Today I am divorced.

It is difficult to reckon with the terrible fact, the conclusion of a decade-long struggle, that this is not how it is supposed to go.  As a child I swore I would never do this, seeing how the lives of my grade-school classmates were affected.

Sometimes people ask “what happened?” as if there is a definite event, an affair, an addiction, an outright betrayal.  It was nothing like that.  No one cheated.  It isn’t as easy as pointing to a singularity and walking away with hands clean.  Sometimes the response is “well, you did the best you could” or “at least there are no children involved.”  But these are not justification.

The reckoning becomes harder.  Working backward, at every turn I see my own sin in the way I shut down, closed up, gave in, and trudged on, because it was easier than confronting the truth.  I see my selfishness in continuing to grieve for lost dreams, opportunities, and desires after giving them up to maintain a peace.  I see my foolishness in dismissing the best advice I ever received before I married, believing that if I just push ahead, I can make anything happen, and it will all work out . . . somehow. I see the poor example to an entire family of what Lutherans believe and do, and failure as a role model to two teenage nephews.  There is nothing I can do to fix this.

Is it possible that when two people have radically different understandings of Christianity, and neither can call the other a Christian, all the other problems in a marriage can be unraveled and set right?  What a person believes doesn’t just stay in their head.  It filters down into the way lives are lived, others are treated, expectations, virtually every aspect of life.  Without a common confession, a common understanding of sin, a common understanding of how our sin does get fixed, problems arise.  A better man may have been able to endure, but I could not.

Hard pressed by trial, beaten to my knees, choking on dirt, unable to stand on my own, I leave this at the foot of His cross.  All of it. There, His blood washes me.  I can’t fix it.  But He did, and still does.  Every Sunday I confess my sins and receive the absolution from my pastor, in the stead and by the command of Christ himself.  At the rail, I put His body and blood in my mouth and consume them with the promise and forgiveness that they bought for me.  And I remember my baptism, received as a powerless helpless infant by sprinkling of water, marking me as His.  I rest entirely on our Heavenly Father’s infinite mercy on account of Christ’s perfect sacrifice for . . . me.  And I should never want to stand again.

If a long life can be divided into seven dozens of years, I am near the end of the third part.  Temporal consequences will remain.  Forgiveness doesn’t erase the fact of what has happened and what I did.  But in His time, this too will be fixed.

A few years ago, a friend suggested I listen to Issues, Etc.  This radio program features a wide range of topics from theology and bible study to current events and social issues within a confessional Lutheran framework.  I began to learn the deficit of my catechesis, and began to learn again not only what I believe, but why I believe it.  I began to identify and discard the junk the world had taught me, all the stuff I had picked up along the way out of convenience, or adopted in order to go along and get along.  I began to understand what is important and what is not.  I began to understand what I could not compromise on.  At the time of my separation I concluded that the only product of my marriage was that I was driven to this understanding of faith by it.  I supposed that she was to thank for this.

Three months later, I short note advised me to “check out Formula of Concord XI.48ff in the Solid Declaration, Book of Concord.”  Article XI is about God’s eternal foreknowledge and election.  For context, here are 45-49.

45           This doctrine also provides the excellent, glorious consolation that God was greatly concerned about the conversion, righteousness, and salvation of every Christian.  He so faithfully <provided for it> that even before the foundation of the world was laid, He considered it, and in His purpose ordained how He would bring me to salvation and preserve me in salvation.  46 He wanted to secure my salvation so well and so certainly, since through the weakness and wickedness of our flesh salvation could easily be lost from our hands, or through the devil’s and the world’s craft and might it could be snatched and taken from us.  Therefore, He ordained in His eternal purpose what cannot fail or be overthrown.  He placed salvation for safekeeping in the almighty hand of our Savior, Jesus Christ, from which no one can snatch us (John 10:28).  47 Therefore, Paul asks in Romans, because we “are called according to His purpose” (8:28), who “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”? (8:39).

48           Furthermore, this doctrine provides glorious consolation under the cross and amid temptations.  In other words, God in His counsel, before the time of the world, determined and decreed that He would assist us in all distresses.  He determined to grant patience, give consolation, nourish and encourage hope, and produce an outcome for us that would contribute to our salvation.  49 Also, Paul teaches this in a very consoling way.  He explains that God in His purpose has ordained before the time of the world by what crosses and sufferings He would conform every one of His elect to the image of His Son.  His cross shall and must work together for good for everyone, because they are called according to God’s purpose.  Therefore, Paul has concluded that it is certain and beyond doubt that neither “tribulation, or distress,” neither “death nor life,” or other such things “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (See Romans 8:28, 29, 35, 38, 39.)

Consolation indeed.  It is He who has used my condition to form me.  And so I go forward with patience and discernment, for His purpose.