So the next day I call my sister and announce, “I’ve decided I’m staying. I’m going to fight for this. I’m going to make this work.”
She says, “Okay. I am here and will walk beside you every step of the way.” I feel hopeful. Yes! This is the answer! But then I catch my reflection in the mirror and I think, No. It won’t work. Never. I can’t pretend. My hope disappears. I say to my sister, “Never mind. That’s not right either.”
She pauses and then says: “Maybe, for now, the only right decision is to stop making decisions.”
She’s right. She sees that I’m trying to fix my pain with certainty, as if I’m one right choice away from relief. I’m stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb my way out, the lower I sink. The only way to survive is to make no sudden movements, to get comfortable with discomfort, and to find peace without answers. I don’t know. The truth is that I just don’t know what will become of us.
There is only one strategy I can count on during this time, and it’s the same one that helped me get sober: Just Do the Next Right Thing, One Thing at a Time. I can never glimpse the end of the path, but if I squint hard, I can see the next step. The way I squint is to sit in the quiet for a few minutes every day, block out all the other well-meaning voices, and say, Give me today my daily bread. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but today, give me enough energy and wisdom and strength and peace to handle what comes. Help me ignore the big decisions, which will make themselves, and just help me focus on the small ones. And then, just for the day, I try to do what feels true, trusting that the next day I’ll be given a fresh batch of whatever tomorrow requires of me.
* * *
Day after day, the still, small voice insists that the next right thing is to stay away from Craig. I do not want this to be true. I want the voice to let us off the hook. But when I am quiet, my deepest wisdom insists that leaving Craig means staying with God and truth and light. Going back to Craig—using the security of our relationship to avoid my fear and loneliness—would be abandoning myself. Self-betrayal is allowing fear to overrule the still, small voice of truth. This is the only thing I cannot do. I can do the second hardest thing—leave Craig, face the crumbling of my family, try life alone—so that I don’t have to do the impossible thing: betray myself. If I want to know: Is there anyone on earth who won’t betray me? I must answer myself: Yes. Look in the mirror. She won’t betray you.
So my question in the quiet shifts from Will I ever be able to trust Craig again? to Will I be able to trust myself? This is the critical question. So I do the hard thing. I build trust with myself. I want to be the kind of person who will take care of me.
God and I know what to do, but my knowing wavers when I try to explain myself to others. When a friend asks, “What happened?” I want to pick up a crystal vase and smash it into the ground. That’s what happened, I’d say. The few times I try to tell the shattering as a story, I regret it. Spoken words make what happened to us too tidy, too palatable, too ordinary. I can’t describe the ferocity of the fear and rage inside me with words tame enough for the light of day. When I finish the telling, I want people to be as shocked and confused as I am. I want thunder to roll and mouths to drop open. But most often, the listener makes the pain harder for me by trying to make it easier for her.
If the receiver of my story is a Shover, she listens with nervousness and then hurriedly explains that “everything happens for a reason,” or “it’s darkest before the dawn,” or “God has a plan for you.” Standing inside the wreckage of my marriage is too uncomfortable, so she uses these tired platitudes like a broom to sweep my shattered life into a tidy pile she can sidestep. She needs me to move forward, to make progress, to skip through the hard parts and get to the happy ending. She needs to edit my story so that it fits inside her story about how good things happen to good people and life is fair and things tend to work out nicely in the end. I see what this is. This is an opportunity for greatness! The biggest challenges happen to the strongest people, after all! This will be a blessing, you’ll see. With these declarations, she puts her hands on my back and shoves me toward the door of hope. I don’t want to be shoved. I want to turn toward that door in my own time. But she can’t stand waiting, so she steps into the spotlight and becomes the hero of my story. I wither in the face of her optimism and clarity and slink offstage. Yeah. I guess you’re right. Everything happens for a reason.
If she is a Comparer, she nods while “listening,” as if my pain confirms something she already knows. When I finish she clucks her tongue, shakes her head, and responds with her own story. Comparers need to deflect my personal pain by refusing to accept that any of this is personal. So instead of making a new file for my story, she files me into some category for which she already has a reference. She tells me how we are the same, she and I, because she had a bad breakup in college. Or how actually, I am more like her friend Jody, who went through something “just like this.” So I find myself listening to a story about some lady named Jody—nodding, coo-ing, oh no-ing, poor Jody-ing. My hopelessness is too intense, so the Comparer’s strategy is to hijack the moment. Let’s make this about Jody—because dealing with you right now is too much to handle. And so I become just another story in a long line of stories and my family becomes just another family. My children become just like Jody’s poor children and my husband is just like Jody’s husband. But the paradox of pain is that it is only universal in retrospect. In the present, it is fiercely personal. In the immediacy of my fresh grief, I am nothing like Jody, and Jody’s pain is nothing like mine. But this is the Comparer’s show now and she insists it is all the same. Only special people have the right to grieve, and my story just isn’t all that special. She refuses to be surprised. This is nothing new. Just ask Jody.
