Author: ADivorceObserved

One day soon after we got married, as I was walking home from the university, I passed a small clothing boutique in the city center. “I think I’ll buy Ljubica something,” I thought to myself. I walked in. Two young clerks asked me what I was looking for. I told them that I had just gotten married and wanted to buy my wife something. They helped me pick out a nice striped sweater. The stripes where white, pastel blue, and pastel green.

I don’t remember if they wrapped it up for me or not. I do remember taking it home and giving it to Ljubica. After I gave it to her, she became very angry. She was livid, in fact. She said that she didn’t want it. She wanted to know why I had bought it. I told her that it was a just-because gift. It was a gift given because I loved her. She didn’t want to hear it. She said that she didn’t want it. She demanded to know where I had bought it. She demanded to know how much it had cost.

And then she made me go with her to the store to return it. Over there, returning merchandize is difficult boarding on impossible. Shop owners would rather never see you again than give you back your money. So it was no surprise that the same two clerks who had helped me not thirty minutes before told Ljubica that they could not accept the return and give her back the money. Ljubica then began to argue with them. “You will give us back our money!” she demanded, shouting. “Why?” they asked. “There is nothing wrong with the sweater.” “I don’t want it,” she argued. “Give me back my money.” Meanwhile, I stood by, silent, mortified, ashamed, scared, horrified.

And humiliated. The same young female clerks who with a twinkle in their eyes had helped me pick out the sweater, who had praised me for being so nice, who had said, “our husbands would never do this,” were being verbally accosted by Ljubica. My heart sank.

“We can’t take it back,” they said, trying to be reasonable. “We’ll get in trouble with our boss. He’ll fire us.” Ljubica demanded to talk to the owner. He wasn’t there, the clerks said, but they would call him. I still stood there, anxious and nervous. While we waited for him to come, a superficial calm prevailed in the store. Act I was over; what would Act II bring?

The owner arrived shortly. “What’s the problem?” he asked. “This woman wants to return this sweater that her husband just bought for her,” the clerks informed him. “We don’t accept returns,” he said. “I’m sorry; there’s even a sign on the door: ‘Returns not Accepted.’ ” Ljubica then began to argue with him. “You have to take it back!” she demanded. “Why?” “Because I don’t want it.” “That’s no reason,” he said. Back and forth they went, neither giving way, until finally the owner offered a compromise: store credit. Ljubica reluctantly accepted the offer. The sweater was returned, a receipt was written up, and we left.

We said nothing on the way home. I would not have known what to say in any case. We never spoke of the event. Later, Ljubica bought a dress there with her store credit that she wore at her graduation ball.

I didn’t stop buying Ljubica gifts. But I never walked into a store after that to buy her a present without experiencing a similar sinking feeling of humiliation rising in my chest. “What will she do when I give her this,” I would think with trepidation. “How will she respond?”

This memory has been haunting my thoughts for the past two weeks. I think about it at least once a day. It is immediate and fresh but with a dream like quality. I am not an outside observer, seeing myself, but I am actually there in the store. I am standing by a rack of clothing, half-hidden from Ljubica and the clerks. I watch them argue. I watch the owner come in. I watch the receipt being written. I am somehow invisible, my generosity lost and forgotten in the storm of Ljubica’s rage. Her words are imprecise, as are the clerks’ and the owner’s. But my emotions churn in my gut. My heart sinks and my countenance, once lifted by the clerks’ praise, falls. Shame, humiliation, and anger pervade my soul.

This happened fourteen years ago, but it can feel more real than last Tuesday.

Ljubica and her family have withheld the fact of the divorce from her mother. I don’t know why but it certainly is evidence of sickness and dysfunction in her family.

Just now Ljubica asked me for the fourth time for permission to take the kids to her home country during spring break. (She can’t take them without my consent.)

She wants them to be with her when she tells her mother about the divorce. She has said to me that having them there will make her telling her mother about the divorce easier. She has said that their presence will also make her mother hearing about the divorce easier, too.

This aberrant perspective is sufficient to justify me reasonably withholding my consent. It is certainly sick and dysfunctional to presume that a ten-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy should be used to make anything easier for an adult. In fact, the issue is not one of use; it is rather one of abuse. Children need to be kids. They do not need to be not support crutches for their mothers or grandmothers.

I am withholding my consent to protect the children.

