The Bottom

Outside the door of my dorm room apartment there is a drinking fountain. It's not just any drinking fountain. For reasons apparent by clicking here, Sassy McLadyBoots and I affectionately refer to this drinking fountain as The Magic Fountain. Unlike any other fountain on campus it endlessly brings forth the most soul quenchingly refreshing water--crisp and cool in the palpable plumeria breeze. Every morning when I wake up, and usually before I go to sleep I fill up my water bottle from The Magic Fountain. This is to say, I slip out from between my sheets in my vintage sleepware, put on my lightweight robe--the one with the big flowers, and open the screen door (because the front door has literally never been closed in my almost year long stint here) and step out onto warm cement and into sunshine. Sometimes there is a rainbow. Usually there are tropical birds. Always the temperature outside is exactly the same as the temperature inside, and inevitably I have this thought:

I freaking love living in Hawaii.

Every. Single. Day.

I have been aware of this state of being for quite some time, but today I am especially cognizant. I am leaving Hawaii tomorrow. The reason I am leaving Hawaii is a really happy reason. It's a cause I created myself and have spent months preparing for, even years dreaming of. With the help of one of my closest and most amazing friends I am launching a vintage inspired, modest, women's clothing line--dresses that can be worn in just one layer. I will be on a sumer road trip, (which may make me less available for a bit--don't worry. I'm coming back!) driving through California and Oregon, visiting people I love more than my own kneecaps, stopping to thrift in every town I come to, and blogging about it. Apart from the addition of a VW Van, this adventure could not be more packed full of my happy making-est things in life, but here's the thing.

I don't want to go.

I'm going, and I am certain that I will thoroughly enjoy the experience, that it will be even more fun and adventure than I can currently wrap my brain around, but in this exact moment and in the moments I spent this evening breathing in a little ocean air… I don't want to go.

This is a really exciting development.

I am 29 year old. I spent a five year stint living in one place and a seven year stint living in another, and still I have moved 30 times. Throughout the entirety of my adult life I have decided after about six months of living somewhere that the unhappiness/uneasiness/discontent/frustration I feel is because I need to try living somewhere else. Now, I know I live in Hawaii now and everything, but hear me out. I don't think this wave of contentment I have been basking is entirely about the sun and the breeze… and the plumeria… and the… WAIT! Those aren't the only things. I have a different theory about why it is that for the first time in my life I am content.

I've struggled with depression my entire life--long before I knew what to call it or that everyone didn't feel the way I almost always did. I pull myself together well. I get things done. I find things to be happy about. I find people to love and project to be involved in, but up until recently I lived with a persistent nagging at my heart. It was like a four year old that you are trying really hard to ignore because you are on the phone getting important information from a fast talking banker. If you can plug your ear hard enough and close your eyes tight enough (or move from place to place enough) maybe it will go away.

Then, one day about 15 months into my marriage that nagging four year old had an absolute melt down. No--he morphed into a vengeful, demonic, fire breathing dragon twelve times the size of my house. He scared the crap out of me. I hung up the phone with the banker, sat down and stared for a good long while. Then, I started taking an anti-depressant, seeing a counselor, and divorced my husband, in that order.

I think it was that terrifying, fire breathing moment that did it. I mean--ok. I know. I can't lie, the melona soft serve at Country Rides and Grinds is off the hook and the papaya that grows on the tree in my courtyard is ridiculous. The art I get to do daily is deeply healing and sometimes I can feel the sun frying anything you might call, "the blues" out of me. But I tell you this now, I have had delicious food, fresh fruit, art projects and sunshine all before, and I have never felt like this. There is something about bottoming out that changes a girl. The sadness I lived with before was legitimate and warranted, to whatever degree, but the fire breathing dragon moment is what changed my life. I had to decide--do I stay this way? Or do I make a new path? How much do I want to change? How much am I willing to sacrifice to get to a healthier place?

I let go of my pride and got on some medication. I released preconceived notions and judgements about who gets divorced and why. I sold every possession I owned for peanuts from my adorable two bedroom apartment with the hardwood floors, checkered kitchen tiles, and big windows. I set aside all my fears about what it would be like to start completely over… again. (I cannot adequately explain to you the depth of my emptiness at the end of my marriage. I gave the endeavor the marrow in my bones and walked away with nothing but a broken heart.) And slowly I began to risk involvement with your average, everyday, flawed human beings again.

I've seen the bottom now. I know the ugliness of it. I know the lonely and the empty and the hollow that live there, and I'm not afraid of them anymore. I let them and the fear of them go too, and because I did, my melona soft serve tastes a little more melony. I spend more time in that gorgeous sunshine. I second guess myself less and can make new friends with fun stories to tell and moments to share. I see a little more clearly the goodness and the beauty that exists in every day life around me, and when sad or stressful things happen, they hardly register on the Richter Scale. I just pause my conversation and tell the panic rising in my throat, "I have seen the bottom. I know the fire breathing dragon, and you, sir, are not it." Then I go back to my plumeria and papaya, my deadlines and projects,  my homework and hard work--invested, present and appreciative. I have seen the bottom. Jesus is down there. I don't have to worry about being alone anymore.

my side of the bed

Photo attribution here.

