The Importance Of Being Earnest

I've been a little hesitant to post something like this because I was afraid. But I've been learning lately the importance of doing things that scare you, or things you don't want to do, precisely because they are hard. If you don't want to do something productive or positive it can be an indicator that you need to do that thing. So excuse me if I wax personal, I guess I'm supposed to.

The other day I was reminded of a peculiar gift I received from my trials two years ago--how quickly the time has fled. The gift has been one of earnestness and authenticity. I can never again pretend to be "normal" whatever that means. It's actually impossible. Life made sure of it. I now have a label that I can never forget nor remove. I'm divorced. No amount of therapy or repentance or life coaching can change that label. But I'm fine with it. Let's examine the word. One definition is "a separation between things that were connected." Besides the obvious meaning, there are others. I'll get to that later.

Most people are actually very gracious when I tell them about my label. If anything they just don't know how to react. There are a few who I'm sure assume wrongdoing and stigmatize me and others in their mind. But it helps to remember that no one wants to be divorced. The attitude that I have adopted is that if people I meet want to stigmatize me then I guess I wasn't supposed to be associated with them anyway. If they would like to put themselves in a separate category and try to assign some sort of superiority to who they are, then let them.

I'd rather be down here with the bruised and the broken, with those who've loved and lost, with those who dared at one point to try, with those acquainted with failure, with those who have befriended despair and made disappointment their ally, with those who had the audacity to dream though it all came crumbling down somehow. The people here with me love much because they have been loved. The people I know here can forgive because they've been forgiven. People who know what I know can recognize light because they know its absence too well.

Call us what you will, except weak. Never that. We are strong because we have been broken. We persist precisely because we can. We hope and we love and we will fight because we know that God is real. We have come to know a greater measure of His son's suffering. We have felt a little of His anguish, a little of His emotional terror. We are acquainted with His grief because we have felt it and caused a little of it ourselves.

But more importantly we would die before we cause anyone else to feel what we have felt or go through what we have. We will tenaciously hang on because He did, never give up because He never did. We are filled with the quiet resolve and confidence of knowing that God is awake and with us through the fourth watch of the night. He is alive in the quiet confines of the heart. We are earnest and authentic because it is the right way to live; anything else would be petty superficiality. Lord knows there is enough of that in the world already. Take it from us, we know because we used to be that way too.

Those that judge and label may remain on their high horse. I'd rather be down here with those who can stand on their own feet and admit it when they are dirty and muddy from the long desperate roads they have traveled. And this is the second meaning of divorced: Separated from the dross, the pretense, the masks of perfection, and from all that was fake about ourselves. We are earnest now. More authentic to who we are. I am divorced from who I was before and I can't be anything else.

 
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