So, I am becoming Catholic. The reasons for this change are many; I will not use this blog post to delve into the details. I will say this, however: one of the reasons has to do with geography and resources. The town I lived in before had 120,000 people and at least thirty-three Christian Churches. Chicago has six. Four of them are on the south side. One of them is weird. The sixth is the one I had to leave. If I still lived where I did before, I don’t think that I would be becoming Catholic right now. The help and resources I need would be readily available within my old tradition.

When I was in seminary, my professors emphasized the notion of “local” and “contextual” theology. The idea was that communities of faith had to develop and own their own understanding of faith and practice. The role of a minister was to facilitate this development. He (and in our tradition it is invariably a he) was not to impose theology “from above.”

This is just another way of saying, I suppose, that the experience of faith is local in the sense that it is particular and largely individual. To be particular, then: other peoples’ experience of Bret can be good; mine was not. They are free to stay; I was made unwelcome. In this sense, the large number of excellent ministers from within my tradition who live in Tennessee doesn’t really matter. I’m not there. They can’t help. The resources that are available through one of the flagship universities of my old tradition are inaccessible to one who lives in Chicago. For all intents and purposes, all I have is my individual experience of a local congregation and its minister from my old tradition in the place where I live now. Nostalgia for another time and place will not provide for the spiritual needs of me or my children. I must find the resources we need where we are.

I admit that so far what I have written is an answer to the question, Why not my old tradition? It is not an answer to the question, Why become Catholic? As I wrote before, I’m not going to delve into the details. This blog is primarily about my experience of domestic violence at the hands of my ex-wife. Talking about becoming Catholic here needs to tie into that purpose.

To that end, I am offering the following quotes from “When I Call for Help: A Pastoral Response to Domestic Violence against Women.” This document was released by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Note that I have altered the quotes slightly by replacing the word “women” with “intimate partners” or “partners” because the document is applicable to both male and female victims of domestic violence. I have also made some of the text bold.)

As pastors of the Catholic Church in the United States, we state as clearly and strongly as we can that violence against [intimate partners], inside or outside the home, is never justified. Violence in any form—physical, sexual, psychological, or verbal—is sinful; often, it is a crime as well.

The Catholic Church teaches that violence against another person in any form fails to treat that person as someone worthy of love. Instead, it treats the person as an object to be used. When violence occurs within a sacramental marriage, the abused spouse may question, “How do these violent acts relate to my promise to take my spouse for better or for worse?” The person being assaulted needs to know that acting to end the abuse does not violate the marriage promises.

Typically, abusive [partners] deny that the abuse is happening, or they minimize it. They often blame their abusive behavior on someone or something other than themselves. They tell their partner, “You made me do this.”

As bishops, we condemn the use of the Bible to support abusive behavior in any form. A correct reading of Scripture leads people to an understanding of the equal dignity of men and women and to relationships based on mutuality and love.

We emphasize that no person is expected to stay in an abusive marriage. Some abused [partners] believe that church teaching on the permanence of marriage requires them to stay in an abusive relationship. They may hesitate to seek a separation or divorce. They may fear that they cannot re-marry in the Church. Violence and abuse, not divorce, break up a marriage.

In dealing with people who abuse, church ministers need to hold them accountable for their behavior. They can support the abusive person as he seeks specialized counseling to change his abusive behavior. Couple counseling is not appropriate and can endanger the victim’s safety.

This document is not based on facile and thin reading of the Bible. Rather, it considers the biblical witness alongside careful consideration of domestic violence, its causes, and its consequences for its victims (and its perpetrators). It is overwhelmingly concerned with the safety, health, welfare, and well-being of victims of domestic violence. As a document, it is a credit to the Catholic bishops.

It is also a testimony against Bret and his church. At almost every point, Bret offered the opposite counsel of this document. Specifically, the church never condemned Ljubica’s actions as abusive or sinful. They never acknowledged the legitimacy of my decision to leave the marriage in order to protect myself. In the end, they appropriated Ljubica’s own minimization of the abuse and her projection of blame onto me. They used the Bible in an attempt to make me stay in the marriage, quoting passages such as “God hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16) and Jesus’s teachings on the subject. They expected me to stay in my abusive marriage. When I filed for divorce, they blamed the divorce on me, not on Ljubica’s violence and abuse. They did not hold Ljubica accountable for her behavior. Instead, they treated her like a victim. They advised me to go to couple counseling.

