Life is Weird. But… May 9, 2011

Image by juggernautco via Flickr

Hello all.  You know what?  Life is just weird.  I don’t really have a direction for this entry, by the way.  I’m just sort of talking out of my head for a bit.  There’s so much on my mind, and as usual, I’m hoping I can find a way to articulate it all, effectively. 

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One thing I wanted to write about a few days ago was on the topic of marriage, or more appropriately, divorce.  This was on my mind because on May 3rd, I secured my “man-made piece of paper” (divorce decree) that superceded the previous “man-made piece of paper” (marriage license) and now I’m legally single again.  I don’t know what I wanted to say about that, exactly.  I’ve retyped this sentence almost 10 times and I still can’t figure out what to say.  I’m divorced.  AGAIN.  I was taught in my church that because I didn’t divorce for the reason of adultery, that I can never remarry again without being guilty of adultery myself for as long as I am in that marriage.  I really struggle with that, and not just because it would mean spending the next 50 years alone.  I struggle with whether anything I’ve been taught is really what God says or whether it’s largely a human being’s faulty, flawed, skewed, biased, HUMAN interpretation of God’s will.  I struggle with whether it’s possible for any human to really know what God’s will is, and how you can know if what you think God’s will is, is right! 

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It’s not like it matters.  I don’t have any prospects at the moment.  I don’t have even have any prospects of having prospects!  I am singularly single and thoroughly unattached.  My most recent former husband and I are still good friends and we’re still close enough that we could go out on a date every so often if we wanted to.  (I know that makes absolutely no sense to anyone reading this, but it’s way too complicated to explain.  I’m not even sure I understand it.  We didn’t divorce because we didn’t love each other, and that’s all I can really say about that.) 

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Anyway.  There’s more on my mind than just my newly minted single status.  My grandmother has been very ill for the last week, and is scheduled for surgery the day after tomorrow.  She may not make it through the surgery.  I wanted to send her a card, to tell her that despite her fears, I believe that she CAN survive the surgery and regain her health, that she has been through a lot of stuff in her life and survived, because she’s a strong woman.  I know this, because *I*am a strong woman, and a strong woman can’t come from a line of wimps!  But I didn’t get the card to my parents, who are on their way to be with her during her surgery.  I told my mom on the phone tonight what I wanted to say to my Grandma, and hopefully it will sink in a little. 

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You know, I was so scared that Grandma being sick and having surgery and possibly not making it would derail our Disney trip plans.  We’re supposed to leave May 27th, and I was very afraid we’d have to reschedule and I felt soooo guilty about that.  But I know that it’s normal to not want something that has been so long anticipated to be postponed, and that it doesn’t mean I don’t love my grandma, or that I don’t care if my dad loses his mother.  Of course not.  But now I’m choosing to believe that Grandma will make it through the surgery and be recovering nicely when we get on a plane to Florida.

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On top of all that, I’m also just kinda marveling a little, both at myself and at how strange life is becoming.  I have mentioned previously (I know, a lot) that I’ve been exercising.  Today I finally tried the last class, the one that intimidated me the most, Hip Hop Hustle.  It was fun, and not even as hard as I thought it was going to be.  (I still can’t really do those steps and moves right, but I’m trying!)  The crazy part is that today…  I went to both TurboKick AND Hip Hop Hustle!  I just can’t believe it’s me doing all this!  Me, the person who used to say it was crazy and nuts and insane to work out more than once in a day, or indeed, to get up at 5:00a.m. for the sole purpose of exercising!  The person whose favorite thing to do in the whole wiiiiide world is to lie in a horizontal position and read a book!  The person who has always hated physical exertion “like, worse than liver!”  Yet, here I am.  See, the thing is, I talked about motion, about action, and movement and so on, but I don’t think I really saw this one coming, this “me as a regular exerciser” thing.  I don’t think I reeeeally thought I’d ever become an active person.  But I’m enjoying it. A lot! 

