Life On The Outside
I found Sarah's comment about my being 'naked' in my last blog entry intriguing. Of the maybe three or four people who read this blog, only one knows me personally. So how naked am I, really? One of the nice things about blogging is that you can easily retain your anonymity and thus enjoy greater freedom to put some real depth and grittiness to your musings. If you are lucky enough to have a readership, then the feedback can be both cathartic and encouraging while diminishing the risk of shame.

That aside, Sarah's comment reminded me of something that I've been avoiding for the past few weeks. I've been asked by the fellow who leads my Sunday morning group fellowship to consider sharing my 'testimony'. For those of you not familiar with the phrase, one's testimony is basically your story, given with an emphasis on how Jesus saved you from your sins/road to destruction. In particular, this guy and I have been talking about how I came back to the Lord after 9 years of apostasy. I believe it's his hope that I will be able to weave a story not unlike that of the Prodigal Son.

I'm not so convinced, however, that my story is ready to tell to that audience. Part of it is that I am still really struggling with some of the results of life choices I made during those years. Another part of it is that I am not sure I have truly left it all behind.

But it is a story that I've decided I want to tell. I'm just not sure how to go about. So given my relative anonymity in this little slice of cyberspace, I've decided to go for it. Sarah, get ready for some real nakedness. No, not pictures! Sheesh! I'm trying to have a literary moment here, not make people ill.

To my friend who shall remain nameless, I beg forbearance and an open mind.

I had composed a few paragraphs of backstory, but decided that would bog down the narrative.
Suffice it to say that the title of this post comes from my lifelong feelings of alienation, isolation, abandonment and rejection. I've struggled to find acceptance and significance from those important to me for as long as I can remember. As for my history coming up in my family of origin, I will only say that I did not learn how to be in a loving, respectful relationship.
Now on to the story.

A little over ten years ago, my life was in a downward spiral of doom that would continue for the next eight months. I had just been fired from a job that I hated. My marriage of just over eight years was in a shambles. We had just finished having four children together in less than 5 years' time -- the oldest being 5 and the youngest only 7 months. And I was still recovering from the debilitating effects of a marijuana addiction that I had, with God's help, shaken about 18 months prior. Up to that point, I had not made much more than 20K a year in any of the food and social service positions I had held since my graduation from college with a 3.8 GPA.

Now it would be easy to conclude from the prior paragraph that I was just a victim of my circumstances, but I want to dispel that straightaway. There was only one thing that was going that I did not seem to be able to bounce back from -- my failing marriage. V. was the love of my life. I fell for her the instant I laid eyes on her, and the depth of feeling and desire I had for her is something I've never since experienced. Unfortunately, I was, and still am, a deeply flawed human. I could not seem to put aside my addiction in time to focus on showing her every day just how deeply she had gotten into my soul. And once I did, there was too much damage done.

Moreover, I was unable to cope with the intensity of my feelings, sorrow and desperation in knowing that I had lost my soulmate. And so I became a raging idiot, saying anything I could think of to stop the pain -- to make her stop stabbing me in the heart with her disapproval and rejection.

I still remember the day the other shoe dropped -- September, 21, 1994. We sat in the office of a therapist, and as V. rattled off all the horrible names I had called her during our many arguments, the counselor looked me in the eye and asked, "Is this true? Is this the kind of thing that goes down?" When I answered in the affirmative, she shot back, "That's abuse, and it has to stop. We can't do conjoint therapy as long as this kind of behavior is going on. You need to go into a group for batterers in order to get this under control."

Game over.

Batterer? I never so much as raised my hand to this woman I loved so much, but now I was a batterer? I could go on and on debating this, and I did back then. But it's irrelevant. That's how she saw me now, and as the counselor related the bleak recovery statistics to V, I could feel it all slipping away.

We had been attending church and having fellowship with other believers for several years, and there is no doubt that God did a lot to heal me during that time. As I mentioned before, I was delivered from my desire to smoke weed in early '93 by virtue of a prayer I said with a men's Bible study I had been attending for several months. Prior to that, I had seen the Lord move in several instances to provide jobs and housing and finances during very difficult times. And even at the time of the marital collapse, God was continuing to direct me towards the career in IT that has been so rewarding and successful.

And so, I really believed that God would take care of this as well. And that my brothers and sisters in Christ would rally around us and encourage me and pray with me, and the Lord would make everything all right. But that's not what happened.

Batterer.

Abuser.

As V went amongst our fellowship armed with these new labels asking for them to support HER, I had a sub-conscious recognition that she had found her way out. Implicit in that realization was another that she found living with me unbearable, and THAT I could not take. So instead of our congregation coming together to support a marriage in trouble, I found them arrayed against me in a way that I found very threatening and discouraging. To be fair, I'm sure that some of these folks were trying to exhibit tough love towards me. In fact, 3 of them agreed to meet with me to discuss the situation and pray with me every week.

On the surface, the battle devolved into a theological dispute over whether one spouse's angry rantings justified the other spouse's ending the marriage (her position), or whether divorce for any reason other than infidelity was disobedience to God (my position). At a deeper level, however, it was really only about my perception that I was being utterly abandoned despite my best efforts and desperate prayers. That unending feeling of rejection drove me to the brink of insanity over the next 6 months. Every outburst was magnified, every failure to meet an unspoken need was viciously condemned, and everyone just plain gave up on me, including me.

One day I just snapped. V had just finished up a run of acting in a play in the city the previous night, and wanted to sleep in. I wanted to talk. I told her how I was feeling like everyone was rejecting me, and she just said something to the effect that that was what I deserved. From the depths of my being, a howling arose raging against the 'fact' that I was so personally deficient that no one wanted me in their lives, and I found myself on top of her screaming into her face, "You mean like my mother? LIKE MY FUCKING MOTHER!!!!"

Then V punched me as hard as she could in the jaw. I barely felt it, but it was the final act of ultimate rejection, accompanied by the vicious spitting of her invectives back into my face. Then I was on the floor howling like I imagine the Gerasene demonic must have when under the control of Legion. I remember my daughter in the doorway crying, but most of it is just a surrealistic blur.

I left that day at her request and never returned. In the days, weeks and months that followed, my anger and bitterness grew towards God. I couldn't believe that He hadn't helped me out of my insanity. Or softened V's heart enough to see how hard I was trying. Or how my efforts, unsuccessful as they were, were a true reflection of my love for her. Instead, she and her 'Christian' friends threw me into the streets and took away my children.

And how I blamed God.

Next: Life In the Wilderness

- posted by The Drake @ 2:44 PM