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. 

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. . .