Facing the Unthinkable-Shock, Part 2

Live, Laugh, Love Again : A Christian Woman's Survival Guide to Divorce
by Michelle Borquez, Connie Wetzell, Carla Sue Nelson

(Page 2 of 2)

Rosalind
"Alone Time with God?"

It was the weekend of Valentine's Day. We sat in a cozy, romantic restaurant, having a wonderful evening together, laughing and talking without any interruptions. We didn't talk about the baby or problems from work and ministry. Nor did we have any disagreements or arguments. It was a fun time-just the two of us.

We sat talking about our future together, and our past. We couldn't believe we had just celebrated three years of marriage last December. We'd had stress and tension in the relationship. We had a toddler who took up a lot of my time. I was operating an in-home daycare five days a week and sometimes during the evening. My husband was a graduate student working a full-time job and also serving as ministry leader at our church. There was no balance for all the activity going on in our lives, which affected our marriage. So this alone time together was something we both needed and wanted.

At least I did. Sitting there that night with my husband, divorce never entered my mind. I thought we were both on the same page, headed in the same direction. We'd vowed in December that we were committed to the marriage and were determined to make it work despite everything going on in our lives, and we were reaffirming that commitment that night.

Cut to the weekend after Valentine's Day. My dear, sweet husband encouraged me to go on a little getaway trip with my son to visit family so he could enjoy some "alone" time with God. Why would I think twice about it? I respected his desire. My husband spending time with God would only benefit our marriage and give him some time to really seek the purposes God had for him. Plus, spending time with family was always positive.

Looking back, I did think it a bit odd when I called him that Friday night and he didn't call me back. This probably should have been a red flag, but who knew? I dismissed it and assumed he was enjoying his special time with God so much that he forgot to call. I didn't call him again the whole weekend so as not to interrupt any prayer time he might have been having.

When I walked in the door that Sunday evening, he was there to welcome me with such a sweet smile. He asked me how my weekend had been, and I shared briefly how wonderful it had been to spend time with my family. Then he suddenly became serious and told me he needed to talk. Something in his tone, something in the way he said those words, made me respond with hesitation. I wondered what he wanted to discuss.

He began telling me how much he had enjoyed his time with God and how wonderful it was to get away. Then the conversation suddenly took a turn for the worse. He said (and sisters, can you believe this one?) God had "revealed" to him that our marriage was over. He told me God was releasing him from the marriage.

I felt numb. My mind simply couldn't compute what he was saying: What? What in the world is he talking about? I immediately ran away to our bedroom, got on my knees before God, and cried out to Him, asking if He had indeed revealed such a thing to my husband. In my heart, I knew that this was not of God-that there must be someone else.

To say that I was "surprised" is quite the understatement. Even "absolutely floored" doesn't cut it. There is no word in the English language that could describe how I felt. I couldn't sleep that night. I tossed and turned in a state of shock. "My husband is leaving me . . . My husband is leaving me . . ." ran through my mind over and over. I knew I had to get some rest because I had my babies from the daycare coming in the morning. So I tried to sleep.

But I couldn't. All I could think was, How could this be happening to me? I thought I had done everything I could to be a good wife and make a good life for my family. I had supported my husband in his schooling and his ministry and tried to love him with all of my heart. Yet now he was destroying all that we had built together.

The next day my husband stayed home from work. We tried to talk, but I was too numb to hear what he had to say. All day long, I was in shock. I couldn't even function in my job as caretaker at the daycare. All I could think was, How am I going to tell the parents that my husband is leaving me and I have to close the daycare for good?

I asked my husband if we could go to counseling. He told me he would go; however, he did not want to hear what the counselor had to say because he had already gotten his "Word from the Lord."

God gives you what you need when you least expect it. Two days later I was taking the trash out. When I opened the lid to the trash can, I noticed some bank statements inside. I took them out and looked to see who they belonged to, because I knew we didn't belong to the bank listed on the envelope. Well, you can guess what I saw-the statements belonged to my husband . . . with a different address. I couldn't believe it; he'd opened another account without letting me know.