“When I Call for Help” is not a remarkable document. It is basically a Catholic contextualization of well known and well researched principles on how to come to the aid of victims of domestic violence. Thus to fault Bret for not acting in accordance with its principles is not to blame him for not being Catholic. Instead it is to blame him for not being human.

Again, this fact does not constitute a positive argument for becoming Catholic. It is just an explanation of why I am not staying in my old tradition.

So from within the context of my experience of domestic abuse, why am I becoming Catholic? Because the ministry that I have received from Catholics—priests, religious, laity, counselors, doctors, teachers, lawyers, psychologists, mediators, and others—has in every way reflected the document I quoted above. No one—not a single person—ever intimated that I had any obligation other than one to myself to be safe and secure in my person and free from abuse. Dozens of people found time to support me, hold my hand, pray for me, and lift me up in the midst of my desolation. Catholics kept me alive.

I will give one example. I was in a Catholic Church praying one day. A man came in. It turned out he was a Jesuit priest. I asked him if I could talk to him. He said yes. We talked about my marriage, Ljubica’s mental health issues, and her abusive behavior toward me. We spoke for an hour and a half. At the end of our conversation he prayed for me, putting his hand on my head. I don’t even remember his name. Maybe I never knew it. But he had an hour and a half for me—a random stranger whom he had never met. At a later time, I reached out to one of the elders at my old church to talk. He didn’t have time for me. He had a Cubs game to go to that day. And the next. Before I could meet with him, Bret made me persona non grata.

This is why I am becoming Catholic.

Dear Bret,

Today I received a long email from Ljubica. In it she again availed herself of an opportunity to pour poison into my soul. The email itself was enough to put an end to a promising start to the week. I won’t disclose the details to you—maybe later I will write another blog post about it.

Anyway, part of her email discloses her knowledge of another email that I sent to you and the other elders. How exactly did she come to know about this email and its content? The only possible route leading to the disclosure of this information goes through you and the other elders. Which one of you did it? I don’t know. I don’t care. One of you did.

I wrote you an email expressing my outrage that one of you did this. You denied that any of you had done any such thing. And then you lied to me. You are a liar. But I’m sure you don’t care that I think that you are a liar. Because you have such a low opinion of me, I can’t image any reason why you would care what I think.

So overall it’s been a shitty day.

To put an end to it, I’ve decided to post a letter that I wrote to you but never sent you. I wrote it last May. Its composition was provoked by a reflection you published in the church’s bulletin. In your reflection, you write about a know-it-all kid you knew as a child. Here it is:

Dear Bret,

I would like to respond to your comment: “I have many times expressed to you my sorrow for Ljubica’s words, going back to I guess this time last year when you first confided these things to me. I have no doubt that such words cause great pain and severely undermine the foundation of a marriage, perhaps irreparably. I do believe you’ve been treated badly in your marriage.”

I acknowledge that you have “expressed sorrow” and I appreciate that you recognize that Ljubica’s words “cause great pain.” Your empathy is appreciated.

But empathy is not sufficient, at least not from you. You are not simply another member of the congregation, you are its minister and one of its elders. One member of your congregation mistreated her spouse to such a degree that in January 2015 he contemplated committing suicide. I do not believe that you have ever adequately appreciated the severity of the abuse to which Ljubica has subjected and continues to subject me.

You who speak about the “plain meaning” of the biblical texts to condemn me, do you forget James? He writes, “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:14–17).

I suppose a literalist interpretation of the text gets you off the hook, just as you deem your literalist interpretation of Jesus’s words to have put me on it. I was not ill-clad or in lack of daily food. Instead, I was abused and mistreated. My spirit was beaten down. I was hated. I was called worse than a rapist, indeed, worse than a child molester. The ministry you provided to me was nothing more than the equivalent of “Go in peace, be warmed and filled.” I cannot recall any time when you took action to intervene and stop the abuse. Once the abuse was made known to you, you had an opportunity and, I believe, an obligation to act. Yet you did not.

You did not act. A host of other people also failed to act. As the object of Ljubica’s abuse, I could not act. No one came to my aid with real assistance. Maybe no one could have. Regardless, why does it seem so incredible to you that in a situation like mine, God did act—directly—and freed me from my abuser?

