God works in wonderfully mysterious ways!! My older daughter is home from Iraq for a couple of weeks, and she could not have come back at a better time, where I am concerned (kind of a selfish point of view, I know).It lifted my spirits exponentionally. To see her glowing self, to experience her never-ending effervescence, to feed off of her perpetual energy was uplifting to the nth degree. I had to say good-bye to her in September, and put her life in the hands of the U.S. military (a horrible control issue to deal with). And then, in October, my wife left me. I have felt so empty with both of them leaving, and not knowing whether I would see either of them again made me feel so helpless. There are critical times in our lives when we are forced by uncontrolable circumstances to re-evaluate every single aspect of our lives....to ask,"What things REALLY are important to me?" I have not felt this hopeless since December 19, 1989, when I hit my necessary bottom and decided to get treatment for my alcoholism. It is at these low points that we make crucial decisions which will determine much of how our future will be played out. Our attitudes, actions, words, feelings are ALL things which we can control. We can CHOOSE to be miserable, or choose the opposite. We can choose to be vindictive, or not! We have control over whether we will be angry, happy, or whatever, just by the attitudes which we choose to have about events in our lives. Feelings are different than attitudes. Feelings are natural responses to events. Feeling sad is a natural response to losing a loved one. But one can choose to be happy after the grieving by adopting the attitude that things happen for a reason, and that we are better for having had the relationship with the lost one. I choose to be happy for having known my wife, and for having nine awesome years before things began to break down. I choose to grow from the divorce situation. I have chosen to stay in contact with my stbx, because it turns out, I have the opportunity to be a part of her healing. I am gratious to God for the guidance he lent me when I had no answers. I am gratious that He lead my stbx to accept the Divorce Care link i sent her last week. I was nearly brought to my knees with joy when she replied to me that she had signed up for the DC daily spiritual encouragements and Bible passages. She actually admitted to me that I am way ahead of her in my recovery. That was a miracle in itself. She admitted that she has been using alcohol and drugs and a new relationship to avoid the imminent pain, and she commended me for having the strength to face the pain and go THROUGH it rather than around it. I think I may have heard a fanfare of angels singing in the heavens as I read her admissions in her last e-mails. I told her that our recovery would be more thorough and more healing if we could heal together. That there would be less scar tissue if we were able to help each other through this process. Admittedly, we cannot always validate each other, as there have been so many wrongs done in the past. We may not be able to help each other deal with the issues of anger, since we have differing views of how things went down. But what we can offer each other is a mutual understanding that we both left each other empty in certain areas of needs, that we didn't nurture where nurturing was needed. We can, at some point offer forgiveness, and ammends where WE are solely qualified, due to the nature of our situation. We HAVE admitted to each other that EACH of us wounded the other MORE than any other human being had the capacity to, but only because EACH of us allowed oursleves to be that vulnerable to each other. That is the nature of love. It takes great courage to risk loving that intensely. The deepest love can only be attained by two people who are willing to make themselves so vulnerable, that each party has the unique capacity to to be able to deal the most mortal of wounds to the other. Your significant other cannot take your heart and wound it. They can only take what you have offered them, entrusted them with. A heart cannot broken unless it has been given away. That is why I have always believed that the best sex is with someone you love. Loveless sex is almost empty. Loving sex is a GIVING thing, where the greatest degree of satisfaction is achieved because each party is genuinely interested in giving to the other. The result is actually a spiritual bonding in every deifinition of the wprd "spiritual". Loveless sex is a "taking" thing, where one takes what they can get from the experience.
This whole seperation situation has truly become a spiritual experience for me. I have begun to realize that the relationship had caused a distancing of me from God. In trying to hold together a failing reltionship, I had put my marriage before God. I became so depressed that I had stopped praying. I had mis-prioritized my life. The seperation had put me in such a state of denial, a state of emptiness that I had not felt since I needed to quit drinking 17 years earlier. I have gained my relationship with God, and with it, more of my whole self. I am feeling today, a feeling of liberation. Liberation from my denial, my anger, my co-dependency. I am slowly becoming a freer individual. Free to feel feelings, not to deny them. Free to think about my situation, not flee from it. Free to learn from my mistakes, not blame others for my situation. Free to offer my help to others, to share my experiences for the betterment of others who feel the same pain I have been in. My pain has been a blessing. At one time, the pain was so great that I prayed a prayer of thanks..."thank you Lord for the priveledge of pain, that I may more fully understand its healing power, and one day appreciate the lack of it, and please never let me forget its acuteness." I hope to be able to help others one day with my unique understanding of seperation and divorce. Just as I have the blessing of understanding the mind of an alcoholic, and am able to help others through this understanding, I am able to reach out to others suffering the tribulations of rejection, guilt, shame, grief, anger, and perhaps share how these things can lead to wholeness of self if understood and chanelled correctly. Pain can be directed. I am having a great day today. I am not in denial that I will experience more pain as the divorce grows nearer. What I do have now that I didn't before is hope. I also have more tools to work with than I had earlier in my grieving. I have people to talk to, God to lean on, and prayer as a healthy vehicle to deal with whatever roadblocks appear on my journey.