Saturday 5 April 2014

Stumbling....

I recently blogged about Psalm 56. In this blog post I talked about how God is on the side of the abused, about how I’m learning not to act impulsively based on my own sense of injustice, but rather pray, consider and trust God even when it seems like the abuser is getting away with it.

Well I have to admit, the key word in that sentence is “learning” and you know, sometimes we stumble and fall, we do the things we know we shouldn’t and we let things get to us that shouldn’t. 

Today has been one of those days for me.

It’s been a rough week here.   We’re getting into the meat of the divorce process and it gets to me from so many angles. For a start it’s not something I ever imagined I’d do, I thought my marriage would be for life. The divorce process reminds me, not of the loss of my husband (because really that’s no great loss) but of the loss of my dreams, those dreams of having a happy marriage, being one of those old couples you see on greetings cards- walking down a beach hand in hand celebrating their golden wedding anniversary and still besotted with each other. It reminds me not only of what I don’t have, but actually of what I never really had in the first place.

So it’s not a good place to start from anyway, but then there’s the whole nastiness of it. I’m sure getting a divorce from anyone can be pretty acrimonious but divorcing a manipulative and abusive controller takes things to a whole new level. And it’s tough when someone you always thought the best of is deliberately cruel and difficult. More than this, one of the things I regret most about my relationship is how my husband brought out the worst in me, I always had a tendency to be a bit sharp and cutting and my relationship seemed to cultivate that. In the year since I have left I have found that the desire to be that person isn’t there, and in fact it’s no effort for me to be gentler and kinder. Except for when he’s getting to me, and then ‘The Mrs’ starts to rear her ugly head again, I don’t like that, if I am allowing him to affect my behaviour and my thoughts like this I’m allowing him to continue to control me

So today I did something I am not proud of and I didn’t do what I said I was learning to do. I didn’t pray, I didn’t trust God. I saw him behaving in an unjust way and I reacted impulsively. And I’m cross with myself, not just because I played into his hands, but more because I allowed him to influence me, to exert a tiny bit of control over me, I allowed him to get to me and I didn’t trust God to deal with it.

And I wanted to blog about this because it’s all well and good me saying “life is so much better without abuse” and “I got through it so other people can too” but I think it’s important to be honest. I don’t sail through it, I stumble through it, I find my way but I make mistakes. If you or someone you know is in this position you’ll make mistakes too, and I think it’s important to know you’re not alone in that.

But it’s also important to know that tomorrow is another day. In the words of Confucius “Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall” And tomorrow we get back up again, we brush the dust of today off our feet. We repent. Yes, we repent.  And you know what, our wonderful God forgives us and gets back to the business of standing by us in our suffering and making just the unjust.

So tomorrow I will get up, I will not complain about what he has got out of all this, I will not worry about what games he is playing or what he is up to. I will look at my children, I will look at their pictures on the wall and mess under my feet, I will check out the flowers in my garden, I will hang with my friends and family and I will worship my God, knowing that man can take nothing of any real value from me. 

I might just be singing along to Chumbawumba too...



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