There is enough Love...Thank God for my Divorce! (part 6 of 7)

Love has been good to me.

photo by Jade

I was afraid that divorce meant I am not loved and nobody would love me again. What I found out was quite the opposite. Had I not been divorced, I might never have realized how many people care. Strangers and friends went out of the way to show me tender concern. It's still happening. The generosity of humans amazes me. 

More than once my cousin and his wife drove 90 minutes  just to make me dinner and hang out so I could relax enough to fall asleep. 

Derek & Steph

I just got back from dinner and dessert with a friend I've known for 20 years. It's feels good to say I've had a friend that long. In a world where connection is steadily giving way to isolation, I consider myself blessed to have traded love with such admirable people. 

That's what I like about love--you can't get rid of it. You give it away, you get more than you had to begin with. 

One of my favorite gifts of Love is Gratitude. When God offers me so many amazing opportunities to know and be known, why would I ignore these blessings to dwell on the pain of love lost? 

Gratitude opens my eyes wide enough to see I haven't lost Suzanne's love. It is simply speaking to me with an honesty I hadn't imagined before about changes I can make that will allow me to better serve the ones I love, including her. 

If by her honesty she has taught me to love more fiercely, to believe more steadfastly, to serve more humbly and dream more boldly, how can I not be grateful?

Wings

Facing Fear... Thank God for my Divorce! (part 5 of 7)

photo by Rory D. Peters

I arrived in Los Angeles, September 2005, all my possessions in the back of a green minivan. Bags and boxes. Clothes and instruments.  A car full of questions.

"Will this pain make me bitter or better?"

"Will I continue to open my soul and offer whatever strength is in me?"

"Will I dare to dream?"

"Ok, there's my toothbrush, where did I put my confidence?"

Confidence and fear both took the 17-hour drive with me, but they just don't seem to get along, you know? They argued all the way down I-5, and eventually it dawned on me one of them would have to get out of the car. 

I'm a very simple man. Suzanne is complex, and beautiful--she has all kinds of brilliant ideas. Me?  I've had, like, four good ideas in my life!

Music was one of them. I have known since I was 8 years old that I hear music in a unique way. I have known since I was 21 that God speaks to me through music. I have known since I was 27 that I was designed to tell an important story. But for fear of rejection, fear of failure, or worse, fear of success, I hesitated and half-stepped up until that moment in fall of '05.

There's a moment in the Matrix when Neo turns to face Agent Smith in the train station, and Trinity says, incredulity all over her face, 

"What is he doing?"

It's that moment in Return of the King when Aragorn turns into the cave, steel-faced, blade in hand, and says,

"I do not fear death."

It's that moment we face our deepest fears. 

Out of the abundance of the heart comes the human voice. I was hurting so badly, i could barely breathe. Singing was out of the question, but that's what needed to happen. I had to sing or my heart would close up and suffocate me in a cloud of fear. And, again by Grace, I met Tom Macomber who provided the opportunity to sing into a microphone that recorded my first album. 

The album isn't slick and shiny and polished. You can hear my broken heart rasping for breath. It's not my best work, but I tell you what, I may never accomplish a more important recording. It is the sound of a man afraid, and moving forward anyway. It ain't pretty, but it's real. It is the sound of defiance. Like the indomitable Love of the God who would not be stopped by death. 

 photo by Rory D. Peters

It happened while I was still bleeding. 

In the months since, I've been supported to strength, and we're now working on the second album, making something together that chronicles a journey toward wholeness. 

Without that first frightened move there would be no second. I am intensely grateful that in the moment of the question, God gave me an answer of confidence and not of fear. 

Honesty... (Thank God for my divorce! (part 4 of 7)

I drank the wine to numb my pain. 

Too much to feel at once. 

Pain, however, is a form of honesty. My heart wanted me to know that I had hurt myself. That something of great value had been damaged, maybe irreparably. 

As I learned to listen to the wisdom around me, I also learned to listen to the wisdom inside. When I wake up in the middle of the night and miss her, that's me letting me know that her being there is important to me. 

photo by Leslie Foster

I felt the pain of her honesty with me. When someone you love doesn't want to be around you and tells you why, it hurts. 