The Fixer is certain that my situation is a question and she knows the answer. All I need is her resources and wisdom and I’ll be able to fix everything. She tells me that I just need to pray harder. I need to be more sexually available. I should leave. I have to stay. I really, really need to read this amazing book that worked miracles for her friend. The Fixer insists that there are definitive ways in and out of this mess, because to consider it random means that her life is also vulnerable to disaster. No, no, no. There is a foolproof marriage formula and her security is dependent on believing that Craig and I simply haven’t followed the formula. I don’t have the energy to tell her that I’ve attended the same conferences and read the same books she has. I do not have the heart to suggest that maybe life doesn’t respect the boundaries of our tidy formulas, and that knowledge is not a fortress that keeps out pain. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll be sure to read that book. Thanks.”
The Reporter seems far too curious about the details of the shattering. There is a line between concerned and excited, and the Reporter steps over it. She asks inappropriate, probing questions and her eyes glisten as she waits for the answers. She is not receiving my story, she is collecting it. I learn later that she passes on the breaking news almost immediately, usually with a worry or prayer disclaimer. “You guys, I’m so worried about Craig and Glennon. Did you hear what happened? Keep them in your prayers.” Our story is the only thing we have that is completely our own. A person who steals it and uses it to entertain is the worst kind of thief.
Then there are the Victims. A few people write to say they’ve heard my news secondhand and they are hurt I haven’t told them personally. They thought we were closer than that. As if grieving people, upon hearing their news, begin making lists in descending order of how close they are to everyone they know so they can disseminate information in an orderly, fair fashion. As if etiquette exists inside grief. As if mothers dealing with shattered families are mostly concerned with how their friends feel about their pain. Upon receiving messages from these Victims, I learn what the phrase “my blood turned cold” means.
And finally, there are the God Reps. They believe they know what God wants for me and they “feel led” by God to “sha
re.” Lord, have mercy.
A few months after we arrived in Naples, I filled out the kids’ back-to-school paperwork and realized I had no one to list as their emergency contact. All of that freedom we’d wanted so badly started to feel lonely. Who’d bring us a casserole if we got sick? Before we moved we’d been a part of a church that felt like our village, a place where adults’ faces lit up when they saw our kids, where we knew and loved their kids back. We missed it. We decided it was time to join a church, and we started attending one that advertised itself as young and hip. The first time we went, we were taken in by the coffee bar, rock band, and hundreds of young families who seemed like one big family. It felt like we could be folded in there. But gradually I began to feel less and less comfortable with the particular brand of comfort this church offered. For one, there weren’t any women in leadership, or people of color in attendance. There also seemed to be an underlying political agenda that was heavy on defending the majority’s rights and light on looking out for the poor and marginalized. The minister seemed more focused on the thriving of this institution than he was on the survival of those hurting beyond the institution’s walls. I knew this church wasn’t the right fit and planned to find a new one, but then Craig’s news hit and I needed the comforting warmth of the fold.
A few weeks after the separation, a woman I know only vaguely grabs my arm in the church hallway. I smile at her and she cocks her head to the side, wearing a sympathetic frown. Damnit, I think. Here we go.
“Can we talk?” she says.
No, I think. “Sure!” I say.
She begins, “Our Bible study heard what happened, honey, and we feel led to talk to you about the dangers of divorce. Divorce is simply not God’s plan for your family. We love your children like our own and we don’t want them to suffer. God’s preference is the nuclear family, and if you step outside of His umbrella of safety, He doesn’t promise to protect you, honey. God gave you to Craig as his helper. Your duty is to help him through this time. There are a few scriptures God laid on our hearts to share with you, if that’s okay.”
She rustles through her purse and I stare at her steadily while my insides explode with flashing lights, red flags, and fury. My fury is for every woman who’s been told by the church that God values her marriage more than her soul, her safety, her freedom. My fury is for every woman who has been taught that God is man and man is God. My fury is for every woman who has been told that her bad marriage is the cross upon which she should hang herself.
I hear myself say, “Excuse me. What is it that you think happened?”
“Well, you left, right?” While she waits for me to answer, her frown turns into a patronizing smile. I’ve never understood patronizing until this woman stands in front of me and insists that she doesn’t need to know what happened to me to know the best way forward. She doesn’t even want to know. It strikes me that more information is the last thing this institution wants women to have.
I look around at the walls of the church and it is as if, for a moment, the poison in this mine becomes visible to me. This woman is not speaking to me woman to woman; she is speaking to me as a representative of this institution. It is very important to this institution that she and I never know that there is a difference between leaving a man and leaving God. It needs us never to understand that there is a difference between submitting to God and submitting to patriarchy. So the secret that is kept under tight wraps in these places is this: God is the God of woman every bit as fiercely as God is the God of man. There it is. The keeping of that secret is poison. That’s why women stop singing here.