I read your latest reflection in the church bulletin. It seems obvious that at some level you had me in mind as you wrote it. Perhaps I am the “know-it-all” you are really concerned about. You wrote, “[Jesus] healed lepers and gave sight to the blind just to mess with what everyone thought they knew about cleanliness and uncleanness.” Surely you don’t believe this? Surely your understanding of the gospel is not so shallow that you are unable to see that Jesus healed, in the first place, because of his love, compassion, mercy, and empathy for blind people and lepers.

I spent twelve years trying to love Ljubica. I spent twelve years trying to convince her that I cared about her. I took care of her needs. I made sure we had sufficient resources to meet—to exceed—what is required for life. I went into debt to pay for her trips to visit her family. I was faithful to her. I was not a perfect husband. I was once much younger and much more immature. Nevertheless, there is no correlation between the treatment I received from her and my own imperfection. There is absolutely no justification for her mistreatment. None.

But still I tried, and tried, and tried. I imagined how Jesus would love her if he was married to her, and then I tried to live that way. I expended myself loving her to the point of becoming suicidal because she made me believe that only by being dead could I succeed in making her happy.

And no one stepped in to stop the abuse. One of the other elders said in that marathon meeting you called me to that “God can do the impossible.” He was thinking of Jesus’s words, “What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). The impossible thing he wanted me to believe in was that God would heal my wife and heal our marriage. But God had already done the impossible thing: He set me free from Ljubica.

I was the leper. I was the blind man. I was the woman with a hemorrhage. I was the deaf-mute. Jesus came and healed me. He set me free from my oppression. And he did not do it to make a point to you or to anyone else. He did it because he loves me and he wants me to live. God is about life, not death. You might yet learn something about him from this, but I am sure that his purpose was never primarily to teach you something about himself.

I will say no more.

There is a sin that Jesus calls “unforgivable”: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:28–29). Jesus’s motivation for making this strong statement stems from the accusation that his opponents leveled against him, namely that “he has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons” (Mark 3:22).

Jesus was famous for healing demonized people—and many others. Some Jewish religious leaders disapproved. They condemned his healing. Later in the gospel we learn that they were jealous (Mark 15:10), but at this juncture their indignation appears to stem from Jesus’s annoying habit of healing on the Sabbath (see Mark 3:1–6). Healing was fine—but doing it on God’s designated day of rest was highly suspect. Couldn’t Jesus just be a good Jew and wait until the Sabbath was over to heal people?

Well—no. In Luke 13, Jesus similarly heals someone on the Sabbath. This time it is a bent-over crippled woman who had been suffering for eighteen years. Jesus heals her. The leader of the synagogue is indignant: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.” Jesus will have none of it. “You hypocrites!” he decries. “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” In other words, Jesus seems to say, “What the hell is your problem, exactly?”

Back to the unforgiveable sin. It is simple enough to understand: the sin is misattribution. Rather than recognizing the obvious fact that God’s work, performed by Jesus through the Holy Spirit, is God’s work, one instead attributes God’s work to a demon. “By the ruler of the demons he casts out demons,” they say. Such a sin will not be forgiven, Jesus says. All others—yes. This one—no.

So what does this have to do with my divorce? I will try to explain.

I told my minister, Bret, everything. Bret knows about my sin and hers. He knows when I lost it. He knows when I responded poorly to Ljubica’s provocations. He knows when I did shameful things. He knows all about my bad habits.

Bret knows about Ljubica’s abuse. He knows about it all. I hid nothing from him. And he did “due diligence.” He asked her directly about some of the claims that I made. He told me that she denied them. But he also said that he did not believe her denials. He believed me. He concluded, “I’m aware that Ljubica has at various times stated her desire to not be married to you, or her regret at having married you. I have no doubt that such words cause great pain and severely undermine the foundation of a marriage, perhaps irreparably. I do believe you’ve been treated badly in your marriage.” Talk about an understatement: I was treated badly. Thanks for letting me know.

And he knows that I agonized over my marriage. That I agonized over Ljubica’s mental health. That I supported her to the best of my ability. When our marriage was killing me, I still spent hours on my knees praying. I prayed the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. “Forgive us our trespasses,” I prayed again and again. I forgave her. I asked God to help me forgive her. I asked God to help me love her. I lit candles as a testimony of my love for her. I loved her when she didn’t love me. I loved her when he hated me. I loved her when she overflowed with fiery hatred toward me. I loved her when she called me a shit. I loved her when she said that I was nothing to her. I even called myself a pig to get her to talk to me. I sent her flowers with a note that said, “Even though I’m a pig, I still love you.” That was after she hadn’t talked to me for a month. She then took a picture of the flowers and the card and posted them on Facebook. “Even though you’re a pig, I still love you.” And then things were ostensibly okay for a short season—until she started hating me again.