I began to look at the statements and noticed a floral shop transaction on one of them-for Valentine's Day. I contacted the shop, explained to the lady that I was double-checking my statement and didn't recognize the transaction, and asked to whom the flowers had been sent.

She looked up the information. It wasn't good news. The flowers had been sent to another woman-someone I knew from church.

Now I was angry. I immediately contacted my husband, who tried to deny it, regardless of the proof. He tried to make excuses, explaining he'd had them sent from the church when her grandmother died. Which didn't explain the separate account. Or why he'd never mentioned it.

Of course there was no way, considering the circumstances, that we would end up doing anything other than arguing over the phone. I ended up hanging up on him. I was in so much pain. It was then that I truly began to realize I was losing my husband and there was nothing-I mean nothing-I could do to gain him back.

ROSALIND'S LIFE LESSONS
The Shock Stage

Sisters, if you are in this stage, you probably feel like you' re in a state of shock, especially if you weren't expecting your husband to leave you. Yes, it's painful right now and your world is probably upside down. So ask your friends and family to embrace you and bolster you. It is okay to scream at the top of your lungs or cry your eyes out. You are experiencing a loss that is devastating. God hears your cry and He knows your pain. Release yourself to Him and let Him comfort you and help you through this difficult time. Don't give up.

Michelle
"Midlife Crisis or Marriage Crisis?"

Unlike Carla, The Conz, and Roz, I knew long before the words "I want a divorce" were spoken that I was on a journey headed for disaster. I remember as vividly as if it was yesterday pleading with my husband, telling him where we were heading in the hopes that he would see it and agree we needed to be in counseling together. We had gone through a lot together in the thirteen years of our marriage. He had endured some personal and professional frustrations, but I always thought they were things we would get through. I kept thinking he was in some kind of midlife crisis and would recover. I had not "felt" love for him in quite some time, but I was raised to believe that love is commitment, even when feelings come and go, and that feelings can't always be trusted.

Still, it became very apparent that if something didn't change, my marriage would end as a train wreck. As each day passed, it felt as if my dream of the happily-ever-after marriage went with it. It was all slipping away, and my overwhelming feelings of helplessness were unbearable. I kept thinking to myself, This can't be happening. This cannot be happening to me. This wasn't part of my plan. I am one of those "Till death do us part" kind of gals. What happened to our vows? What happened to the words "to hell and back"? (Okay, the wedding vows don't actually say "to hell and back," but we all know that's what they mean.)

On the other hand, I have always been an eternal optimist (or maybe the eternal ostrich), so even though I thought I knew where our marriage was headed, the shock of actually arriving there was unbearably difficult to handle. I found myself wanting to run-although I had actually been "running," or at least avoiding, for at least a year before my divorce, to the extent that I had tried not to even be in the same room as my husband! I kept thinking somehow the problem would go away. Somehow it would all disappear. I thought wrong. This Cinderella was losing her prince and somehow couldn't fathom it.

Once upon a time when we were dating, my soon-to-be husband whispered to me in the middle of an incredibly romantic date, "Michelle, I want to take care of you for the rest of your life." I melted when I heard that-what woman wouldn't? Did I believe him when he said it? You bet I believed him. Now, almost fifteen years later, the words "I want a divorce" were being nicely delivered to me while on family vacation in Colorado. I knew before the trip that he was going to walk away, but it was my last attempt-a dream vacation that would somehow make everything better.

It was so surreal, almost like watching a version of the movie of my life. I felt as if someone else had taken over my body because I could no longer feel my fingers or toes. I quietly asked him, "Why? Why is this the end of everything we have worked so hard to build?"

The only answer he could give me was simply, "I just haven't painted on the tapestry of my life, and you have." I couldn't believe my ears! Talk about shock! I don't know what was worse for me: his desire for a divorce or his lack of passion to try and save our marriage. Was I not worth even that? But he had made his decision long before he shared it with me, and there was nothing that would change his mind. He had already discussed everything with his lawyer and had begun the divorce proceedings before he even told me.