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That’s what I mean when I say life is weird.  Not just once, but two times now, I’ve divorced someone I loved, who still pretty much loved me, but who it just wasn’t a good idea to stay married to anymore.  I’ve always hated exercise, thought of myself as a complete NON-ATHLETE, and I’m working out 5X a week and planning to take part in a 5k with mud and obstacle course!  What. The. Heck!?  And more than that, I’m starting to realize that although there were things I loved about teaching, I don’t want to be a classroom teacher in a K12 public school!  There is an opening right here in my local school and although part of me still feels the urge to apply, I am acutely aware now, that I don’t love trying to make teenagers behave.  I don’t love having to teach to a test.  I don’t love being held responsible for the learning (or failure at learning) of kids who may or may not be having their most basic life needs met outside of school, like a place to live, food to eat, and love and nurture!  But I loved trying to nurture the kids.  I loved trying to show them how much I cared and wanted them to learn, and wanted the best for them.  I just wasn’t good at keeping them under control so as to facilitate that learning process!

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I actually have a possible career change coming, and I’m not going to go into detail about it until I know for sure, but I’m really excited and hopeful about it, because it seems like a very good fit for me with regard to who I am as an educator.  I’m praying it is where God wants me to be and as such, that it works out positively.  Stay tuned for more on that.

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All in all, I am in a very non-angst-y place at the moment.  I’m happy.  I’m active.  I’m full of faith that my Grandma is going to be fine, and that we will get to take our long-awaited trip, and that I am about to find where I belong in the career field I trained for, which is sooooo happiness-inducing!  In short… dudes, Life. Is. Sweet!

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Until next time,

D.

Related articles

• Are Marriages No Longer “Forever” But Instead, “For The Next Few Years?” (hellobeautiful.com)
• Divorce without having Reasons (jaysdad.com)

Tested By Fire (Parts 2 & 3 of ?) February 19, 2011

Hello all.  Today is another anniversary for me.  I didn’t realize the date until I was at work today.  In the middle of just another Saturday at work.  I was actually hiding in the bathroom checking Facebook on my phone, and I noticed the date, February 19th.  Two years ago today, my world broke.  Not to be dramatic or anything, but you know, it kinda was.  A week and two days after a tornado hit my hometown and killed 8 people on the same day that I found out I wasn’t going to have a job the next year. 

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It had been a normal-ish day.  Read: a difficult day.  I was teaching, as usual.  It was almost the end of 6th hour.  Speech class.  We weren’t doing anything.  I think they were supposed to have been finishing an outline or something.  The principal’s secretary beeped in on the intercom and told me I had a phone call.  I went to the office to get the phone.  It was my husband, and his first words were, “You need to come home. The house is on fire.” 

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My heart fell through the floor, and I said the dumbest thing ever:  “Are you kidding?!”  (Like he would joke about that, right?)  He assured me he was not kidding:  “No, I’m not kidding!  The house is on fire!” And I said “Well how bad is it?”  He replied, “I don’t know, but the firemen are here and there’s a lot of smoke.”  I told him I was on my way.  The secretary was sitting behind the counter looking at me, and I just looked down at her and told her my house was on fire and she said “Go. We’ll find someone to take your classes.”  I practically ran down the hall to my room, grabbed my purse out from under my desk.  I was hyperventilating, shaking, almost crying.  Things were falling out of my purse and I just grabbed them and stuffed them in the bag.  One of the kids asked me what was wrong and I said “Don’t worry about it.”  In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t been so snippy, but at the time, I think I didn’t want them to know or something.  I’m not sure.  I tore out of the room without a backward glance, ran out the side door, threw myself into the car and flew out of the parking lot throwing gravel. 

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My school was about 10 miles from my home, and my normal 15 minute trip probably took 5.  I could see from down the street, there were several fire trucks surrounding my house, and I knew it was bad.  I pulled up and parked on the street in front of the house.  The firemen were everywhere, but it looked like they were finished.  The front door was standing open.  I think they were dragging a big hose out and rolling it up.  I walked up, and they said I could go in.  RMB and I went in together.

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This house has been mine since it was built.  It was built especially for me.  Me and the kids and their father.   I was there when it was nothing but a concrete slab.  During construction, I crawled on my hands and knees and scraped plaster and wall texture off the floors, inch by inch, with a razor blade in the dead of winter.  I picked out the colors of the tile and the cabinets and the brick and the shingles on the roof.  The kids’ dad and I.  We were blessed to get this house because he has a CDIB card.  A certificate of degree of Indian blood.  Chickasaw, to be precise.  We entered the program at just the right time and we were able to get a new house, built on the lot we picked, with the colors we picked. 