I don't know if this is something all divorcees do, but I like to mark milestones. I still remember congratulating myself for making it ten minutes in to my first day back at work the morning after the bomb dropped. I counted days up until I hit six months and I counted months 'till I hit a year. Now, I count waves crashing, beautiful boys smiling and hours remaining 'till my homework is due. Today, however, I would like to pause to note and commemorate, as of early this month this blog is officially one year old.

Congratulations, blog. You made it through your first year!

In order to celebrate this occasion I want to share with you a post I wrote just before this blog was created on another, more private blog I'd been keeping. It describes life in the early stages of recovery. I want to share it because I was remembering today how desperately I wanted to know, in that time, how long my life was going to look so much like the seventh circle of hell. Often times when I am feeling sad I convince myself that I am the only one who could ever possibly understand or experience the pain I feel. This is just not true. While I haven't felt everything you've felt, I do want to offer you this glimpse (and believe me, it is a very small, watered down glimpse) into what life was like in January of 2013.

This is my life now.

I wake up at 6:30, fall back asleep till 7. Freak out that I'm late and jump in the shower. Eat a PB&J on my way to the car (have I mentioned I need to go grocery shopping?) before slapping some makeup on my face as I drive. I then spend 4-6 hours with a five year old boy. His mom is a stay at home mom, and does indeed stay at home while I am there, at times. I don't blame her for needing the break. He just got kicked out of his third preschool. 

After job one I head into town (a 45 minute commute) where I spend the rest of daylight nannying two considerably calmer children. After job two I come home to my apartment where it is cold and dark and there I meet some mail addressed to someone I don't know, mystifying stale smells, and my disgruntled Siamese. Everything in the house is exactly where I left it. Not one thing has changed or been touched by an outside force of any kind. All that's there is me. 

I find anything mindless to do for the next few hours, then I go to bed.

I sleep in the bed The Mr. and I bought with some of our wedding cash. That bed, my newlywed and recently divorced bed, has many, many memories. The relationship in all its extremity was experienced here. Giddy. Love drunk. Elated. Orgasmic. Exhausted. Optimistic. Confused. Concerned. Cuddling. Compromising. Talking. Fighting. Fearing. Feeling. Praying. Pleading. And oh good God, so much crying. This is where I was sitting when we decided to separate, and this is where I crawled moments after he walked out the door.

I still used to sleep on my side, in the beginning. I found that I would turn over in my half sleep and find myself alone. That's no way to start or end a night. Now I sleep in the middle. I surround myself with pillows and my cat hops up to join me, whether I like it or not. I bought new sheets and a new duvet cover. I painted the bedside tables, right over the back sides where we'd painted our initials in hearts at The Mr.'s suggestion. I put a new skin on the bones of my life, but it doesn't change that the flesh is all still missing. Empty. Quiet. Calm. Free of the chaos that was killing me, but... dead. Just a little bit dead. Painted and spruced, clean and calm and... unrelentingly heartbreakingly wrong.



And now,  a brief synopsis of what my life looked like today.



This morning I woke up around 8:00 to the sound of tropical birds and lawn mowers. Oh, Hawaii-- how you can have such a laid back attitude about pretty much everything in life, but such an affinity for ear drum blastingly loud lawn care equipment in the wee hours of the A.M. is beyond me. In ceramics I turned in my latest two creations. The teacher was clearly impressed, because I am a pottery ninja. Sheri Dew came to speak at devotional today. Sweet of her to drop by. Book of Mormon class was thought provoking, as usual. Our teacher loves a good question, and you know how much I love to ask a good question. 

I ordered some new t shirts from my favorite site because they are having a sale and then hit the grocery store with Sassy McLadyBoots. The lime Tostidos were on sale, making them almost the price they would be when I'm not shopping on a remote island. Clearly, God loves me. A woman from my mission is in town, so we met up for the night show, which means I spent a couple hours watching my adorable roommate perform the hula and countless dudes from my classes whoop and holler and slap themselves and play with fire... shirtless. 

After the show I stopped over at Hukilau beach and did a little yoga, stretched, prayed and took some deep breaths while the wind fussed with my hair and did her best to tip me out of tree pose. Then, back to my twin bed in a shared dorm room which, I realized last Sunday, is starting to feel impressively and unexpectedly like home. The Padre asked me today if I'm coming home for summer break. For the first time in my life I could truthfully say, "I don't know, I think I might rather stay."

Perhaps you're tired of me saying this, but I need you to know--things do get better. The painful things diminish and new things steal your focus. Mundane things. Scary things. Exciting things. Things so unexpected and hilarious you almost forget you ever had a no-good-low-down-rotten-or-at-least-not-ideal spouse in the first place.  Life may not be extraordinary every day, but you have within you the power to move in a positive direction. You have within you a way to make it through.

