Divorce for me (definitely not for everyone) is the equivalent of being Hester Prine in “The Scarlet Letter.” It feels as if I have a big “D” on my shoulder for everyone to see. It means that I failed. It means that I didn’t have enough faith to persevere through the difficult times. It means that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, thin enough…you get the picture. And y’all, I do plenty wrong but I have always tried hard to do the right thing no matter what. And this was a BIG failure…although I now know that it was not my failure.

All of that combines together to create a whole lot of insecurity in the identity I had created for myself. Much to my dismay, I realized that my identity wasn’t some wonderful life filled with God; my identity was something that I had made up. I thought that I was an unwavering Believer who loved God with everything I had…but when coming face to face with the truth, I realized that wasn’t my truth.

Although my self-made identity was off a bit, I definitely do have a close walk with God. There is no way possible that I could be functioning at this point if I didn’t have that walk. Maybe one day I’ll blog about all of the “coincidences” that have occurred time and time again since February 4th of 2018.

The yucky part of coming face to face with reality is that I now recognize that I have hidden places of my heart where I have held people and ideas higher than God’s word. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t believe in God or trust Him; it means that my view was sometimes blocked by whatever was in my brain at the time.

Some of the questions that I am beginning to process are:

1 – Does being divorced have to define me?

2 – What am I going to do about these hidden pieces of my heart?

3 – Do I want to hold onto the horrifying past or do I want to use it as a springboard for the future?

4 – What do I want my story to be? **Funny Fact: My very first thought/prayer after finding out and confronting Code Red about his secret life was, “PLEASE GOD, don’t let this be my story. And even if it does end up being my story, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t ask me to use it.”

**I call him Code Red so that I remember to never, ever let my guard down around him. He cannot be trusted.

I could give you a reasonable answer to all of these questions…however, to truly examine my heart and move forward, I have to ponder and wrestle with each one. (FYI-the next few posts may be a bit heavy  as I lay the foundation for my movement forward.)

The truths that I cling to are: God is good. God is faithful. God is present. God cares.