After he said he wanted a divorce, he shared that he had been unhappy for thirteen years and that he had never had the same vision I did for our lives. I think the hardest thing for me to swallow was the news that he had been secretly planning our divorce for two years! I was truly devastated to hear that while I had been racking my brain trying to figure out how and what would save our marriage, he had already removed himself emotionally.

MICHELLE'S LIFE LESSONS
The Shock Stage

Your feelings are very real, and it is important to be able to express them in a real way. It is not a time to tell yourself you are a Christian and therefore you shouldn't be feeling this way. In their book A Woman's Forbidden Emotion, authors H. Norman Wright and Dr. Gary J. Oliver state that "anger within a woman that goes unrecognized, unadmitted, and untouched becomes an unwanted resident that soon affects the totality of her life." Girls, recognize the situation and realize it is okay if you are angry. Just don' t stay there!

After listening to him express his reasons for divorce, I immediately did a rewind in my mind and began walking through memory after memory to try and find some hint of when it was that I'd stopped pleasing this man. "Michelle, I want to take care of you for the rest of your life" was to play over and over again in my head throughout our divorce proceedings. He had promised me! Promised never to leave me, never to walk out on me, always to be there for me. What about those promises? So I turned the accusations on myself, wondering, Where did I go wrong? How could I have done something different? Mixed in with the questions was some guilt, because after years of fighting for something that obviously wasn't there, I had to admit I felt some relief. Then, I felt fear. After the reality that we were getting a divorce began to set in, the questions quickly changed to What will I do? How can I live without him? How will I sleep alone at night?

My former husband, the father of my four children, had been slowly closing me out of his life-physically, emotionally, and spiritually-for several years, and now it was all over. Just like that. I'd invested my life and everything in my soul and entrusted it to this person, and with the quickest stroke of the pen it was over.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Now you know a little of our stories. But how about yours? Do you hurt so badly in the middle of the night in that now all-too-empty bed that you literally think the pain will kill you-and sometimes wish that it would? Do you find yourself thinking, Who came up with divorce anyway? Obviously, it wasn't someone who understood what it means to have your heart ripped out of your chest!

The train of divorce may have been coming at you from a distance, barely visible, for a long time. Now it's right in front of you, barreling down larger and louder than you could have ever imagined. You see no way of escape, no exit. You see nothing but true hopelessness and despair, for you are not in control of someone else's decision. You just get hit full force and dragged along the tracks for the ride. Hang on, Sister. This too shall pass!

It's okay to feel shocked. It's okay to feel pain. Nothing prepares you for the knock-the-wind-out-of-you sucker punch of "I'm not sure I ever loved you. I want a divorce." You may have even known you were heading toward the "Big D," or you may even have been the one to utter those words, but the shock still comes. We don't care if you and your husband have been fighting for twenty years and you hate each other's guts, it is still shocking and earthshattering when you are told the words, "I want a divorce, and I mean it!"

It doesn't matter how long you have been married, be it one year or thirty. Just look at anyone who has experienced losing a child through miscarriage. The length of the pregnancy doesn't matter. Death is death, and it is still overwhelming. The baby may have only been ten weeks along, but his parents already had names, a vision for the nursery, and a valedictorian speech all imagined. Then, in one brief moment, the dream is gone.

Divorce, too, is like a death. In some ways, it is worse. It hangs around like the stink of a skunk on a country road in July. It will probably cross your mind that death would actually be easier since it would be more final. With death, eventually there is closure. No one chooses to die, like someone is choosing to divorce.

Welcome to the first stage of grief as it pertains to divorce: shock. It won't be your last stage. Like psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross noted in her famous "Five Stages of Grief," which include Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, along this train ride through divorce, you will also have pit stops at the stations of denial and depression (Goody, goody, right?) before arriving at the ultimate destination of acceptance. Some of your stops will be longer than others. You may even backtrack to a stage you already visited once or twice. Don't give up hope. Keep moving forward, and hang onto Jesus. He will see you through.