I still get sad sometimes, and that's okay.

Photo attribution here.

I spent a lot of my childhood riding in the back seat of a car, watching the road--quietly contemplative. Speeding along the freeway I would watch as the pavement holding us would silently split into two lanes--one with a brand new destination. We'd cruise along, parallel with the new road. Two that had been made from one. I'd watch as the new road rose or sank, then took its own turn and silently peeled away from us and disappeared from my view. I'd wonder then for a moment where that road went and how it could disappear, so smooth and silent. When I think about The Mr. now, I think about the roads. One road split into two, silently going their own ways.

When I first got back into classes here in Hawaii I was completely immersed in the healing that comes with creativity. Particularly there was a drawing class that took all the time, attention and focus I could afford it. I loved it. My professor was excellent in pointing out where I was going wrong and teaching me how to fix it. I marveled at the return I got on my artistic investment over those few short months.

In this class an interesting thing would sometimes happen. I'd be so lost in trying to capture the core shadow on the sphere I was drawing that I probably morphed into a full on mouth breather and didn't even know it. The kind of concentration it takes when you are first learning this stuff is nigh unto Jedi Master in training concentration. I'd be full on in the throws of mastering the force of my charcoal pencil when all of a sudden, a still frame from my former life would flash through the feature film of Frowfrow Goes Back to College and Loves It. It was such an unexpected juxtaposition that the first time it happened it almost knocked me over--it was so dizzyingly disorienting.

When I take stock of my life, the things I want to be and the things I've accomplished, the phrase, "divorced" inevitably filters through. Every time it does my brain does a double take. No, I'm not divorced. I'm not the type. I wouldn't let that happen to me. I'm not stupid enough to marry someone I would have to divorce. I wouldn't break that promise to God.

And yet, I did.

I am.

I can't take it back or unmake the decisions that brought me to and through that. I can't know better in time to not make those mistakes. I know God doesn't hold it against me, but I still can't help feeling like I can't ever get my slate completely clean.

I'm divorced.

In my memory bank there's ring, a proposal, a wedding day and a wedding night. There's a family ward I attended and an apartment I decorated. There are plans I tried to make and promises broken. There's the first times and the last times, the endless efforts of making it work, the cruel things that can never be undone and the way it unrelentingly would not renege until my soul was lying motionless on the floor, bereft of any ideas for what I could try next. There's a foundation--laid and abandoned.

I'm divorced.

And now I'm in my second chance at life, and it's a nearly surreal life at that. I put an ocean between myself and anything I'd ever known. I indulge every creative impulse that flits through my mind. I spent an hour today lying on a private, aqua beach reading for pleasure. I sleep in on Sunday, go out on weekends, skinny dip in January and have nothing I can logically complain about in this freshly constructed world I've built for myself. But there is always this part of me that is somberly saying, No, you don't understand. You don't know what it was like. 

I'm divorced.

I was married. I took a full on face dive leap of faith into the tea cup of a quick marriage. I make my conscious efforts to move ahead, to live in the present, to embrace the now, to learn from my mistakes and to cultivate gratitude, forgiveness and love--but I will never not be divorced.

That makes me sad.

So please, when you meet someone who has been through it, withhold judgement for a moment or two. Give the person space to be who they are--now. Let the divorced people you meet know that it's okay to be okay, that they are not categorically dismissed because of life experiences, and that life is full of tough choices. None of us get out unscathed. There's a unity to be had in sharing our stories, regardless of the source of the scar.

The Best Worst Day of My Life

Somewhere in the early days when all I could think to myself was, "When will this feel less like a semi just hit my life?" I was consulting the all powerful Google and found this admittedly arbitrary formula. Recovery time from a divorce averages about one half the length of the marriage. 10 years marriage = 5 years recovery and so on, so I planted the seed in the back of my mind that I would give myself the first full year to focus almost entirely on healing myself up, and I have.

This is the year I will always remember as the year I slept just as much as my body asked me to, which sometimes meant going straight to bed at 6pm and waking up 14 hours later. I ate any and every thing I wanted and I let myself talk about my experience endlessly, processing it out of me by virtue of sheer repetition. I bought myself presents --nice dresses and red high heels, jewelry, and a guitar. I took myself on weekend trips, road trips, trips to the theater and movies and beach. I bought myself a reliable car and moved back to the home I'd left in a hope to appease The Mr. Then, I allowed my soul to let go of 9/10 of my earthly possessions to pursue my education (another luxury out of reach to married Frowfrow) in the two things I love most - art and teaching...in Hawaii, and when a beautiful African man said to me, in his adorable accent, "Come outside, I'm going to kiss you." I said, "Okay."

