This weekend has been tough. The first weekend since I was told that our marriage was over. The first weekend to face the absence of our normal weekend routines. No more weekend morning trips to Spielman’s for coffee and bagels. New routines will have to be found (they didn’t happen this weekend for sure). Instead I spent it packing up some of her remaining things and putting them in the garage until she moves them too. Church was really difficult this morning. With rare exception she had been by my side since I moved back to Portland. The Rector talked about prayer in her sermon. How it is central to everything. How it can be hard to do…but also how it can be hard to receive for some people (including herself). As hard as being there was this morning, I knew it was exactly where I was supposed to be. Surrounded by the prayers of the congregation whether they were for me and this situation or something completely different.
This is painful. It hurts. I’ve been shaken to my core. Like I mentioned in my last post…I didn’t see this storm coming until it was already surrounding me. One place I went for comfort today was a book from the Irish poet John O’Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us. I’ve used this book of blessings many times over the years. For weddings, for thanksgivings, and for prayer. The last section of the book is “Beyond Endings“. He talks in the introduction to the section how endings seem to lie in wait. How we can feel ambushed by them because we are too focused on the present to see the approaching ending. He talks about the contrast between the innocence and joy of how beginnings initially unfold and the soreness and protrusion of endings. Endings can quietly and irreversibly build within something, strengthening its grip on finality during each stage. When I look back on these last two months…I can see these things in greater focus now. Today, I’ve been reflecting and sitting with this blessing:
For the Breakup of a Relationship
Now you endeavor
To gather yourself
And withdraw in slow
Animal woundedness
From love turned sour and ungentle.
When we love, the depth in us
Trusts itself forward until
The empty space between
Becomes gradually woven
Into an embrace where longing
Can close its weary eyes.
Love can seldom end clean;
For all the tissue is torn
And each lover turned stranger
Is dropped into a ruin of distance
Where emptiness is young and fierce.
Time becomes strange and slipshod;
it mixes memories that felt
The kiss of the eternal
With the blistering hurt of now.
Unknown to themselves,
Certain small things
Touch nerve-lines to the heart
And bring back with color and force
All that is utterly lost.
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
This weekend has been tough. But I’ve got a community praying for me. I’ve got an army behind me. I’ve been given so much love and strength by friends, family, and strangers over the past few weeks. They’ve given me a place to cry, a place to vent, and a shoulder to hold on to. You are all there to help guide me through this storm and get me to the calm sea.
Thank you more than I could ever say.