I was able to share what wasn't working for me. She told me what hurt. I told her what hurt. Honesty clears the air. Now everyone's working with full disclosure. When you're trying to rebuild damaged trust, stick to the truth. 

John 8:32 ..."The truth will set you free."

Absolutely!

So now I have a different value for honesty. Like the honesty of a man who explained to me what pornography does to my soul and to the soul of the woman I love. I had been seeking validation of my masculinity, a legitimate need met by counterfeit methods, a dishonest and ultimately ineffective approach. The counterfeit devalues the original by communicating to a magnificent woman that she is not enough. 

I also learned the tenderness of honesty. This is great news!! Truth not only exposes what's not working; it also heals, and comforts and reveals what is working. To whatever isn't working, there is balance, and honesty reveals that balance. 

Here's some honesty, both strong and tender: She didn't like who I was, but when I was real about it, I didn't either. Today I like myself very much, and that requires neither counterfeit nor denial.  

I see eye to eye with the guy in the mirror.  Honesty is now my pleasure. 

photo by Terry Reid

Conversation with God...Thank God for my Divorce! (part 3 of 7)

photo by Jade

"If you love me, keep my commandments."

Not the same as "If you love me, ponder my suggestions." 

Or, "If you love me, consider the following recommendations."

When my ego died I came to God and asked for something I would not have asked for otherwise. I wasn't looking for suggestions. I wasn't looking for advice. I was looking for instructions, for directions. 

"Tell me what to do. Talk to me like I'm two years old. Tell me to sit down, stand up, be quiet, eat my peas...What do you want me to do?"

I hear God's not saying anything these days.  Earnest hearts asking the question, why isn't God talking to me? I don't know the answer and there are still periods of silence in our conversation, but I submit to you that when I stopped asking God for advice, I began to hear much more frequently and more clearly. 

I don't have time right now to tell you about the vision I had with the horses and the tree and sword, but maybe we'll have a chance to talk about that another time. Let it be sufficient that I needed to know, so I asked. 

It was a simple conversation, rewarded by simple answers.  Straight to the point. Sincere. Honest

photo by Julie Kim

Death... Thank God for my Divorce! (part 2 of 7)

I drank an entire bottle of Pinot Noir in 3 minutes!

When the sidewalk started spinning, I thought, 

"Perfect, that's the way I feel inside."

My world was reeling. The woman I love no longer wanted to be with me. 

One blessing of my divorce is a learning about Humility. Although I knew that something wasn't working, I simply could not find it in me to ask for help. I could delude myself as long as she stayed. I could convince myself things weren't all that bad, but on the day she took me to the judge, denial shattered. 

photo by Suzanne

We weren't making it. We weren't flying. We weren't even close. 

"That's the ground rushing up at you, Len. That's the end of the rope you're hanging on to."

I finally had to admit that I don't know what I'm doing. I began to realize how smart that woman is. I've read a few relationship books and listened to a few gurus,  and I'm amazed at how much of what they tell me is an echo of something she told me years earlier. 

The thing is, I wasn't listening.  The shock of knowing that this woman I adore thinks her life is better without me in it, that shock activated a new response, something I hadn't tried before. I shall call it listening. When I finally sobered up, I began to ask questions and listen. 

First question: "What the hell just happened?"

Answer: "Your wife doesn't like you or trust you."

Second question: "Why not?"

Answer: "Do you really want to hear this?"

I would ask her and then interpret the answer to suit my preconceptions. I thought I already knew so I only half listened, enough to patronize, not really intending to hear. For some reason, I finally heard the problem clearly when a man explained it to me.

At this point, she was too deeply hurt to talk to me, so I started asking around, and by Grace I happened to ask some men with thriving families who were anything but gentle in letting me know how many ways I had ignored the signals. 

Why did I hear when a man said to me all the same things my wife had been saying for years? I don't know but that's the way it worked out. Somewhere there's a man reading this and I hope you hear me, cause there's a good chance your woman has already told you what you need to know and you think she's just crazy. 

I am grateful for my divorce because it taught me to listen, even when I think I know. 