To some this year may seem overly indulgent or self centered, but it has been exactly what I needed to get my sea legs back.  I had to learn that I can take care of myself. I can meet my needs. There isn't a man alive that can fix the broken parts of me, and I can stop looking, because Jesus and I are enough. My poor little terrified, broken heart and soul have been quieted, soothed, cradled and nurtured back into functionality, and I must say, today, 365 days after the best worst day of my life, I am thankful for what's happened.

I was making up a whiteboard for the students at work the other day and came across these wise words from the mouth of Oprah. "True forgiveness is when you can say, 'Thank you for that experience'." I cannot say I am grateful for every aspect of what the past three years of my life have been like, but last night when I was talking to God about the whole thing, this is some of the list we were able to come up with:

I'm thankful that I learned so much about myself through this experience,  that I now have a much deeper understanding of the importance of my own needs, hopes, dreams and establishing boundaries. I'm thankful that I get another chance at life, and that being in an unhealthy marriage helped me to see more clearly the things that are most important to me in life. I'm thankful that I know how much I love being a wife and how much I love having a husband. I'm thankful that I was married -- that someone, at least at some point, loved me enough to ask me to be his wife and that I had the time I did in Long Beach as a newly wed. I loved that short season in my life so immensely.

I'm thankful that dating again has opened my eyes to the things I did to contribute to the problems in my marriage and that I have all the time I need to work through those issues and becomes a healthier individual. I'm thankful that The Mr. had the courage to put a final stop to everything, and that he has been very respectful of my request that he not contact me again. I'm thankful for the new world that has opened up to me with possibilities that were once completely off the table. I'm thankful for all the long hours those who love me have put in with me--helping me move, inviting me over, flying me out for a visit, taking me out for an adventure, sitting in with me for the night, all the talking, all the prayers, all the hope and all the love. I'm thankful for the incredibly cathartic, healing experience writing this blog has been for me, and ultimately, beyond any other blessing to come from this experience I'm thankful that I have new understanding of exactly what my Savior is willing to go through, just for me.

So thanks for being a part of this first year of recovery. Thanks for reaching out to help me know I am not so alone in this unexpected stage of my life, and thank you, thank you, thank you that the first year is finally over. : )

Part Three

I know I've written before about the importance of breaking all contact with an ex if at all possible, but I have an update for you on this topic. About a month ago things with The Mr. were in a place where we weren't talking, really just because there wasn't anything left to say. All the finances are sorted, possessions divided, words spoken, papers signed. But when you have been in such an intimate place with someone closing the door completely somehow seems caustic-- even while rationally acknowledging the trauma leaving the door even slightly ajar brings.

I was driving--windows down, sun shining, so I didn't hear the phone ring the first or second time. When I checked the message it was something I would have swallowed as sweet in days gone by. The Mr. wanted to know how I was doing. He wanted to know if I was happy.

There's a voice inside me that never lies and is never wrong. When I met The Mr. that voice said, "No thank you." But I kissed him anyway--a lot. When he proposed that voice said, "You do not know this man. How can you marry someone you don't know if you can trust?" But I told the voice to be quiet or we'd never find love. When The Mr. and I would sit in a room together, 15 months into our mistake that voice would say, "He's not here in the room with you. He's already gone." I would tell the voice, "No. He's the one who loves me."

So when I heard The Mr.'s voicemail I stopped for a moment and asked the voice what she thought. Two days later she replied in the form of a text message I sent The Mr.

I got your message. Thank you for your concern. How I'm doing is information I no longer feel comfortable sharing with you. I know you feel guilty for things from our past, but that's between you and God now. I wish you the best of luck in sorting it out and sincerely hope you find peace. Please do not contact me again. 

It wasn't easy to send, but it was easier than all that work it took to smother out the voice for those two years. My mama says that you don't have room for good things in your life when you won't let go of the bad ones. Mental energy is finite, after all. Since I calmly but firmly closed the door to all that pain, beautiful things have started happening. Or perhaps the more likely truth is that beautiful things were happening all along, but in closing the door I finally was able to look up.

My life is in the process of changing in big ways this week, not the least of which is where I reside. I am moving... again. But this isn't one of those little hopping around moves I've done every six months up until now. This is a mega leap of faith move from my seemingly eternally cyclical existence betwixt a few west coast states-- to a distant tropical island. 

I've never been to Hawaii. I've never rented a car or bought a one way ticket without any idea when I'll be coming back or really any desire to find out. In nine days I start part three of my Three Part Plan to Get on With Life, and I just want to say, it's coming together shockingly well. 

I bring this up, not to rub it in your face that I'm finally getting healthy when you likely have come to this blog in a state of profound grief or concern. I bring this up because I remember vividly the days that I was incapable of believing that things could ever, ever, ever get better, and I remember the day I started listening to that voice in me that never lies and is never wrong. 