My love finally died in the cauldron of her hate. “Rapist! Child molester!” she cried. Once I loved her. I loved her and then I didn’t. But still I wanted to love her, and that was enough to keep trying. And then I didn’t even want to love her, but I still wanted to want to love her, and that, somehow, was also enough to keep trying. And then I didn’t even want to want to love her. How can love be rekindled when the rains of malice have extinguished the embers and the winds of hate have scattered the ashes?

Still I prayed. Last year in January I spent a month on the floor of a church. I was often on my face before the cross. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” I cried out to the Lord. My tears wet the floor of the church. I curled up in a ball on the floor. People would come in. None disturbed me. Perhaps some even prayed for me. Sometimes I could say nothing. The only sound that came out of my mouth was a deep throaty groan. I made sounds for which verbs do not exist. But God was there. He held me. He embraced me. He kept me alive. He loved me. And then the day came. February 1, 2016. I was on the floor of the church. I was crying. If agony has a sound, I was making it.

I spoke to the Lord of the universe, “I can’t do this anymore.”

The Lord spoke back, “You don’t have to.”

“Then I choose not to,” I replied.

“Okay,” he answered.

And it was over. I was free. Life began again. God set me free. God said that I didn’t have to do it anymore.

I am still trying to understand what happened that day. Maybe I always will. The Lord of the universe saw me, loved me, and set me free. I told my best friend about the experience. I told him that I learned that God knows who I am and that he cares about my welfare. My friend told me that this was his definition of grace: God knows who we are and cares about our welfare. Put succinctly, my life mattered to God. I am not sure that I had known this, really. Of course, I knew that human lives matter to God, but experiencing my own individual life mattering to God—this I had never experienced before.

Back to Bret and the unforgiveable sin. He knew about the experience. This was his evaluation: “I suspect that the voice you hear and credit to the Lord, the one telling you it’s all right to divorce Ljubica, is actually your voice. I feel like you’re constructing a justification for what you’ve already decided to do.” These are the words Bret wrote to me. He later preached an entire sermon on the topic. As I sat in the pew, I was acutely aware that Bret’s sermon was for me and no one else in the congregation. Anyway, the minister reasoned that the voice I had heard could not be God’s voice; after all, the Bible says that God hates divorce.

Indeed. God does hate divorce. But God also hates abuse. And not everything that parades under the name “marriage” is marriage. When did marriage become telling your spouse repeatedly that you hate him, that you do not want to be married to him, that he is shit, that he is worthless, that he is garbage, that he is…. Do I really need to go on? Whatever my relationship with Ljubica was, it was not a marriage. And whatever it was, God set me free from it. Why? Because God is good. Because God liberates the oppressed. Because God loves—me.

So, dear minister, consider that you might be guilty of the unforgivable sin. Consider that you may have misattributed God’s work to a demon. Consider that your Pharisaical legalism kept you from seeing the gift of God, the gift of freedom and liberation. How is it that you managed to recognize the fact of my abuse at my “spouse’s” hands but not the action of God that freed me from that abuse? How indeed? Are you really that blind?

Dear Ljubica,

You recently sent me an email in which you called me a shit—eight times. You also stated that I never did anything for you during our thirteen-year marriage. The only exception you mentioned was that I took you to a dentist to have one of your cavities filled. You then said that you ended up having to have this tooth pulled anyway. You then made a derogatory comment about my girlfriend.

Please allow me to dispel your confusion regarding the causes of our divorce:

First, we are divorced because you asked for a divorce. You asked for a divorce frequently during the course of our marriage and a year ago you asked for a divorce excessively. Second, we are divorced because of the content of your last email—in the sense that its content reflects well the dismissive, derogatory, and maligning attitude you frequently displayed toward me throughout our marriage. Third, we are divorced because the effect your emotional and psychological abuse had on me. I simply could not be married to you any longer and be healthy. Fourth, we are divorced because you falsely accused me of raping you and, indirectly, of molesting children. Fifth, we are divorced because you publicly slandered me to our church, our friends, our community, and your family. Sixth, we are divorced because at no point did you express sorrow, regret, or repentance at any of your actions. On the contrary, you denied that any of you actions were wrong.

