an honest story in parts: love

i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (pause) i am married (full stop)

when i left my marriage, it was with the honest intention of never getting married again. i was married at 18 and couldn't imagine a man or a circumstance that would be compelling enough. and then due to the happy accident of locking myself out of the house, i met this guy:

without warning, i found myself loved. loved. even adored. and i found love (and cheesy, smooshy cornball feelings) oozing out of me. it was really the strangest thing. and the most unexpected, beautiful thing. my whole life i had heard it said at weddings that someone was 'marrying their best friend' and while i knew it was a lovely sentiment, i dismissed it entirely as romantic rhetoric, not something that could possibly be true or bear the weight of Real Life. 

but then, this guy. the week we met he bought tickets for us to see my favorite band with vip access (!) for a show that was 3 months away. i was delighted, to say the least, but also figured it was a waste of his money because the likelihood we'd still be seeing each other was slim to nil. i made him promise to leave them with me when we broke up. that was 3 years ago. 

there's a line in one of my favorite songs that says, 'you can be flawed enough, but perfect for a person'. i have no illusion that either of us is perfect, far from it, but our flaws are part of what make us perfect for each other. turns out i *did* marry my best friend... we adventure through the world together, actual partners. we have each others backs.  and our friendship does bear the weight of Real Life. negotiating the tentative relationship with my daughter, which was fraught and volatile for nearly a year. being laid off. buying a home together. a job that had me in tears and wiped any margin or lightness from my life. big financial realities. loss of relationships. quarantine. and those are just the big ones. despite the small stresses and pettiness-es of daily of life, evening still finds us on the couch, side by side, touching or holding hands, every night. i look at us and wonder how on earth we got so lucky as to even find each other - a girl from western canada and a boy from west virginia, meeting in north carolina. i have to shake my head at the miracle of it all. 

but here's the thing. i struggle even to write that all down. i hesitate to openly celebrate all the crazy love i get to give and am given. because i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (pause) i am married (full stop)

the guilt and shame of leaving my first marriage is an undercurrent in my life. it carved deep grooves in my bedrock, that are only now starting to smooth out. i feel like i ought not to be outspoken, or even overly cheerful, about being married to my partner, my best friend and my lover. i feel as though it is frowned up, even dismissed as temporary or unfounded, because i am divorced.... that it is seen as a second class second marriage.

i am totally willing to admit that may be entirely internal and that none of it is coming from people i know or the world around me, but that just makes it even more appalling. even if, especially if, i am the only one i am living apologetically toward, it's a cruelty to my relationship, my husband and myself.

i am the luckiest girl around. maybe there are whole swaths of people who have spent 6 months cooped up with one person and are totally blissful about it, but maybe it's just us. who knows. but i *do* know that i am loved, and i love him. and my life is better, fuller, happier, safer and more joyful because of him. and i am grateful - like super, crazy grateful. i didn't think anything even close to this could be real. i recently posted that i was not going to apologize that we are so damn adorable... and i think it's time i really meant it.

an honest story in parts: faith

i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (full stop)

this story isn't so much about those things as it is about the things that followed, and the things that have come together for me recently. things that are still more exploration than fact, more becoming than have become. 

i have a beautiful friend, Dylan (@the_dylanhill), who is a gay man who loves Jesus.

He recently posted this picture with the following caption: “I’m living proof that you can look like a street walker, and still love the Lord...” This is a funny quote that I say all the time. But it is such a true statement! This weekend I sat by this window in a hundred year old church. This church hasn’t had a congregation in a very long time, but looking out at the empty pews, God’s presence was still ever present. As it is in my life. I can’t tell you the number of times people have tried to dismiss both my love for him, and his love for me. Simply because of who I am, and how I present myself to the world. But here in this empty church, he whispered to my soul, a gentle reminder that we all come in different packages... some more abstract than others, all carrying different things, gracefully broken, and always loved by him. So yes, just like you, I’m living proof... "

what he wrote ricocheted around inside of me... "all carrying different things.. and always loved by him..." when i left my marriage, i lost all the things you hear about ... friends, dishes, the trust of my daughter...and i lost God. i was devoured by a firestorm of guilt and shame, my whole interior world reduced to ash. divorce, and divorcing a pastor no less, was a Sin with a capital S, and i knew that i had been abandoned by God. unable to return to the church i loved, i attempted, twice, to attend a church in the city that was vaguely familiar to me and that i knew i enjoyed. from the moment i sat in the pew, my eyes began to well up and by the end of the first song i was in full-blown tears. i didn't even make it to the sermon. i had the same experience going back a second time, and found myself crouched against the short wall of the parking lot, tears streaming down my face. i had no longer had any right to enter the presence of God... i had pinned the scarlet S on myself with both hands. it was over a year before i attempted church again. 

my friend ashleigh recently said to me quite matter-of-factly, ''you KNOW God looks after babies and fools." it's been over 4 years since i made the incredibly difficult decision to leave my marriage, but i grabbed onto that like a lifesaver, because even now the journey back toward some kind of faith is difficult and halting. and though it may not seem like it to an onlooker, i am still a girl who loves Jesus, and has her whole life. but i can no longer find comfort in prayer, though do sometimes in music. i struggle to connect, feel adrift, and have to look around my life for the beautiful things, the joy-giving things and point them out to myself saying, 'see - God loves you - he is still watching out for you.' but when we found out the roof needed to be replaced, my initial thoughts carried the underlying current of 'see! God has turned his back on you.'

it's as though i live in a schism inside myself - the faithless and the faithful, the daughter and the outcast, the beloved and unlovable. some days, sooty piece by sooty piece, i want to try to put the ashes back together. some days i don't... i seem to myself a lost cause. but i *want* to. i want to find my way back...no. i want to find my way forward.  not back to the girl i was. i have outgrown that girl and her small beliefs. i want to unearth the woman i have become, with all of her experiences and love and hurt and joy, and find God whose love is big enough to hold all of that. 

so i will hold on to the hope that i am a fool, looked after by God. and a gracefully broken human, loved by him. and i will keep trying to dig through the ashes to see what emerges, if anything...