe that most of us live in a perpetual state of unreality and denial of our own making. This refusal to hear truth’s voice is what keeps women in unhealthy relationships, makes men believe that they are defined solely by the work that they do and what they accomplish there, and makes teens believe that suicide is the only solution for their pain. It is what enables the alcoholic to drink too much and then drive. It allows the meth-user to look in the mirror at her ravaged face and broken teeth and still go out to buy one more hit. It leads governments to trillion dollar deficits. It leads nations to tragedies like Oklahoma City and 9/11. Friends, we cannot continue to deny our truths and expect our world to prosper or our lives to change for the better.

Let me tell you a story about someone who began having some health concerns as she got older. This woman was having dizziness, bleeding, black-outs, and a lot of pain and tenderness in her lower abdomen. She refused to see a doctor. Instead, she told herself this was normal for her age and she ignored the problem for two years. Then she began having headaches and memory lapses, pain in her upper abdomen, and uncontrollable coughing. She started to cough up blood and finally went to see a doctor – after tests and x-rays she was diagnosed with terminal cancer that had spread to her lungs, her pancreas, her liver, and her brain. It had likely begun in her uterus, but by the time it was diagnosed it was so widespread that there was just no way to know. She was diagnosed in early summer. By August of that same year, she was gone. This is an extreme example, but it shows what can happen when we continue to deny the truth.

What truth are you denying? What voice is whispering its reality into your ear? Do you need help giving up smoking? Has your drinking gone too far? Are you in the right relationship for the right reasons? Do you need to look for another job? Do you need to think about retiring? Those headaches might be more than just a need for better glasses. Maybe you need to come to terms with your eating disorder, your weight, your depression. Maybe you need to spend less time thinking about others and more time thinking about and taking care of yourself. Maybe it’s time for you to seek out a community of believers and understand that faith really does grow stronger when you do. Maybe you need to allow yourself the space to ask hard questions and seek answers. Maybe it’s time to admit that you just can’t do this by yourself anymore. Maybe it’s time to accept God’s forgiveness and grace.

Whatever your truth is, it is time to accept it, examine it, and own it. Stop living in denial; see and accept your reality. Let's commit to living in the here and now, not in the someday/somehow. Truth is, and it must be acted upon if you are ever to be your whole, authentic self.

It's a Brand New Year

It's a brand new year. Like 99% of you, I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to do with it. For a variety of reasons, I am not the type of person who makes New Years' Resolutions. Not that I don't have any resolve - quite the contrary. I dislike the term, though - it has become cliche; it is just another way to say "here's something I really need and want to do that I have no intention of following through with." And all of you who know me know how big a pet peeve that is, right? If you say you're going to do something, then do it. If you have no intention of doing it, then don't say you will. The same applies to me. I don't say I will do things that I have no intention of doing.

So I have no resolutions - just commitments, goals, and plans to achieve them. A great way to make sure I actually keep those commitments and reach those goals is to tell people what they are. This makes me accountable and introduces what I like to call the GUILT FACTOR if I don't do what I said I would do. I don't like feeling guilty any more than the rest of you, but I know me and I know that guilt is a very effective motivator.

This year, I am making the commitment to myself not to settle for less than I need in any area of my life. That's pretty broad-based, isn't it? Here are some examples to help explain what I mean by that: Shoes. Time. Tithing. Relationships. Work. Food. Activity. Church. Giving. Healing. Spiritual growth. Daughters. Still confused?

Okay - I admit, that's pretty cryptic. Let's break it down. Shoes - I'm not buying cheap ones. I'm also not spending a lot of money on shoes, for a couple of reasons - one, I just don't care about things like that. Two, I have a limited budget. So the plan is that if I need to buy shoes, I'll buy good quality ones that may cost more at the outset, but which will far outlast cheap shoes. A good example is my waterproof hiking boots - I paid $80 for those boots three years ago. They are used every week. They are in incredibly good condition even though I wear them often and I hike in them once every ten days. They were a great investment and a good example of not settling for less than I need.

As December faded into January, I tossed around a lot of commitments I could make, but not settling for less than I need seems to cover them all. I am committing to a high quality of life for myself and through myself, for others. This means fewer evenings spent stressing over things I can't change and more time spent with my daughters. It means healthful food for my body instead of fast-food or junk food. It means really living into my tithing, participating fully in my church groups and in worship, and not wasting the time I have on things that are superficial. It means admitting to myself that I really do know what I want from romantic relationships and not settling for less - and it may mean letting go if it becomes apparent that my needs cannot be met within the parameters of the relationship. It means knowing and owning the truth instead of living in denial about it; it means admitting to myself that sometimes things don't work out, even though we may desperately want them to. It means proactively working for my own healing and admitting that I may need help in some areas, then finding that help. It means being more physically active and not wasting my time doing things that don't bring me joy, harmony, or happiness.

So here's to the new year - 2012. May it be blessed - and may I be a blessing to others as I live in and through it.

