Blindsided By Betrayal, Grappling Past Grief

Hardly a day different in all your experience,
So normal it is you were actually bored,
Then they come in and blindside you,
And suddenly you’re shifted,
From where you’ve been moored.

You land in a grief so poignantly blue,
Where uncertainties of fact are so horribly true.
Grappling, groaning, weeping inside,
You cannot seem to find a way not to hide,
It seems to take an age to find your way through,
But don’t lose hope for God to make you new.

“You shouldn’t have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn’t know.”
~ Frances (recently divorced), Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

Recovering from divorce is a complex process. It is a grief all its own – betrayal, loss, confusion of identity, rejection, inferiority, and more, all rolled into one.

No wonder a person who has just lost not only their marriage, but their best friend and soul mate, and the father or mother of their children, all in one foul swoop.

When we have been blindsided by betrayal, there is a certain level of vulnerability that just becomes us. This vulnerability either exposes us in ways that makes us uncomfortable or we approach vulnerability like it’s a breath of fresh air – it liberates us.

Recovering from something as heinous as divorce is compromised only by the fear to tread. Somehow, as we stride through the day, some days worse than others, and some just horrendous, we are given ideas and strength for boldness. It is up to us.

But the confusion of those days where we are immobile is too much, and days for bed and sofa and the garden are what they are.

There is always a reframing that occurs when we have been so betrayed that we have found ourselves to stop believing in goodness and faithfulness.

In recovery we have hopefully found that recounting the reasons to trust was vital in getting back into the saddle. Somehow the cost of staying as we are is overcome by the benefit of taking that risk.

Recovery – grappling past grief – is indicated when there is an embracing of risk that is based in the fruit of the Spirit; joy, peace, goodness, love, etc.

***

Divorce can, and often does, break us. But being broken is not the end. It’s often the very beginning. Somehow, something emerges in us that is pliable and compassionate and kind. Sometimes the end beckons in a new beginning.

We can, and need to, hold on, in faithful perseverance.