I threw up on that sidewalk after midnight in February of 2005. Not the most beautiful ceremony, but certainly fit for occasion. A place to bury denial. A moment to confront death. 

More painful than heartache, more necessary than knowledge, the death of an ego. 

Photo by Rory Peters

When the student is ready, teachers appear. . .

If It Ain't Broke... Thank God For My Divorce! (part 1 of 7)

I do not believe in divorce. I am a divorced man.  The irony is not wasted on me. 

Thank God for my divorce?

I've heard people use that phrase in so many ways. Often the connotation is "thank God I'm finally rid of that person, 'cause I really can't stand them."

I am not happy to be rid of my wife. I miss her very much. I think our relationship was highly successful and we're just getting to the good parts. Crazy as it may sound, divorce is one of the best things that ever happened to us. Let me tell you why.

photo by Zoe Pamintuan

I knew our marriage wasn't working. It wasn't all the way broken, just cracked, so I would invest only  enough energy to patch it up so we could limp along another mile. We would maintain it enough to survive until the next winter. I knew that we could be more, but how to get there? At that time there were precious few examples in my life of a thriving marriage. 

Thriving has always been far more attractive to me than surviving. If we're simply trying to survive marriage, or for that matter, survive life, I think it's time to make a choice. One option is to let go. The other is to grab hold with both hands and create what you envision. It's like Andy Dufresne says in Shawshank Redemption, "Get busy living, or get busy dying."

My choice was to go along, to remain passive. Just so we're clear, when there are options and one is to live,  the other may cast various shades of passive complacency, but it is nevertheless a choice to die, slowly. Over against vibrant marriage, the default choice is slow death, the hope that our bodies will give out before our marriages do, at which point we can consider that a successful marriage. 

Really?

About one year into marriage I realized it takes more than just love to make things work. I'd actually just read something by M. Scott Peck that left me knowing I needed to understand commitment on a deeper level. 

I didn't know what needed to change. I also didn't want to find out, because that would require work. I was in love, but lazy. What I did know was that change is difficult and painful. I was afraid to face the pain of becoming the man I could be, so I just let things lie. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

When I asked God how to engage my wife in real, unfeigned love, the response was,  "your relationship is based on lies; we'll have to take it apart and put it back together the right way."

I really like something Professor Henry Foster shared with me. In a discussion about business paradigms, he said, "If it ain't broke, break it!"

I think that is what God did for me. He broke my marriage to save me from surviving it, and for this I am grateful. 

photo by Jade Pondella

Inner Man

30 days at the beach. My photos drew comment on Facebook. Some wished they were there. Some feigned jealousy well enough to fool me. One comment jabbed me right in the soul...

"it's beautiful there, but you're all alone"

It stuck. And it stung. 

For $11.75 at the box office I can buy vicarious strength 90 minutes at a time. But the movie ends and I'm left with the reality that I'm weak and tired. Not strong enough, never was. Nobody's hero. 

Some people are energized by social interaction. I have to get away and be still, alone with God. People drain me. I love people--they still drain me. It's one of the great ironies of my life. I'm an introvert assigned to extrovert duties. 

When divorce took me apart, there was deathly silence on the 6th floor. I had thought to always have company in my soul, at least while I live here. Instead I find myself entertaining echoes. Time slowed and sound departed. 

By various means of amusement and distraction, I set about to avoid being alone. Movies, visitors, conversations, self-improvement, study, overwork, business and busy-ness. 

I went home to make peace with loneliness. Loneliness is part death, and there comes a time to face them both. For me, it is time. The conversation to which I was summoned, required that I appear on my own. To stick my feet in the sand and make sure they still fit. My soul hung out to dry from the weariness of living. 

On the beach God reminded me about Sabbath and Marriage. Monument and memorial to Rest and Intimacy. 

On that beach I read Graham Cooke's "Towards developing a powerful inner life." Thank you, Laura and Leslie, for that gift. 

Ephesians 3:16 prays strengthening for my inner man. It's a prayer for internal fortitude. For a stronger shadow. 

 

I've never been weaker. I'm ok with that.