A Brighter Place

My favorite holiday movie is A Christmas Carol. I think I love it so much because it is such a redemptive story. I love watching the hardened old man become a boy again, acknowledging the power of his past hurts and the harm he has done to others, and yet finding forgiveness - and giving it - because of Christmas and what it means for the world. But the biggest, best reason I love the story is because I have my own life-version of it. I've been struggling with how to write about this for a while now, but I think the best way is just to do it. Some stories just need to be shared.

In the dark days of December 2009, I was in a dangerously abusive relationship with a man whose mental and emotional instability increased exponentially as the weeks passed. His rage was constant and his capacity for blaming me for everything wrong with his life seemed limitless. He would go from hating me, calling me names, and throwing things at me to crying on his knees with his head in my lap, begging me not to leave him, threatening to kill himself if I did. These mood swings were swift and violent - sometimes lasting only hours so that the kind, understanding man I saw in the morning was a punch-throwing, knife-brandishing maniac by the time darkness fell.

The abuses grew apace with his rage. His screaming-shouting-sobbing spells increased in frequency and though I cared deeply for him, even at that time, I knew I could not stay in the relationship without serious risk to my own life and sanity. There came a day when he threatened to burn down the house we sometimes shared, to burn down my church, to kill me and himself. I came home that evening to find some of my belongings damaged and destroyed, and partially burned pages from a Bible on top of the kitchen stove. Fear crawled over me like ants skittering over my skin. As I was rushing to leave before he turned up, he came in the door and pulled me down the hall to his bedroom - to "talk", he said. The discussion ended up with me dodging heavy books and anything else he could get his hands on to throw and him shrieking obscenities and threats at me. You would think I would have had the sense to leave him then - and it isn't that I didn't want to. But he ended the discussion by threatening to harm himself and others and leaving me feeling responsible for the damage he might cause. That was December 8th, two days after my grandmother passed away; it was ten more days before I was able to leave the relationship.

All through the summer that we were together, he had chipped away at my belief in God. At the time I thought he was questioning and doubting because of his painful past and the hurts of two failed marriages. He was a pastor - my pastor, actually - and he held a lot of authority as such. He kept introducing questions about God's reality; believe me, a seminary-educated person has a lot of knowledge that can easily be turned from building up faith to tearing it down. By that December, I didn't know if I believed in God anymore. My abuser had used my faith to draw me into the relationship in the first place; it was what had brought us together. I was exploring a call to ministry and he was helping me to discern that; he was also my marriage counselor. I had absolute trust in him in the beginning and because of that, I did not believe that he would lie to me or do anything to hurt me. Later on, when the emotional and verbal abuse began I started to question the things he had told me, but the questioning only brought more rage and repercussions. My faith withered - by that December, it was reduced to ashes. I had no functioning belief in God. I felt more alone at that time of my life than I ever had before.

My grandmother died on December 6th. When I was a child, she was instrumental in bringing me to church and helping me to find my way into belief in God. Though I had long since turned away from the fundamentalist structure to which she had introduced me, I had always honored her place in my journey toward faith. Her death rocked me. I knew she had passed on in complete belief even though her life had been difficult at best, and she had spent her last years nearly blind and with a host of health problems. Her faith never wavered. In the days after her death, I found myself dreaming about her each night and waking with images of her careworn face very clear in my mind. I felt she was trying to tell me something important, but I couldn't discern what it might be. I awoke from them feeling frustrated and frightened, as though I was missing some vital point she was trying to make.

During the early morning hours of December 18th I had one last dream about my grandmother. That week had been particularly awful; my partner and I had met with his District Superintendent about his possible return to ministry in the face of our relationship, which had begun during my divorce, and was inappropriate on many levels due to the fact that he was my pastor, adviser, and counselor. The meeting was a fiasco. I didn't want to go in the first place - I wanted out of the relationship and away from him. He lost his temper and yelled, calling his superior a "pharisee" and comparing himself to a persecuted Christ. Driving home that night, he threatened to murder his DS, blamed me for the position he was in, and said he would commit suicide after he "took care" of the people who had hurt him. By that Friday morning, I was unable to sleep more than a few moments at a time because the tension was so great, even though it had been months since I'd had more than five hours of sleep at a time. During one of those short naps, I dreamed that I was walking into a funeral parlor. It resembled the church I had attended as a child, and at the altar was a casket surrounded by yellow roses. I knew my grandmother was there though I couldn't yet see her; I could feel her presence both physically in the casket and spiritually around me, where I stood. Beneath this was a layer of awareness of the dream state, the fact that I was lying in bed in a darkened room with a man I feared - I felt her presence there, too; a tingling warmth that at once saw, comprehended, and still forgave all the wrong decisions I had made that had led me to this place. In my dream I approached the altar and a red light in the ceiling cast a rosy glow onto her body; her skin looked healthy and warm. On her forehead, filled with red light, were the words God is real. Though she was dead in my dream, I could feel her spirit standing with me, imparting to me everything those three words meant and all their implications for my future. God is real. God is Real.

