Darn You Forgiveness {1 Yr Post Divorce Rant}

Change. Blame my lack of blogging on change.
God bless consistent. Or boring. Or mundane. 
I'd be a-o-k with that but change (although for good) is flooding my world.

One of my roomies moved out and now the other is too...from two to none in one month! 
I changed jobs which resulted in a change of co-workers (obv.), schedule, and wardrobe!
And, I even changed gyms. I had a little moment when I stopped my boxing membership because that placed served me so, so well. Not just in my physical fitness but my emotional well being. Those poor bags took a beating but I always left less angry than when I arrived. 

Change isn't my thing. I am very much a creature of habit but I'm learning to embrace it.


...Back to my actual thoughts that I set out to share...

I remember saying once that I don't believe in divorce. In being naive, it made sense to me that if you loved enough to marry, then you would always love enough to fight to stay married.

Hypocrite much? Indeed.

Because here I am, exactly one year after sitting before a judge, raising my right hand, chin quivering, and hearing what had constituted my completion be flayed into oblivion. I am among the 50% in America. I am exactly who I swore I would never be. That is me, I am one of those.

It still makes my stomach turn to hear the word divorce. Queasy almost. And I despise those forms where you have to circle your marital status. Why can't they just say single or married? Why is it necessary to have to circle "divorced." I know I am divorced people, I still have his last name. I don't need to circle a little word to remind me that my marriage failed. 

It stinks. It hurts. It robs. It devastates. 

To think that my divorce was finalized a full year ago almost seems impossible. I spent the past twelve months separating us, rediscovering me, stabilizing my new reality, and healing in God sized ways. Though there were moments of intense pain, and outright anger (insert anger therapy via those punching bags), deep sadness, and an overwhelming longing for what was supposed to be, the year was rich with healing. Sometimes I am in awe of how good the year unfolded. I am ok. More than ok really. I know that and I recognize how far I have come with the hand that life dealt me. I read once that, "Physiologically, hearts broken from love lost rate among the most stressful life events a person can experience, exceeded in psychological pain only by horrific events such as a child dying." Death of my child and a divorce from the one whom I thought was my forever...simultaneously. Oh what heartache. Praise Jesus that He can redeem when quite literally everything is broken. 

I loved him with all that I was and a part of me will forever. We shared the majority of my life. He was my first and only love. For 12 years, we built us. Over those years, we had real memories. Real memories filled with joy and happiness and warmth. And for that, a part of me will love and care about him forever. It is true. I don't wish him harm or evil or retaliated pain. I pray peace, and healing, and hope for him. The very same I pray for myself. That is hard for others to understand once they know the reality of how we ended. But, I don't need a eye for an eye. I don't need him to know compensated pain. 

Instead, I want to get to a place of genuine forgiveness.
But, that's just it. I want to get to a place of forgiveness. 
Not merely uttering words but a transformation so deep that it frees.
I am not there. Bits and pieces. But fully, 100%, no hold backs, unhinged, all-in-forgiven, no.

Shouldn't forgiveness follow repentance? Shouldn't it go hand and hand with the words "I am sorry." Shouldn't, wouldn't, couldn't? I can justify, rationalize, and validate until pigs fly. It is a work in progress. Some of the most raw memories are so drowned in deceit that it makes forgiveness a struggle. Despicable and wrong and a blatant selfishness. When those memories surface, a pain wells up so strong that I have had to literally utter, "Aly, you are ok." I have to hear it to believe it when my mind is so lost in the reality of the choices made. 

Jesus Himself commanded the Pharisees to cast the first stone at a woman caught in adultery if only they were without sin. And he commanded not only forgive but to forgive seventy times seven times. And in the sermon on the mount, there is that nice little section about loving your enemies. That is right, those who persecute you. 

Oh forgiveness, darn you. 
Someday. Someday I believe that it will come. 

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"Feelings take time to heal after the choice to forgive is made...we acknowledge that it hurt, that it mattered, and we choose to extend forgiveness to those who hurt us. This is not saying, 'It didn't really matter', it is not saying, 'I probably deserved part of it anyway.' Forgiveness says, 'It was wrong. Very wrong. It mattered, hurt me deeply, and I release you. I give you to God.' It might help to remember that those who hurt you are also deeply wounded themselves. They were broken hearts, broken when they were young, and they fell captive to the Enemy....This doesn't absolve them of the choices they made, the things they did. It just helps to let them go - to realize that they are shattered souls themselves."  
- Captivating (Written by John and Stasi Eldredge)

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Just keeping it real.