We are not divorced because of any third party external to our marriage.

Regards,

Your ex-husband

One thousand dollars bought me a will and two trusts.

One of the trusts was mandated by the divorce judgment. It requires me to maintain a $350,000 term-life insurance policy whose beneficiary has to be a trust benefiting my two children. Ljubica has to be named as the trustee of said trust. I complied with this demand of the judgment last week.

I wrote my divorce attorney to ask what I needed to do next. She advised me to send a copy of the trust document to Ljubica. I followed her advice. “Ljubica,” I wrote, “I have set up a trust for the children per the divorce judgment. See the attached documents.”

Ljubica wrote back,

For your information: I got the [document]. I read it. I understood very little.

I did understand one thing: That you are SHIT, and you will be SHIT for me forever (not for the kids).

Why did you bother making that whole document, you SHIT? All that wealth that you created for me and left to me. You filled up shelves with books all these years, you SHIT! You didn’t do anything else. [There’s that] one cavity that you supposedly got filled for me, and I still had to get the tooth pulled and it’s costing me as much as all the wealth you gave me for these 13 years, you SHIT.

That’s all I have for now, you SHIT.

Forgive me for not being able to swallow, but when SHIT get in front of me, I have to clean it up. Albanians might not be as smart as AMERICAN BITCHES, but they don’t eat SHIT at all.

Sincerely,
Ljubica.

So it goes in a divorce observed. Messages like this keep me awake a night, or they wake me up in the middle of the night (like tonight). Here I sit at 4:14 AM, processing Ljubica’s email just to get her gnawing words out of my subconscious and into the light. I hope to leave them here, on this blog and out of my mind, so I can go back to sleep for at least a couple of hours before I have to get the kids up and ready for school.

That’s all for now from this SHIT.

Good night.

 

I was recently reacquainted with a Dwight Yoakam song, “Little Ways,” that reflects well the abuse I suffered in my marriage. I offer it here as a testimony to my experience of being married to Ljubica. I address it to her.

I sent the latest professionally taken pictures of our kids to Ljubica’s family over the holidays. Standard fare: pictures from school, pictures from extracurricular activities, holiday pictures. I sent them without comment. Ljubica’s mother responded immediately, thanking me profusely and expressing her love and admiration for the kids. (I realized immediately that she had still not been told about the divorce; it must still be a family secret.)

Her brother contacted me today about it. “Beloved Wes,” he wrote. “As far as you’re concerned, we don’t exist anymore, and neither does any other family member of ours. Have a little shame and a little morality. Erase all our contacts. I believe that you are at least capable of this. And one more thing: If Ljubica had cheated on you, it would be different. But I don’t know what kind of people you are. Have at least a little consideration for the family. We don’t want to have any contact with you, either for good or bad. Take care of your new family now. You should have thought about it sooner if you still wanted to be seen as a good man by us. We supported you in everything, but now everything is over because that’s what you wanted. Erase our contact information and please don’t ever contact us or any of our relatives.”

Ljubica sent my mom a message wishing her a happy New Year. “Hi,” she wrote. “I am not trying to apologize for anything. I will not send you pictures of your grandkids (like your son did to my family).”

“I did not ask much from your son,” she continued. “All I asked for was his time. He did not have it. Everything else was more important to him. School, books, more books. He did not make space for me. He buried me with his books. I hope he finds what he’s been looking for in the books. I really do. Books make us smart, I know, but they do not make us better people. During these past couple years, nothing has hurt me more than knowing that he never saw me as more than just a thing. I hope you don’t read this as a threat or anything. I won’t promise to keep in touch. I won’t promise to speak well of your son to my kids. I wish you and your family good health and all the best in the years to come!”

My mom wrote back, “I miss you. I will probably not send many messages, but I will acknowledge you on special days. I also thank you for allowing the children to call on special days.”

Hate has a name: Ljubica. Pray that it not infect our children as it infects her family.

A few days ago Ljubica sent me an email to wish me a happy New Year. She wrote about watching a movie, Fences. She wrote, “ ‘Fences,’ the woman says about the man. But he was so big; he filled the house when he was there. But then she said, ‘but he never made room for me.’ ” I don’t know if Ljubica’s assessment of the film is accurate. I have not seen it. But Ljubica’s message is clear: according to her, I never made room for her.