I woke up with my faith restored, like an ember glowing in the darkness. I knew that I had to end the relationship I was in and I had to seek and offer forgiveness where I had hurt others, and where I had been hurt. That day was one of the worst I have lived through - and anyone who's read this blog knows I've lived through some dark days. But the light was there, sustaining me, giving me the strength to end the relationship even though he hit me, hurt me, threatened to wreck his car and kill both of us, and then later, tried to overdose and kill himself. The light was there, showing me the path out of that hellish place, though he cried and begged and pleaded with me not to leave him, and even though my mouth was bloody and my shoulder was bruised from his fists, it was still hard to go. The light was there, steeling my resolve during the weeks afterward when he put himself into a suicide-watch program and finally sought treatment for his mental disorders and continued to try to talk me into coming back - I stayed strong because the light that had been kindled in me as a child but had burned to ashes, that same light that my grandmother had coaxed and nurtured, the light that had rekindled upon her final visitation to me - the light was there. The light was all the proof I needed that God is real.

This year, as I watched A Christmas Carol and saw Scrooge's ghostly visitors, I was reminded of that spiritual visitation I had received, the redemption and restoration I experienced because of the deep love that my grandmother had for me. Was she really there? Honestly, it doesn't matter. What matters is the truth she worked so hard to make sure I learned - that God is real. Because of her I was reminded of that truth in all the most vital ways, and I received the strength I needed and could not seek for myself. That visitation was my ghost-of-Christmas moment and it led me out of the darkness and into a brighter place. Heaven and the Christmas-time be praised for it.

Reconciliation - Redemption - Peace

December is here with all the stress of the approaching holiday. All through the year I think of December and reassure myself there's plenty of time to deal with all the extra work and concerns it brings. But now it is too late in the season to deny the reality of Christmas. Not that I really want to deny it - I love Christmas. There is a warmth and coziness in this season that no other time of year brings. Part of it is the warm-fuzzy of the holiday, part is the cold weather keeping us indoors and in each other's company, part is the long tradition of deep, nurturing love that my mother put into Christmas when I was a child - we might have lacked money, but there was no shortage of joy during the holidays. I have continued that tradition as an adult. I don't rely on the gifts for our Christmas happiness (though I do give and receive some presents) but on the meaning of Christmas itself with its bright flame of pure love, modeled in God becoming flesh in Jesus' birth and beginning to walk the path that would bring humanity to the realization that God is not far away, but is imminent: Emmanuel. God-with-us.

But even with all those wonderful, joy-inducing things, I guess I should confess that I have had a deep dread of the holiday since my divorce. There are so many memories wrapped up in Christmas as a family: putting up the tree with my ex-husband, buying a keepsake ornament each year (these are the ornaments it hurts me to hang up now), the tradition of listening to Christmas music as we decorated, the obligatory silly photo of the dog with a Santa hat on...these are memories that make me smile with tears in my eyes. But those memories aren't an accurate portrayal. The reality is that my ex thoroughly disliked Christmas. His job required him to decorate a huge space and put up half a dozen trees; by the time we got around to decorating the house he was exhausted and the very sight of an ornament made him angry. His participation in our family preparations was forced and it put both of us on edge. And of course there is the fact that he's an unbeliever and so Christmas felt like a slap in the face to him. We would find ourselves at odds over the secularism of the holiday and its religious connotations, and after a while those disagreements bled over into our everyday lives until the tension became unbearable. No one saw that, though. They only saw the decorated house, the happy kids, the smiling parents, the Christmas cookies and the gifts and the glowing lights.

I have been thinking about that a lot this year. On the surface everything about our lives together seemed ideal, but underneath - where currents run deepest and strongest - everything was wrong. I have spent a lot of time berating myself for ending my 18-year marriage and causing so much pain and readjustment for my former husband, myself, and for our two daughters. But for the past six months I have also begun to acknowledge what I could not see before - that the foundation of our union was weak, that we made a lifetime commitment when we were both too young to really understand the concept, that deep friendship is not enough to build your conjugal relationship on, and that there are some things I just can't fix.

Oh...I wonder if anyone knows how much it cost me to write those last six words? Or ultimately, how freeing it is to finally acknowledge? It is hard to say "I couldn't fix my marriage" because it means I'm not perfect. It means that if I ever enter into another commitment of that type, I may not be able to fix or make it work either. But it is also freeing to admit because then the responsibility for my marriage's demise is an equal burden between me and my former husband, and not one that I need to carry on my own. Or maybe...maybe my thinking there is wrong. What if there is no burden to share? What if I look at it in a whole new way? Then...

Our ending is just something that happened as the natural extension of two very different people finally maturing enough to express what they really wanted from a relationship, and discovering together that they couldn't find it with each other after all. Having the strength to admit that - to cut our losses and move on - was an act of courage rather than cowardice. Our relationship now is based on mutual kindness and forgiveness, and it is a thing of grace, peace, and redemptive power that our marriage should have achieved but could not.

I think this changes everything. It relieves the guilt and regret I've been carrying for so long. It acknowledges the personal power of choice that we both exercised - me when I left, and him when he decided not to come back into the relationship when we re-examined that possibility. It honors the inner authority and truth that I ignored for so long - that truth which told me there had to be more to love than just tolerance and silence and disengagement. And it quiets the external referencing that has kept me wondering whether I did "the right thing".

It is a grace-filled answer to many questions, and it brings with it reconciliation, redemption, and peace.