Gerda's Prayer Takes the Form of Angels

[Rita]

DnJ -- So happy to see your post this morning, I am back to my post BD nerves despite constant prayer.

But have been distracting myself too much with temptations and this is probably only making it worse as it is part of my existential crisis -- or spiritual battle, depending how you see it.

The issue is that the way H is going about this is so evil, my exposure to his L and all that evil is so impossibly dark, that it is killing something in me that was a seed that could grow. The seed that would allow forgiveness no matter what. I don't know why the other things seem forgivable and this does not, but truly this is beyond anything I ever imagined he would be capable of. He is believing a lie about me -- e.g., that I am hiding money -- but it is very easy to look at the numbers and see the truth. So he either has to be committed to an insane asylum for delusions or he is evil beyond repair. The first will not happen and the second destroys what has defined me all this time -- and since long before I even met H.

Despite what you said about feelings and not worrying about standing for now -- all of which is true but only possible if you have the interior mind-control of a DnJ or maybe Saint Theresa of Avila -- the problem is that I see myself at this crossroads, and having to choose a path. One is the path of standing no matter what, which is what I have lived by for seven years, and what makes perfect sense to me in terms of my faith and in terms of everything I believed about divorce my entire life. And it seems like the only way to explain my suffering, on many levels, to give it a purpose -- restoration of this family as the end point to everything. And to give my children hope and a reason to believe in vows and to forgive their father.

I know i think all the protests you will have against this black-white vision. I know you will encourage me to wait and watch and not worry about this. I know you will say it's not my job to help them forgive their dad.

But it is what is driving my anxiety right now. And sometimes I do the opposite, I get so upset that I can't stand it when D10 loves her dad, though of course I try to hide that.

I imagine that if I gave up everything I believed in, I would be like I was before I came to Christ -- tough, cool, enough of a hard heart not to care about some things and to pursue distractions from pain. This is what I see people doing all around me, here in my city which is the epicenter of divorce. They trade pain for "moving on." Everyone I know outside of my faith community is constantly urging me to do that, and men keep appearing in my path. Most of them make me sick but there are a couple of temptations....

But giving up everything I have believed in all this time is first of all not possible, just because of my nature and a conviction on my heart, and second of all means something horrifying as far as my vision of the world of the spirit -- unless it's just that I submit to being unable to live in the world of the spirit anymore and hope God pulls me back -- or even just hope that God gives me the desire for Him to pull me back! I don't even have the desire anymore to walk fully in God's way.

So then I make deals with myself. I don't try to make any deals with God at least, I just tell him that I reached the end of my strength and that I hope He can somehow show me He loves me despite even if I turn away from what I know is best for my family.

And then when I start doing that, nothing else makes sense about how to walk my path.

I know that for you, DnJ and probably Grace too, it's a little different, because you do not see remarriage or dating in the same way. But that is what I mean, I do not want to adapt my faith to my circumstances.

XO