So I know my own moniker points at the faith aspect of my life, and I know I've posted plenty in the past about Jesus. I also know I haven't blogged a whole lot about it in the past few months. I guess I feel I should offer an explanation.
I don't know where I stand with God.
I still fully and completely believe in Him, and pray every day, thanking Him for everything I've been given. I pray for my children, they pray for me. I sing scripture over them almost every night.
But I don't go to church. I stopped about six weeks ago.
Church has become a place of isolation and misery. Everywhere I look, it is family after family. Husbands, wives, children. We do NOT fit that mold. No, we are the broken family. We are the ones who "failed". Nevermind that it was The Bear who failed. It is the children and I who pay for it, if we wish to remain in the community of believers. The church loves to tell us about fathers who love their children (as a model of the Heavenly Father), which hurts my children because they are fatherless.
That Guy and I were discussing it the other day, how unwelcome we feel in the Christian community. How both of us have been told by numerous pastors that we must forever wait, bound by our marriage oaths, for our spouses to return. They never address the question I know we've both posed: What are we supposed to do if our spouses have remarried?
And in my case, I am bearing burdens I can't bear much longer by myself. Are they telling me then that because The Bear broke his promise to us, I and my children must suffer alone? That to find someone else would be sinful? Yes, I know that God will never give us more than we can bear. I have heard this time and time again. I also keep coming back (yep, you knew it was coming) to a Morrissey song:
Why did you give me so much desire
When there is nowhere I can go to offload this desire?
And why did you give me so much love in a loveless world
When there is no one I can turn to
To unlock all this love?
And why did you stick me in self deprecating bones and skin?
Jesus, do you hate me?
1 comment:
Marriage is a contract, a covenant, an oath, between three parties: a man, a woman, and an eternal God. If he breaks the contract (by remarrying), the contract is broken.
Jeremiah 3:1 and Deut 24:1-4 - after marrying someone else, he can hardly go back to his original wife. That contract is broken and destroyed.
Young children need a father. Furthermore - need a GOOD father. So many references in the Bible explain God to us by drawing an analogy with your earthly father, which places on the father the responsibility to represent God - a heavy duty, and yet no heavier than has been carried by men throughout the centuries. With the removal of a bad father, your four children have lost their example - a bad example - and gained nobody instead. A father-figure is important. (Now, this position can be filled by a man who does not actually _marry_ you - it's possible to be a god-father or uncle or somesuch and fill the same place - but it's hardly going to be the same.)
A father has to be older and wiser than "his" children, and able to lead in worship. A strong and loving leader of the household. I pray that you WILL find somebody who can fill that place.
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