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When I walked in the front door of the home I’d lived in for 13 years, first with The Dufus, and then alone with my kids, and then with RMB, all I could see was black.  The walls, the floor, every surface, every object in the house was blackened.  One living room wall and the door leading to the hall were charred.  The firemen had torn into that wall and chunks of drywall were scattered in the floor around it.  The living room windows were blown out from the heat.  The living room ceiling fan was drooping, melted, toward the floor.  The back door was open, and the remains of the couch had been thrown outside.  Most of the things in the living room had been heat damaged.  The entertainment center, the computer desk.  My laptop that Mom got me when I started back to college.  The digital camera she got me for my graduation.  The TV, VCR, the kids’ collection of Disney movies.  The flower arrangement that was the casket spray on my first baby’s casket. The coats in the entry closet.  All blackened and melted.  The smell was overwhelming, nauseating.

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I called my mom and dad to tell them what had happened.  I might have done that when I first got out of the car.  I don’t remember.  They were at our church building, sorting donated clothes and items that we had been collecting for the tornado victims.  School was almost out, and Mom went to go get the kids and bring them.  RMB and I had gone back outside, because we couldn’t take the sight, the smell, and the lingering heat.  Mom pulled up behind my car and she and the kids jumped out.  They walked across the yard, Mom hanging on to them, holding their hands, even though hers were shaking uncontrollably.  I walked in with them.  At first they just looked around in shock, then finally they started to cry.  Even RMB.  It was the third house fire he’d been through, and he said he didn’t think he could take it.  I did my best to comfort all of them, tried to tell them it was ok, that it was ok to be sad, and we’d get through it.  They couldn’t stand to stay in there very long, and we had to leave anyway.  The house was unliveable and there was no power and no water.  We knew Mom and Dad would let us stay with them, even though the kids’ dad and his wife and daughter were already staying there, since their house got ruined in the tornado. 

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PART 3

We went to the church building to look through the donated tornado clothes and find something for the kids to wear to sleep in and to school the next day.  Mom and Dad’s house was now our house, and would be, indefinitely.  We were pretty sure the Chickasaw housing people would rebuild the house, but we had absolutely no clue how long it would take.  At the start, I was hoping for two or three months.  I was being optimistic. 

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We went to Mom and Dad’s and tried to get settled in- just one big happy family.  My parents, me, my husband of only 21 months, my kids, their father, his wife, their toddler daughter.  Like a reality tv show from hell.  I only took a few days off from school.  Being me, I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone too much.  In the next few days and weeks, the rest of the family set about trying to remove everything from the house so they could gut it and rebuild.  I couldn’t be there.  I was stuck at school, trying to put on a normal face, trying to teach English and Speech to kids who couldn’t have cared less, all the while knowing it didn’t matter, because I wouldn’t be there the next year.  Meanwhile, everybody else was going through MY house, throwing out MY things, MY memories, without me.  I know, it was my choice to stay at school, but I didn’t feel at the time that I had a choice. 

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Over time, we emptied the house and the reconstruction began.  Living at Mom and Dad’s was challenging at best.  After a few weeks, the kids’ dad and his family got some relief money from FEMA and moved to another town where they could find a house.  Things got easier then, but by that time, RMB had left.  He and my dad had a difference of opinion one night, but that was just a convenient excuse.  He went to stay with his mother, and remains there to this day, two years later.  We’re still legally married.  I plan to remedy that with this year’s tax return. 

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So here we are.  Two years later.  The house was rebuilt, better and more beautiful than before.  Again, we got to pick the colors.  Wall paint, trim, carpet, tiles, kitchen laminate, everything.  Up until it was almost finished, RMB was going to join us when we moved back in, but at the last minute he decided he wasn’t coming back. 

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But we’ve survived.  Exactly 6 months after the tornado, we moved back into the house that was cleansed by fire.  Our lives were a literal mess before the fire.  A literal disaster.  The house was continually a filthy wreck.  My new marriage was a complete disappointment.  The fire took care of all that.  A clean, fresh start.  The kids and I are here now, alone again, and we’re happy.  We’ve been tested and come out on the other side, stronger and better than ever before.  Tested.  And passed.

