When a marriage ends, the pain is palpable. It feels as though someone has died. Every first feels like a last: The first time we slept apart. The first time it hit me that we’ll never have children together. The first time we talked on the phone without saying I love you.
No one plans for this.
On the day we married, we imagined our life together would last forever. We were — and still are — utterly in love, but time has changed things. There’s no longer an “us.” Our hearts are breaking for each other and for ourselves.
Anaïs Nin said, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.”
While things have been tarnished for some time, there’s no blame, no anger. Just countless tears and many questions. What happens now?
People say God will never give you more than you can handle, though I’m not convinced of the truth of that statement.
As I pray for strength for both of us, I weep. The loss of our marriage is painful to bear. It shrouds us both in a sadness we’ve never before faced.
Change in life is inevitable, and our heartache will be healed in time. But for now, we are forced to face it, to sit with it as one sits with the dying.
Megan, my heart breaks for you and Aaron. Several years after surviving my divorce, while I was working on my recovery, I was blessed to with a pastor who’s wife was dying of cancer, after a several year battle. One beautiful sunny afternoon, weeks after she had passed away, he and I talked about the loss of a spouse, and of a dream. He said that, as much as it hurt to lose his wife to cancer, he thought it would be even more painful had he lost her to divorce. Take care of yourself. And don’t ever try to minimize your sense of loss.
So sorry to hear this news… prayers to you both.
Megan,
I’m so sorry to hear this news. I will be sending healing rays and rainbows of love.
I absolutely agree that the trite “God never gives you more than you can handle,” saying so often feels like bullshit. But I heard some thing in the Fellowship the other day that rings more true to me: “God never gives you more than the two of you can handle together.”
You’re moving through the crucible of transformation. It’s never easy, but you are going through it so beautifully.