Tuesday, January 4, 2011
it is divorce
For some reason today several of my customers have been talking about divorce. It is sad really. That was one of Adam's fears, divorce. He is afraid to get married in case it leads to divorce. I guess that is actually a lot of people's fear. I don't blame them. I have seen a lot of people go through divorce. I have seen a lot of people get married. Sometimes the act of the wedding was the problem and the divorce was the saving grace. Sometimes people just choose badly. Sometimes people really do love each other and they really try to make it work. Sometimes outside forces shove people apart. My dad said that his work as a counselor showed that the majority of divorce came from one person putting the love of their self over their love of the other person. Even if the couple is miserably unhappy divorce is still sad and painful. I recently read "Eat, Pray, Love" in it Elizabeth Gilbert describes in detail the pain she felt through her divorce. The raw emotion that she describes through the whole ordeal often brought a tear to my eye. I'm not sure why I am writing or what I want to tell. But I guess as the new year is starting it is sad to see how many books are ending. Of course with every ending there is a beginning. But beginnings are often difficult. I hope this year for all of you ends up being good, even if the beginning seems to be tearing things apart.
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4 comments:
The divorce fear is a cop out of the highest order. If one fears the end then they do not deserve and are likely uncapable of genuinely having that which might end. When my father counseled a man who was undergoing divorce, the man told him that they had no troubles with property, finances, etc., because they'd carefully kept everything separate. They'd worked harder to prepare for a peaceful divorce than they'd ever worked on the marriage. Fear of divorce is really a fear of commitment, and that is simply immaturity. A person that immature cannot be a spouse.
Your dad is right: love of self versus love of a spouse. That's part of the flaw in Gilbert's account, for me, and why it's an incredibly shallow work. Gilbert was incredibly selfish. She loved herself more than anything else. She wanted to be fed but she wouldn't do the work. Then she struggled to forgive herself - for her selfishness? Her self-forgiveness was still all about herself. Gilbert was utterly circular. She wallowed and bathed in the glories of her own emotion for the sake of what that emotion offered her... which was a false sense of depth. True emotion isn't experienced in the shallows and it isn't expressed in performance.
Ends are hard when we're going through them, else we wouldn't notice them. If we determine that something should end, though, we have to let it. If we let ourselves stay in the midst of the ending process then we let ourselves stay in something stagnant. We poison ourselves. It's time to break through the shallows to reach a more genuine depth.
Happiness is a choice. We cannot choose all of our variables, but we can choose to respond to them in certain ways. The choice isn't simplistic or trivial, but it is liberating.
i agree w/ much of what both you and Lorien said. regarding the shallow selfish person of Gilbert, i am not so sure. it is easy to judge someone when we are on the outside. when i read the book, i see a woman who is enormously transparent and open about her own flaws. she is deeply sorrowful for the wounds of divorce the final blow of which she made. But she also realized that the missing piece in her heart was God. she did not have that piece filled in by Him until after the divorce. Perhaps that would have made a difference in the marriage. she never comes out and digs at her ex. My guess is he had a bunch of selfish flaws going, just from the few hints she made. She kept herself from being a name caller and falling into the victim trap. Unless we have been there, we cannot know what another's life is like. she was adamant that she always intended to keep her vows. I am wondering if her husband, who says he loved her so much, had forgotten to look for ways to please his wife and ask what she might need in the relationship along the way. which brings us round to a person who actually did love himself more.
This likely stems from a very deeply different understanding of God's identity. God is a very specific entity with a clear track record. Gilbert didn't find Him at any point in her journey. She did not find Christ. She did not find the God of Israel. She found a vague sense of spiritual fulfillment that was sufficient to calm her immediate needs. One can disagree as to whether the spiritual fulfillment she found is enough for an individual... but in no way can that spirituality be equated to the God of the Bible.
That, however, is a side point.
I'm less concerned by the divorce itself than I am by the shallowness of Gilbert's example.
She left her husband for selfish reasons. She left him for her own sake and at times tried to convince herself that it was for his own good as well. The root was all about her, and that is the definition of selfishness.
Everything that she experienced and every "growth" that she made was based in emotional self-absorption. That is shallow. That is superficial. Depth requires a combination of emotion and reason, of heart and mind - a mature unity of one's holistic self in interaction with submission to God.
I will not judge her spirituality, that's for sure. Thank God He alone judges not by outward appearances but He judges the heart.
regarding her selfishness, i think she should have gone through her entire 'selfish' 'learning' experience should have taken place in her life when she was in her teens and early 20s.she missed a step. so that's often what happens when people get married in their teens or early 20s or whenever they're not ready - even 30.
Shallow? only by your judgment. Again, we are all on a journey that God allows. Only He can judge the depth of our journey and our commitment to it and Him. And remember, whether or not one knows the "God of the Bible" there is still only one God and He happens to be the God of the Bible. Sometimes this is first before they meet His Son. Regardless, He is still judge and His desire is for all His created children to live with Him forever. He goes to great extents to make that happen - even to the point of the dying breath of a convicted murderer.
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