I look away, farther down the hall, and I see Tish in line with her Sunday school class. Tish sees me and her face lights up. In that instant, I realize I owe nothing to the institution of Christianity—not my health, not my dignity, not my silence, not my martyrdom. I do not answer to this place, I answer to God, to myself, and to the little girl in that line. None of us wants me to try to pass off cowardice for strength, willful ignorance for loyalty, codependence for love. That little girl doesn’t want me to die for her; she never asked to bear that burden. She wants me to live for her. She needs me to show her not how a woman pretends her life is perfect, but how a woman deals honestly and bravely with an imperfect life. She needs to learn from me that these four walls don’t contain God and that the people inside them don’t own God, that God loves her more than any institution God made for her. She will learn this only if I show her that I believe it myself. She will know this only if I know it first. She will learn her song only if her mother keeps singing.
The still, small voice inside me arises and says, Get the hell out of here. I turn back toward the woman, and my eyes fall upon a picture above her of Mary and baby Jesus. I find my words. “Why are you so certain that God prefers the nuclear family? Judging by that picture above you, God chose an unwed teen girl to be God’s mom. Maybe God has broader ideas of what constitutes a good family than this church does.”
Her eyes widen and she says nothing.
I continue, “I left Craig because I know the difference between right and wrong, not because I don’t. God and I talk every night, every morning, and sometimes every twenty minutes. Don’t you think God is more likely to speak directly to me about me than to you about me? Good luck to you and good-bye. My girl and I are leaving.” I gesture to Tish, and she runs out of line and into my arms. Her teacher asks her to return to the line and I smile and say, “No. I want her out of that line. She’s fine. She’s coming with me.” We both turn our backs and walk outside into the fresh air and sun. We hold hands and laugh. We walk to our van together and we bring God with us.
I never go back to that church, and I stop talking to anyone outside of my family about my marriage. I stop asking for advice and pretending I don’t know what to do. I do know what to do, just never more than one moment at a time. I stop explaining myself, because I learn that making decisions is never about doing the right thing or the wrong thing. It’s about doing the precise thing. The precise thing is always incredibly personal and often makes no sense to anyone else. God speaks to folks directly and one at a time, so I just listen and follow directions. And when I need to work anything out, I turn to the blank page. There, no one can steal my pain or try to poison my knowing, and there I always have the final word in my own story.
10
SLOWLY THE MONTHS PASS, and even though I will it not to, Christmas comes. It’s the first Christmas our family will spend in two homes instead of one. Craig and I are desperate to fake holiday cheer for the kids, so one night Craig delivers a tree. It is the ugliest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen—half-dead, droopy, and brown—a Florida tree. As he carries it inside, its brittle needles hit our tile floor like a steady rain. Craig makes hopeful, optimistic noises while arranging the frail branches and I allow my silence to speak for itself. I feel desperate to leave the room because the awkwardness is so painful. Even the Christmas music playing in the background sounds forced and hollow.
I ask the kids to begin unpacking the ornaments and I motion to Craig to follow me into the bathroom. We shut the door and he looks at me hopefully.
“I’m filing for divorce,” I say. “You need to know that I don’t intend to reunite. I am not in love with you. I don’t trust you. There is not much I know for sure right now, but I do know this: I can never, ever have sex with you again. Our marriage is over. This is over.”
Craig sits down on the edge of the bathtub, staring at me with wide eyes. His shoulders fall. He looks so tired. He rests his elbows on his knees and buries his face in his hands. He says nothing.
“I just got a Christmas card from a divorced friend,” I say, holding out the card for him to see. “Look. Look at this. She’s remarried to that guy. The husband is remarried to that woman. All their kids are there. They are all together on Christmas morning. We will be like that. We will never be the same, but we will find a way to be loving. We will forge a new, bigger family and we’ll give the kids a g
ood life.”
Craig is silent for another long moment and then he clears his throat and says, “I am not remarrying, Glennon. I am not moving on. I am never giving up. I don’t want that Christmas-card family. I want my family.” He is crying now. “I found a new therapist and I’m going twice a week, Glennon. I’m working so hard. I’m trying to make it better. I am going to become the man you and the kids deserve.”
“You should be in therapy and you should become the best man you can be—you owe that to yourself and to our children. They deserve to have an honest man for a father. But don’t do this work for me. If you do this for me you’re wasting all of our time. I’m done. I’m gone, Craig. I am never, ever coming back. You need to move on.”
He is bawling now. “Okay, Glennon. You go ahead and move on. Take care of yourself. I understand that you need to. But you can’t force me to. No matter what you do, I am not giving up. I am going to keep showing up every day and taking care of you and the kids because that’s all I know how to do. That’s who I am. You and the kids are all I have and all I want. If it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to keep trying to win you back. And if I don’t, it won’t be because I stopped trying. I will never stop trying.”
His tears do not soften me, they disgust me. His tears are too late. They are for himself, not for us. “Then you will be wasting your life, Craig.”
“It won’t be a waste. Even if it doesn’t work, it won’t be a waste. Fighting for you and the kids will never be a waste.”
“These words. They’re just words. You know that, right? They mean nothing. They mean nothing to me.”
“I know,” Craig whispers. “I know.”
We walk out of the bathroom together, smile for the kids, and decorate the tree.
* * *
One afternoon I open an e-mail from my friend Lynn. It says: “I got your message. I support your decision completely. How is life so far without him?”
Love Warrior Page 12