Love

Photo attribution here

I have long been prone to bouts of melancholy. When you deal with depression people like to give you to do lists and things to try, or maybe you make the lists yourself. Being depressed is miserable, so I understand the inclination, but this pattern inevitably leads me to a place where I personify a defeated lump of guilt. I am left void of inertia and worse off knowing what I should be doing and still somehow am not. More often than not I spend my days swimming through a sea of tentative anxiety while making efforts to appear as though I am just another one of the kids with nothing more to stress about than my phone bill. This has been life so long for me I cannot discern when it first began. However, despite this component of my existence and the challenges it presents, I do pass through times of great happiness. Today I'd like to briefly describe one for you. Once upon a time I was fresh out of high school... 

Eighteen is a beautiful age. I was off on my first adventure as a newly christened adult at Southern Oregon University. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or really much of anything about what I liked or needed or wanted or didn't want, but I didn't care. I spent my hours meandering along the streets of the charming town of Ashland, Oregon relishing in the uniqueness of the cranberry hazelnut bread I'd discovered at the local bakery, or the sun soaked beauty of Lithia Park, complete with monologuing thespians and dread locked nomads who only ate organic. I had no money, I had no car, I had no idea what life would bring, but I had a profound appreciation for the freckles God put on the skins of apples just for me. Despite the troubled waters running deep within, there remained in me a relentless wellspring of hope. 

There are times in my world of slow moving blues and greens like that year in Ashland that afford me a brand of solace and joy I believe to be uniquely mine. I cannot say I leave the sea of overwhelming emotions completely, but I have intense moments of illumination and peace, melancholy notwithstanding. In my marriage, however, that light nearly died in me. So desperate for the healing affection that I was sure The Mr. possessed in some hidden corner of his ever increasingly distant soul, I offered him piece after piece after piece of me as a sacrifice. Without him asking I would hand him this peace offering, praying that there could be some way that we could be compatible, that he could love the me I was killing off in the effort to save us.

There's a day that stands in my memory as the day of last date we attempted. Dates were always hard for us. Turns out it takes more than chemistry to enjoy an afternoon together... or evening... or dinner at home... or a birthday. He was doing some work on my car before we headed out and I'd slipped away  to the local sandwich shop. I was enjoying a lemonade and the sunlight as it shimmered through some orangey red leaves canopying my table. Somewhere in that stolen hour the realization shimmered down upon me that for the first time in quite a long time I felt just the slightest bit like myself. For long stretches of our marriage I could not see the light in the trees. Beautiful blossoming Oregon unfolding herself just for me that spring was masked in kind of a hazy smog of confusion and panic. It wasn't that I didn't want to see it. You have to believe me that it wasn't for lack of trying. More than anything I wanted things--every day things, work things, marriage things, family things--to be normal. Healthy. Just to be okay... but they weren't. That day late in September I caught a glimpse of the happiness I once could conjure up within myself, even in times of distress. It giggled up from some unknown spot in my soul, fluttered about my face, close enough to see but just out of reach, and then disappeared into the leaves. The sun began setting and the Mr. and I headed off into what would be one of the more heartbreaking days of my life. It was ending. I could no longer deny that it was ending. 

That little glimmer of happiness went to some mysterious land to hibernate, not to be disturbed through the darkest months of winter. As it did I was swallowed up in the black abyss of my existence for the next several months. There's a reason this blog didn't start in November 2012. In those early months I retreated into the darkest, most terrifyingly lonely places I hope to never see in me again. In a stupor of heartache I spent my days dragging my body from one obligation to another hoping time was passing, but too discouraged, disoriented and afraid to count days or weeks. I was half drowning in my own personal rivers of sorrow, neither able to succumb nor escape.

This is depression. This was my reality. 

The writing I do is primarily what I call "vomit up your toenails" writing. I sit down and spew out whatever thoughts have been chasing each other around my brain all day in an attempt to get some peace. As I write this post I've been asking myself what the value in it is. Doesn't the world have enough stories of soul slaughtering blackness? You will only bring people down, telling them about those days, I think to myself. But I am choosing to record this despite those thoughts. I record this for you and for me. 

While I never want to relive those days, I also don't want to forget them because the contrast they strike is so stark to the way I feel today. In those dark moments the voice inside us says, "It will always be this way. No one understands you. There is no hope." But the voice inside us is a liar sometimes. I record the pain in its blackness so that no one has to feel alone in it like I did. Some posts I write here scrape the bottom of the barrel of my capacity for levity, but today it feels right to make plain that my marriage and my divorce have sent me unwillingly through a refining process where I felt turned utterly to ash; a shadow of myself floating away and disappearing into the wind. Just as involuntary as that experience was, a new wave is crashing. It's washing away the charred remainders of my miserable failure, satiating the parched and barren wasteland of my uninhabited soul, and reviving all that's best in me, teaching me something surprisingly beautiful and comforting. 