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Until next time,

D.

Things I Know After Yesterday’s Post… May 7, 2010

Hello all!  Wow- yesterday’s post was my second-highest read ever.  Certainly it inspired some great comments and conversations in different forums.  I want to thank those who read and commented.  Please know that I do have peace with the situation.  I know I am forgiven for anything I’ve done that was wrong, and I know that being legally divorced is where I need to be at this point, for the reasons of abandonment and irreconcilable differences.  (Aside from the emotional aspect, the hardest part is finding the $$!) I know God knows my mind and heart because He made me.  Because of this, I know that if He wants me to find love again and be married again someday, He will propel the right person into my path. 

I know that the most important things in my life are my family and friends, and trying to influence them to join me in loving God and believing in Jesus, and living so that we’ll someday see Heaven.  That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.

Thanks again for reading, for commenting, and for being seekers on the journey with me!  And maybe after this post, I can get on with the business of trying to be funny!

Love and blessings to all! 

Until next time,

D.

Searching for Answers to the Divorce and Remarriage Question May 6, 2010

Hello all.  I’m trying to figure out a way to explain about what I said I was confused about, yesterday.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to explain it right.  People who aren’t familiar with the teachings of the Church of Christ won’t understand.  This post will not be funny.  This post will be painfully honest, and this post will contain a confession of what may or may not be sin.  I’m not 100% sure anymore.

I’m confused about why I have to have a man-made piece of paper that says ‘here, you’re divorced’ and supercedes the previous man-made piece of paper that says ‘here, you’re married.’  Does it really make a difference what a piece of paper says when I don’t know if the marriage was ever sanctioned by God to start with?  Does it really matter if I go out to dinner with someone, without having that man-made piece of paper in my pocket, when the other person whose signature is on those papers left and has been gone over a year and the two of us are already physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially separate and distinct?    What if we wrote our own piece of paper?  What if we went out by a lake or a river and sat down and held hands and prayed to God and told Him our hearts and our situation and that we knew there was no way we could be a married couple in the sense He intended, and we asked Him to recognize that we were divorcing ourselves from each other, but since He joins together, only He can separate, and asked Him to separate us?

I know what I was brought up to believe, but now it seems so weird.  It doesn’t make sense.  Like if I went out to dinner with someone tonight, that would be wrong, but if I went out to dinner in 2 weeks and I had that piece of paper that some judge gave me, that he was only qualified to give me because someone gave him a piece of paper, then that would be ok … where does it all end?  What does it mean? 

Neither of us had sex with anybody else.  That is not the reason we’re divorcing.  In some people’s minds, (the church that I was raised in) that means if we go ahead and divorce for other reasons, neither of us is eligible to remarry, ever, and if we did, we would be committing adultery.  Ok, so right now I can’t really imagine finding someone and developing that strong of feelings for them.  But I’ve always been a person who wants to love and be loved.  I watch romantic movies and ache with jealousy.  (Yes, I know they’re not real, they’re fictional, they’re scripted, whatever- the concept of romance and love does exist in reality!)

So if I go along with the letter and the spirit of what I’ve been taught, then I free myself from one bad situation only to lock myself into another bad situation. (I’m no longer married, but because I didn’t divorce for the reason of adultery, I’m not able to remarry.)   If I go along with a loose interpretation of what I’ve been taught, (I confess and ask forgiveness for the fact that I was going to go on a dinner date with someone a while back, and there’s no piece of paper in a file drawer in the courthouse, and that he had certain things in his life that took the place of intimacy and provided emotional fulfillment in my stead, and that we’ve both kissed someone else) then we’re both guilty and neither of us is free to remarry anyway. 

So how do I know?  How do I know what to do or believe or hope for?  Is it already a lost cause?  Do I just forget about marriage and romance and love and divorce myself from the part of me that longs for it, and live the rest of my life like a nun?  Or do I just do what I need and want to do, which is get a divorce for the reasons I do have, and if I meet someone in the future and want to marry them, I do it, and if that’s a sin then I just go to Hell?

I don’t know.  Do you?

Until next time,

D.