{"id":893,"date":"2012-10-03T16:31:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T20:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=893"},"modified":"2012-10-17T10:30:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T14:30:47","slug":"amy-lauras-3-apocryphal-rules-of-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=893","title":{"rendered":"Amy Laura\u2019s 3 Apocryphal Rules of Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March, 2011, I separated from my husband of twenty-one years, and I hosted a national, interfaith conference on torture. \u00a0This week, as it happens, while working to complete a special issue about torture for the journal Muslim World<\/em>, I have received several messages from former students asking for suggestions about preaching on divorce. \u00a0The lectionary that United Methodists share slots Mark 10: 2-16 as our Gospel this Sunday and, in this passage, Jesus explicitly prohibits divorce. \u00a0His words are so stark that the disciples query him again in private; surely they had misheard him? \u00a0Jesus explains that anyone who remarries after divorce commits adultery.<\/p>\n

If I were preaching this Sunday, I would concentrate on Psalm 8:4. \u00a0What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?<\/em> \u00a0Isn\u2019t that too gorgeous to pass up? \u00a0I could tie it to World Communion Sunday (also October 7) and also to the anti-torture movement! \u00a0\u00a0But . . . would that be chickening out? \u00a0Dang it.<\/p>\n

Alongside my scholarly writing, I have been sketching a not-too-pious book about the indignity of divorce: \u201cBad Reputation: How Joan Jett and Jesus Saved Me.\u201d \u00a0That little project is thanks to a brave former student, who pushed me to write more real words like the ones I wrote the day I officially separated (Ash Wednesday, 2011). \u00a0[Link<\/a>, please, to Eating Chocolate for Lent<\/a>.] \u00a0She is also a United Methodist minister, and this entry is for her. \u00a0I am NOT (Dear. Lord.) recommending that preachers use this scrap as a sermon guide. \u00a0But it might be helpful to people who will be seething or weeping (or both) after worship this week.<\/p>\n

You can read these rules backwards or forwards, depending on your mood.<\/p>\n

RULE #1<\/strong>: Going to church during divorce sucks<\/strong>.<\/em> \u00a0At least it did for me. \u00a0I knew I had to put one foot in front of the other on Sunday, and go, even though the smell of the place nearly made me hurl. \u00a0Don\u2019t get me wrong. \u00a0Trinity UMC, Durham does not stink. \u00a0But stench is in the nose of the beholder (or whatever) and that little part of my brain that connects smell with memory linked grief with hymnals and anger with candles. \u00a0I was stubbornly determined not to lose my church home, but I also hated going. \u00a0I tried distracting my brain with knitting, needle-point, and cloying perfume. \u00a0The smell is easier to stomach now. \u00a0Other parts are still hard. \u00a0Walking into church as a divorc\u00e9 feels like entering holy space as an icon of brokenness, or as a road-sign to chaos. \u00a0Another mom sighed to me that divorce seems like a \u201csparkly, pretty thing\u201d to people who are struggling. \u00a0Maybe some Christian women see a divorc\u00e9 as a temptation towards the other side, towards a new life without the daily negotiations of greasy laundry, grocery shopping and dog poop removal. \u00a0In all honesty, I remember reacting with wounded self-righteousness when a revered mentor and her much-beloved husband divorced at Yale. \u00a0If they couldn\u2019t make it, for God\u2019s sake, how were we supposed to? \u00a0I had taken a miserably private misery and selfishly wrote it onto my own problems. \u00a0Knowing that my failed marriage now serves as a lure or as a discouragement (or whatever the heck else), inspires me these days to imagine myself rather majestically as Hester Prynne. \u00a0I embroider the large letter D written on my body with blond highlights and wedge-heels. \u00a0But this has all nearly driven me nuts.<\/p>\n