In those incomprehensible, disorienting moments where life went for the knockout, I lost hold of what I  thought was making me good. For a season I couldn't achieve the way I used to. I spent inordinate amounts of time sleeping, crying, lying around, begrudging, loathing, sobbing, swearing, wallowing and letting go of hope. I lost the ability to prove my worth through works, only to discover when the disillusioning fog dispersed that the goodness remains. Faith without works is dead, we are told, but like a submerged buoy this goodness, with a force outside my active will, burst through the surface of my rivers of sorrow. I didn't pray it that way, I didn't exercise it into existence, I didn't bake someone a pie or ask anyone their forgiveness. Having exhausted every other option I could think of, I got so sick of myself that I made a search of the house for all the shards of my broken heart. I packed them up and I took them to my bishop. I showed him the mess I'd made and I cried and cried, not knowing what I wanted him to do about it. That beautifully imperfect man of God smiled at me and put into words the things God had been trying to tell me during all the gnashing of teeth. Though these aren't the words he used, that day my bishop taught me this truth.

That goodness, the light, the hope and the very best essence of ourselves isn't something we can make appear or force into existence. The goodness burns brighter in and after the fire. It is driven relentlessly upward to float on in the river of life past the season of sorrow to show us that life does go on, even when we can't contribute. There is no mistake we can make, no covenant we can break, no sorrow or sadness or circumstance of life that could ever make us less to our God. Through the smog, the fear, the dwindling faith and the knockouts He sees our best selves and stands anxiously awaiting the moment we are ready to embrace the glimmer of hope once more. Sometimes that wait is a long one, but He doesn't tire of it. He stands close saying, "Take all the time you need. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere and neither is my love." They say if you're not paddling forward, your floating backward, but from this moment in time all I can see is that no matter where I am in this ever changing, exquisitely beautiful river of life my God is there with me, and today that matters more. 

I don't understand.

Photo attribution here.

The most universal question in this Devout yet Divorced community must be the question of why?  Why did I let this happen? Why did she do this to me? Why didn't I see it coming? And inevitably we throw God in the mix, like most of us did when we were getting into this mess. Why, when I asked God if I should marry my ex did He not say no?

It was two years in the making for me, asking that question. I'd been faithfully awaiting the day when he would come home from his mission and pop the Q. I was absolutely dying for him to while simultaneously being scared out of my mind. (I mentioned the track record for my parent's marriages, yes?) What this confusing combination culminated in was a sincere, but kind of haphazard moment stolen at work, of all places, where I directly asked God if I should marry the man I had long ago devoted myself to. His response was interesting. What He said was, "You can. It's going to be difficult, but you can." I quickly interpreted this to mean - you will probably have financial troubles. The Mr. hadn't gone to college yet. *Note: That's not what God said. But was I troubled with such trivial things as what I was certain would only be monetary? Of course not. All you need is love. If that was good enough for John Lennon, it was good enough for me. The thoughts that The Mr. could ever be anything but adoring, devoted and endearing, or that John Lennon likely was a bazillionaire when he wrote that song had not even entered my twiterpated consciousness.

Getting married after a short courtship is a gamble. I won't speak out completely against it, because I've seen it work out. However, there is no avoiding the fact that it is irrefutably, undeniably, (to me now) terrifyingly a gamble. So if this gamble was destined to work out so tragically for me, could God have said something like, "Absolutely not," or, "Sure, but it's a terrible idea and will break your heart and end in divorce," instead of, "You can, but it will be difficult"? After all, Latter Day Saint women are up for difficult. Our lives are built on the backs of pioneers who walked across thousands of miles of frozen ground without shoes, burying their babies along the way while their husbands were off on missions. Difficult? We got this on lock.

Perhaps your story is similar to mine. In retrospect we see moments of doubt we harbored. We wonder if that feeling was a warning that we ignored in the wake of romance. Or perhaps you took every precaution, and felt 100% assured. Either way, the answer is yes, He could have been more clear. And I'm convinced now after this most recent study, that He may very well have wanted to be. So, why wasn't he?

These thoughts come from Moses 7. The Lord has taken righteous Enoch into his bosom and is showing him the state of things. Satan has a chain around the world, causing there to be darkness, and he's laughing. The Lord, which is to say, the God of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, is watching the earth and crying. Enoch is confused. He asks Christ, (paraphrasing) How can you be so upset about these things? You have millions and millions of creations in the world. How can you weep over this moment?

Christ then responds, "Behold, these thy brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the garden of eden, I gave unto man his agency. And unto thy brethren I have said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood." (Moses 7:32-33)

I have always admired Job for one powerful phrase he contributes to the Bible. After trials that make even the heartache of divorce feel minimal, he boldly declares, "Though He (God) slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15) I can think of no better application of this verse than to these moments where we find ourselves again and again asking God why. I have had moments in post divorce aftermath where I have felt crushed, eviscerated, even slain or betrayed by God. These feelings are real and can feel completely justified, but somehow they always leave me lacking. There is no light in them to sustain me. After nights of masticating these thoughts for sleepless hours I am left once again seeking truth. The truth I've found is this:

Jesus Christ (and therefore God, since they are one in purpose and character) loves me, enough to cry over what He sees happening in my life. If He loves me that much, then there is a part of Him that wants to prevent any pain from befalling me, especially knowing that He would have to suffer that same pain in Gethsemane. When, knowing all, He chooses not to interfere or even leads us to pain, it must be an even greater act of love. As a teacher, mistakes and heartache are some of God's choice tools for sculpting our character. He allows us to make our choices knowing He will ache with us, He will grieve with us. And when we cry, the God of the Old Testament does not remove the cultivating force from us. His tender heart cries with us, the workmanship of His own hands. I cannot know why some things will come or others have passed, but I do know that the Man who is willing to walk even this road with me is a Man I can trust.

Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

Somewhere along the line in the kingdom of Mormondom, somebody decided that when we die we will see a movie of our lives. We will sit there with Jesus and God, sharing popcorn and sometimes God will say, "Oooh, yeah. I remember that. You really shouldn't have had that impure thought" or "Bought gas on Sunday, I just docked you 10 points." Then Jesus chimes in and says, "Oh, come on, Dad. Maybe you could let him off easy for that one." And thus we strike the perfect balance between Justice and Mercy, the two eternal moral imperatives.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say... I do not believe that is how judgement will play out. I mention this for a reason. Stay with me here.

Everything I understand about God and Jesus and their united mission (Moses 1:38,  Isaiah 53:5) tells me there is more to life than an infinite list of "good"s and "bad"s that have been recorded during our lives that culminate in some final balance that will tip the scale of our eternal destiny one way or another. The God I worship and love is a teacher. His ultimate goal, His work and His glory is to take us from the moment we let Him in, and set out on a divine tutorial with us. That tutorial starts with a spirit, eternal but young and simple, and ends with a fully developed, immortal human being, shaped and molded, trained up and knocked around, then polished into becoming the very best he or she can be.

The gospel is too often taught in terms of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong. Anyone who's reading this blog knows that life is full of complex situations, tailored personally to challenge and stimulate the growth of the person experiencing them. I have a wonderful friend who was the closest thing I had to a big brother through my divorce... besides my big brothers, who are great... but they were not really around. Every now and then when I was up to my eyeballs and nauseated by the blackening skies ahead of me I would send him a text saying something like, "Do you think it's wrong to get a divorce? I mean, won't God be mad at me? A covenant is a really big deal, you know?"

My friend would wisely respond with comments to the effect of, "I think you underestimate how much God knows the human heart and how forgiving He can be. Divorce is one potential solution to a problem. Sometimes it's the best one."

He's in pretty good company with this mentality. I've been listening to conference talks on my iphone lately when I can't sleep. Last night I heard Elder Holland say, "In the words of that prophet (Joseph Smith) I too declare our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views and boundless in His mercies and blessings than we are ready to believe or receive." (The Grandeur of God, General Conference, October 2003.)

I feel like I'm coming to a place now where I am starting to understand that God is an infinitely knowledgeable, merciful, just Man with a mission. He teaches us in black and white, but I believe that's for our own safety. Training wheels. We are designed to develop in our spirituality to become able to discern for ourselves what is truth, and then have the integrity to act according to it. The stark categories of "good" and "bad" give way to fine tuning oneself to God's will for us in that moment.

One day, very near the end of my marriage, I went to the temple looking for some clarity. I wanted so badly for God to say, "If you're righteous enough, if you two just get back to reading and praying more, be more dedicated to service in the church, if you look to me with all your hearts, your marriage can be healed," but God is wise and He knew better. What He told me instead when I asked was, "I don't want any marriage to end, but there comes a point where you have to protect yourself."

Maybe it's because I'm so literal that I've had such a hard time with this. A peak into the mind of me would show you separate bins for right and wrong. I'm always sorting and striving for the "right" bin. But when it came time to sort "divorce" into one or the other, I was nearly paralyzed for the better part of a year. My operating system would flash "wrong" in red and move on to the next decision, but as time went on, again and again and again the thought came up for classification. Should I get divorced? How can it be wrong when staying married feels so incredibly wrong too?

So for those of you out there who are a bit rigid like me, a little black and white and stuck on this categorizing thing, I leave you with this thought: the thing that is right is the thing that brings us closer to God, closer to peace, closer to healing, closer to being whole, always. There is no movie, in the end. There's only a being, cultivated by the life she lived. Every choice she made to come closer to Christ was the right one.

Actually, He never said it would be easy or worth it. (Don't worry though, I'm pretty sure it is.)

I have some thoughts to share on a particular phenomenon I've observed during my short stint in Divorced Mormon Land. When a person crosses over into this place of desolation, one of the many, many things that can happen is that the entire operating system on which he has been running his life goes on the fritz. Here's an example for you.

I remember one day when I was in massage school in California I was chatting up a woman who was in her mid 40s and living life divorced. While petrisaging a trapezius I glibly spouted off my simplistic theory regarding how to have a successful marriage. I should know, after all, I had been married two seconds by that point. These are the words I recall toppling out of my mouth.

"Well, I just think... I mean... okay. You ask God, is this the guy for me? And then you wait for your answer. If He says it's okay, then it must be. I mean, two people can work anything out with God, right? So unless he, like, hits you or something, then you just work it out. And you can, because God will help you. He wouldn't let you have a trial you can't handle, you know?"

Luckily, the woman was kind and gracious and gave me a somewhat knowing half smile, then let it slide.

I tell you what though, I believed it. I had served a mission based off a variation of that kind of faith. I'd picked life paths and made major decisions retaining in remembrance these ideas. I'd deliberately stepped out into the great unknown again and again in little and big ways trying and testing this theory. I believed it so much by that 25th year of my life that I had it inscribed on our wedding rings. His, fashioned after birch bark and mine, a mother of pearl inlaid leaf. "If the root be Holy" and "So are the branches" respectively; a verse from Romans. This wasn't a passing thought for me, it was sinew.

Divorce derails our operating system for life like nothing else I know. What else can possibly cause a person to feel so incredibly rejected, confused, broken hearted and alone all at once? What else can leave a soul so scared and unable to trust for a time? When we hit this moment, or maybe it feels like this moment hits us, what do we do?

Well, I don't know about everyone, but I know about me. I called into question everything I had once thought to be solid and reexamined it with a fine toothed comb. In this numb kind of stupor I thought for hours and hours on end while watching nauseating amounts of Netflix and knitting 702 scarfs for Christmas gifts: Is that real? Was I wrong about that too? Is anything worth working for? Investing in? Can anything be trusted?

This process cannot be undertaken without addressing the most epic and fundamental of LDS doctrines and beliefs, and yes, I went there too.

I had a companion on my mission that remains to this day the most like Jesus (sans beard) of any human I have ever met. I love her in a way I have never loved any other person. She used to say to me, "Truth is Truth...that's what makes it Truth," and even after all these shananagins, I agree. Truth is distinct. Truth is discernible. Truth resonates. Truth can be trusted. And if you are searching for it, Truth wins out in the end. Because of this I am never afraid to pause, when life demands it, and reevaluate or double check my math in making this most epic of all commitments to be a fully active Latter Day Saint. A woman doesn't give up her sexy underwear willie nilly. There is a good deal of thought that goes into this, even still, and in all this thought, I've come again and again to this:

There is doctrine, corroborated, Godly, Spiritually sound and trustable. Then, there's what people think is doctrine. One will, in fact, sustain you. The other will confuse you when rubber hits the road, and maybe break your heart. My favorite example is in the above title of this post. Find me the verse that says, "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it" and I will buy you a pie. It's not in there. Neither is, "God will not give us any trial we can't handle" (it's temptation, there is a difference) or "Everything happens for a reason". These can be lovely, doubtlessly well intended sentiments, but if having my world rocked a few times by seriously difficult things has taught me anything it's the following.

If you want to make it through the extremities of what human beings can put each other through, you better know your religion. Warm fuzzies from Young Women's lessons are intended to be a gateway drug, not  long term sustenance. The world we live in requires us to be mentally present enough to be discerning, to be thoughtful and engaged and introspective about what we are doing with our daily lives. Thank God (literally) we have something that can be put to the test and not found wanting. Thank God for the Book of Mormon, for the Bible, for His Spirit, for prayer, and for every conference address Elder Holland has ever given. (I'm almost through them all now. I have an awesome app for that. Ask me!) Thank God that the Plan of Salvation, even if it or our leaders don't discuss divorce explicitly, explains where we should look and what we should do when life kicks us in the teeth. I used to think of the gospel of Jesus Christ as something pretty to look at, but obsolete in moments that shook me to the depth of my character. Thank God I learned better.

The statement's half true. Christ didn't say it would be easy, because He knew intimately how insanely difficult it could be. He lived through the moment where, even in the presence of an angel sent to strengthen Him, "being in agony He (Jesus Christ Himself) prayed more earnestly." (Luke 22:44) That was for you and that was for me.

In the broken down moments, the moments of previously unfathomable distress and despair, in the moments where all our best selves can think to do is pray more earnestly, we have a choice. We can ruminate on what a well intended teacher spouted off in a thoughtless moment that now seems sickeningly saccharine. We can delve into the areas we all have of our testimonies that are yet green, perhaps dark, underdeveloped or unexplored. Or, we can reach for light, for truth, for stability and safety. This is not some desperate act of a delusional, wounded being to lie his way into a false sense of security. It is an act of clarity and incalculable courage--commendable and brave. We can reach for God and watch brilliant truth resonate it's way into our souls, one moment at a time, luminescent and satiating.

That truth, that light changes us into beings capable of love where once all we could feel was pain. It heals the things we do not believe can be healed, and if we cling to it, live for it, sacrifice for it, it will change us into beings so full of love that we become capable of abiding a celestial glory. In the end, that, I would say, is worth it.