The email includes visual aids. There is a picture of significant items from our relationship. One includes numerous pictures from our relationship: our wedding, her college graduation party, a vacation, walking in the mountains, our kids, a family portrait. The same picture shows her wedding and engagement rings, jewelry, and other gifts, including a polished stone called a tiger’s eye. Her wedding dress is in the picture as well as a bottle of champagne labeled “Love” (it is one of a set given to us by her great aunt for our wedding reception). There are notebooks from a marriage encounter retreat that we attended a year after we got married. There is a stack of thirty letter that I wrote to her, in advance, while we were dating. There is one for each day I was gone when I was visiting the United States. There are two coffee cups that I gave her for Christmas in 2015. Another picture shows a certificate of appreciation that I gave her when I graduated from seminary.

Ljubica writes, “Look at the pictures again. Think of one thing that you really gave to me. One thing that you took time for. Was it the pictures? The letters you wrote? The rings? The necklace? The wedding dress? The coffee cups? The certificate of appreciation that you gave me?”

Is she asking me a question? Or is she just lobbing accusations?

Ljubica—I remember writing you the thirty love letters. It took over a week to do. I would sit at my desk with my itinerary, anticipating where I would be and what I would be doing so that I could tell you. I wrote them in your language. I still didn’t know it well. I had to page through the dictionary to look up hundreds of words. My grammar was poor. I can still remember you teasing me for writing, “You miss me,” instead of “I miss you” because I didn’t know that the idiom was reversed in your language. You would ask, “How do you know that I miss you?” I remember leaving money in the fifteenth letter so that you could go to the telecommunications office and call me. Wasn’t I thinking of you then? Wasn’t I making time for you then?

I remember slowly walking through the rock shop in Idaho looking for a beautiful stone. I landed on the tiger’s eye. I gave it to you when I came back from the trip—along with a dozen roses.

I remember going to dozens of dress shops with you to help pick out your wedding dress. You tried on so many. Do you remember telling me at one of them that the young woman helping us wanted you to keep trying on dresses because she found me attractive and wanted to sleep with me?

I remember the white-gold necklace. The one that I gave you when we were dating. I designed it for you, and it was made by a goldsmith in our town. It is one of a kind. No one in the world has one like it.

I remember buying the bracelet. The jeweler’s eyes gleamed when I told him that I was buying it for my wife.

I remember how we visited dozens of jewelry stores looking for the plain gold bands we wanted for our engagement. They were hard to find. Most rings were decorated in one way or another.

I remember designing your diamond engagement ring, the “upgrade” that I bought you after ten years of marriage. I spent hours on it. I sought the best diamond I could afford and the most exquisite yet simple setting.

And I remember how you would take off your wedding ring for weeks and months at a time when you would refuse to acknowledge me as your husband. “You are not mine,” you would say. I remember.

I remember the marriage encounter retreat that we went to early in our marriage. Even then, things were not well with us. In my notebook I pleaded and begged that you and I would find a way to have a healthy marriage. You would not respond. You wrote almost nothing in your notebook. And you did not acknowledge mine. “We’re fine,” you would snap. But we weren’t fine.

I remember giving you the certificate of appreciation the Sunday after I graduated from seminary. Like many things that I did for you in our marriage, I gave it in hope. And I did (and do) appreciate the good that you did in our marriage. I do value the time and effort you put into raising our children. And I am grateful for the times when you treated me well. I will not deny these things.

But I also remember what you told me after the dedication ceremony at my graduation. At one point in the ceremony, family members were called on to support and encourage the graduates in their ministries. “Will you support these men and women…?” you were asked. “Yes,” everyone said—except you. Do you remember? After the ceremony, you told me that you said, “No.” You have said it many times, “I do not support you.” Or, “I will never support you.” Or, “You are wasting your life.”

I remember the coffee cups. I had them custom made in December 2015 to replace the ones you brought back from the concert you attended with our daughter in your home country. The originals had faded from washing. I spent several hours recreating the design and matching the colors so they would be the same. They were one of your Christmas presents. They arrived in the mail the day you told me you wanted a divorce.

And of course there are the pictures. I remember being with you at those times. One might argue, I suppose, that the pictures themselves are evidence that I made time for you. