Yesterday in church the associate minister gave a very inspiring message about "soul mates". Some of what he said just struck a serious chord in me, such that I found tears welling in my eyes at the recognition of what he was saying and what it reflected in my own experience.
One thing he said was that a soul-mate is someone who cares for the well-being of your soul as much as their own. I immediately recalled my former spouse -- and I realized that by that definition I was her soul-mate, but she proved herself to not have been mine. I have always been concerned for the well-being of her spiritual health, even after the S and D. In fact that is the one thing -- if anything -- that continues to haunt me directly about her: I worry about the loss of her mortal soul and what could have taken the person I thought I knew for so many years away like that.
Conversely, I see how she has regarded me for at least the last three years -- the coldness, the hardness of her heart towards me, the continual malice and contempt she harbors for and stokes against me. As I was going through a hell on earth, the darkest days of my life, albeit at her own hand, she showed no shred of genuine compassion and absolutely no good will or concern for my soul. If I had died and gone to Hell she would have bid me good riddance and just desserts. And sadly, I do not think that thought to be mere hyperbole on my part.
It has chilled me to the marrow to recognize this. Though I loved her truly, she was not my soul-mate. More-to-the-point, she declined to be a soul-mate. That has been a profound revelation.
Much as I (still) mourn the person she was, I now see that God was leading me through this pain then so that I might escape the darkness my R with her brought me. The depression I suffered due to her checking out of our R would have eventually destroyed me had not God allowed the bomb to wake me to this harsh reality. I continually marvel at this bewildering paradox: how the most horrible event in my entire life has actually saved me.
