Gordie 24 still married

[Gerda]

Gordie, DnJ and Gerda have trouble all fitting on the same little soapbox. Fortunately we are mantle-sized. You guys are no longer on my mantle because my H is finally gone. But I still keep you in my pocket sometimes to remind me of stuff. I don't need to do that as often. Like DnJ always says, we have come a long way!

I am on a totally different path in a way because I couldn't be with my H again. And yet I consider myself still clutching a corner of that soapbox though I don't understand what that would entail. I have not posted much of the specifics in the last six months,but the not-physical violence against me of which my was-H is now capable is astonishing, exhausting, never-ending, working against his own financial interests, etc, and in looking back at our lives, I realized that maybe this isn't as surprising as I thought. There was a mental break, but, as I said, the original package was perhaps not the great man I thought he was. But yes, like I said, I think he was battling it for me. Or for God.

I know I could not be married to him ever again, and I don't even want to ever have to see him again. I am Catholic, and I am reading a lot about why the church grants annulment, I mean in a real faith-based way, not the way it is sometimes done -- I am positive my marriage would qualify because we truly did undertake our vows not as Christians and not understanding what it meant. If my husband was mentally ill, I certainly didn't know it. I know there were many many times I ignored an inner voice in regards to my was-band when he was just my boyfriend. I know I didn't value myself and didn't think a man would ever love or care for me in the way I thought a man should love and care for his wife. And we certainly weren't married in the church -- I mean that in a faith-based way, though it is also true in the material way. But I am still standing for something. I wear my wedding ring on the other side now, the widow finger, but I wear it, along with a ring that I think God put (literally and figuratively) in my path to replace the engagement ring I lost after taking it off in anger in the early days.

And when I saw what DnJ wrote above, I was SO happy about that, so happy to see what is on both of your hearts still. Even if the proximity on the soapbox for me and DnJ and some of my other "friendships" IRL have sometimes been very ....proximate.

For all of us, we know God is asking something from us, we just don't know what it exactly is. But we are trying to walk towards His will as best as we can, and I think that is why we are all three still able to see meaning and light in it. I am reading this book which talks about how different the life of faith was from what came before, starting with the OT but much more with the NT, that it was less about our unknown origins than our unknown future -- that faith comes from trusting God completely, without knowing what the future is, that the sacrifice God asks is your desire to control your future and to instead trust His plan for it. I'm not even talking about after death, but tomorrow, today, when Gordie's wife has her headphones on in the next room. I wish my H had left long before he did, and I think you'd have more peace if your W left for a while, but I know that the thought of you going about your day as best as you can, giving your loneliness and grief to God as best as you can, cooking dinner and laughing with your children while their mom is in the next room alone, that that to me is a beautiful light. I don't think this is what God wants for you, but maybe it's what God expects from you, at least until He makes it clear that your path has shifted. I am sure God wanted me to stand, even if it didn't "work" to bring mine back. I have to trust that the reasons for that will become clear as time goes on (and many are already clear), and that I'll never know all of them, but that walking in faith is how I get closer to God. And I know that to be true. You are laying down your life for your family, and maybe we're not even doing it "right," and certainly we can't take any action that will change the MLCer, but there can be no doubt that you are choosing your family over your own desires and even needs and that there is a lot of light in that choice.

I think some of this belongs in my thread, but here it is!