The final stages of grief are acceptance and, with God's help, forgiveness and healing. To survive your divorce, it is very important to understand that you have suffered a death and that you will fluctuate between all of these stages. Divorce ranks as the second-highest cause of stress after the death of a loved one, according to The Unofficial Guide to Divorce by Sharon Naylor. Please understand the stress you are experiencing is completely normal. Part of the shock of divorce itself may be the shock of hearing, "I don't want you anymore, and I really don't have a great reason." You are unable to control what is happening . . . you can't fix this, you cannot change another person.

Embrace your feelings at this time. You must let yourself grieve before you can heal. And you will heal. Right now, you are a broken woman, wondering, Why? How? What? But the day will come when you will be whole again. You will; we promise. Now repeat this phrase:

I will live.
I will laugh.
And, yes, I will love again!

Five Fruitful Steps You Can Take During the
Initial Shock of Impending Divorce

1. Pray and ask God for direction and strength to make it through. He will walk with you through the hard times and carry you through the unbearable times.

2. Consider your options prayerfully, especially if your husband has already made the choice for you to divorce. Will you fight it? Wait calmly and pray it through? With the help of those who love you, formulate your response and game plan.

3. Find someone "safe" and "neutral" to talk to- preferably a pastor or Christian counselor. Try not to use a family member, your attorney, or anyone of the opposite sex, as you are too vulnerable in many ways right now. Also, do not confide in your children. They are still your kids, not your friends. And their dad is still their dad, no matter what!

4. Remember to do all you can to take care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Try to keep comfortably busy, and stick to some kind of routine. Write it down, find an accountability partner, do whatever it takes to stay healthy so you are not adding sickness to your heartache.

5. Seek out those who will help you. Now is not the time to play the "Little Red Hen" who can do it all herself! You need time to cry and time to absorb the blow you've been dealt. Have someone take the kids to and from school, take a weekend away, do whatever it takes for you to safely come to grips with your new reality.

SURVIVAL CHECKLIST

The Basics

Breathe-Breathe in and breathe out. This seems simple for the rest of the world, but we all know it's not very easy for you at this moment.

Cry-Allow yourself to cry without guilt, but remember to try and dry up the waterworks in front of the kids.

Eat-You must eat. We know you don't have an appetite, but you will pass out if your blood sugar drops. Carla has the ambulance ride bill to prove it.

Sleep-Sleep will be nearly impossible, but you must give it your best effort. Your eyes will look bad enough from the crying, much less the bags that will develop with sleep deprivation.

Say "no"-Keep your routine, but don't volunteer for any extra stuff. Try to get out of any big commitments like supervising the second-grade Christmas pageant. You have enough stress right now. The last thing you need is sixty seven-year-old children hyped up on candy canes and parents calling you to ask why little Jacob couldn't be one of the angels.

Survive-Really, we mean it! Satan may plant some really bad thoughts in your head like, "Your children wouldn't have to come from a divorced home if you aren't here." Get those ideas out of your head immediately, and know that God will help you through this. We are living proof!

Copyright © 2006 by Michelle Borquez, Connie Wetzell, Carla Sue Nelson, and Rosalind Spinks-Seay

About the Author

A woman of vision, Michelle's testimony is a powerful example of how God orchestrates our lives. As Founder and Editor-in-Chief of SHINE Magazine, her blend of experience in both ministry and business has allowed her to utilize every facet of her dynamic personality. Having spent years in the fashion industry working in commercials and print photography, founder and host of her own radio program, "The Mom Connection" as well as her strong involvement with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers), this versatile mother of four could not be more in touch with women and their needs.

Connie Wetzell is an award-winning radio personality, voice-over artist, author, and speaker. Published works and collaborations include The Healing Word of God, Women at the Well with LIFE Outreach International, God's Survival Guide and God's Survival Guide for Women.

Carla Sue Nelson worked in the Christian publishing industry, and garnered national and international media exposure for some of the world's most popular Christian authors and ministry leaders including Max Lucado, John MacArthur, Beth Moore, Sheila Walsh, Luci Swindoll, Patsy Clairmont, Henry Blackaby, Chuck Swindoll, TD Jakes and Paula White to name just a few. It was through her work with Connie Wetzell on The Healing Word of God and a PR pitch to Michelle Borquez of Shine Magazine that brought Carla into the picture for Live, Laugh Love Again.