RULE #2<\/strong>: Your post-divorce self will scare your friends.<\/strong> <\/em>\u00a0At least I scared my friends. \u00a0I scared myself. \u00a0Marriage, even a good one, involves adapting to fit together with a partner. \u00a0Torn out of the twisted yin\/yang of a tough marriage, I tried to recover the me that is me apart from the married-me. \u00a0And the parts of me that had endured were the most tenaciously quirky parts. \u00a0The aspects of myself that had not dissolved into the marriage were the weirdly indissoluble ones. \u00a0The me that had chosen Cinderella shoes and a parasol when, as a kid, my grandma took me to K-mart for a toy. \u00a0The me that had scandalized my mother by wearing a lace bikini at church camp and frightened the Methodist counselors by dancing to Rock Lobster. \u00a0The me who is (in my own father\u2019s words) \u201cboy crazy.\u201d \u00a0The me who loves running around the track and, when faced with injustice, loves running my loud mouth. \u00a0(I had paraphrased Mao for my 1990 speech at Emory\u2019s graduation, for goodness sake.) \u00a0After my separation, the brazen me I found confused just about everyone who had come to know me as a decently respectable mother and scholar. \u00a0And, I confused myself. \u00a0I had dealt with trouble at home by working really, really hard \u2013 by pouring myself into reading and writing and teaching and organizing. \u00a0But that part of my brain had been fried from overuse. \u00a0The means by which I had come to justify my existence on this earth \u2013 as a kind, married, working mother, failed me. \u00a0I was unproductive, intolerant, and unkind to the sorts of people with whom I had been previously patient. \u00a0And, anyone who reminded me that I was supposed to be against \u201cwork\u201d and instead all about God\u2019s grace? \u00a0I wanted to bite them. \u00a0But what scared me most was that boy crazy part. \u00a0As one friend put it, most people do not get a divorce while engaged in a fulfilling sex life. \u00a0One distinguished church leader put it to me more bluntly. \u00a0\u201cAmy Laura, you will probably have sex with a man you didn\u2019t plan to have sex with.\u201d \u00a0No, I replied, I probably won\u2019t. \u00a0\u201cAmy Laura, you probably will.\u201d \u00a0No, I don\u2019t think so. \u00a0\u201cAmy Laura, go ahead and forgive yourself now, because you will.\u201d \u00a0Jesus.<\/em><\/p>\n

RULE #3<\/strong>: \u00a0No one understands you.<\/strong> <\/em>\u00a0Well, that is a bit extreme. \u00a0Divorce is like pregnancy, maybe, in that everyone has some experience, of some sort, with divorce, or once read a book about someone who went through a divorce, or whatever. \u00a0And every cultural discourse has something to say about marriage and divorce. \u00a0Divorce is also like a little snowflake of arsenic: every divorce is uniquely poisonous. \u00a0As I tried to hear and sort through all the advice that came my way, I eventually came to understand something they probably teach in CPE 101 (which I never took). \u00a0Every friend, family member, and stranger in the check-out line saw my situation through their own particular desires, hopes, and fears. \u00a0I came to appreciate the time I had spent enduring weird reactions to my daughter\u2019s adoption. \u00a0People sometimes don\u2019t have any clue what to say, so they try to say something, and it was my job to learn how to respond with a smile, and forgiveness. \u00a0(Rather than biting them.) \u00a0One divorced woman who has been through a boatload of pain in her life told me that divorce was the loneliest thing she had ever gone through. \u00a0This rings true to me. \u00a0Which may run blessedly counter to this RULE, right? \u00a0Regarding the scariest part of divorce for me, dating, advice ranged from \u201cyou HAVE to wait a year, because you are UNFIT to inflict yourself on anyone\u201d (true words, and, maybe true also) to \u201cyou need a rebound fling now, to cleanse your palate!\u201d \u00a0But the very, very trickiest part of everything was the darned temporal thing. \u00a0People who had read some random book or another about divorce gave me timelines of supposed reassurance. \u00a0\u201cIt will take about a month for every year you were married,\u201d for example. \u00a0Sigh . . . \u00a0People who had lived through grief kept repeating more vaguely \u201ctime heals.\u201d \u00a0Time heals. \u00a0Time. \u00a0Heals.<\/em> \u00a0Turns out that they are right. \u00a0But I still want one of those swanky time-travel machines from Dr. Who. \u00a0I want to flip off time and skip ahead to the easy part. \u00a0Please?<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe preaching on Psalm 8 isn\u2019t such a bad idea after all . . . Don\u2019t skip the Gospel reading, but maybe focus on Psalm 8. \u00a0For, Jesus suffers us to come to him, as God is ever mindful of even me and you.<\/p>\n

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In March, 2011, I separated from my husband of twenty-one years, and I hosted a national, interfaith conference on torture. \u00a0This week, as it happens, while working to complete a special issue about torture for the journal Muslim World, I have received several messages from former students asking for suggestions about preaching on divorce. \u00a0The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-ethics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-ep","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}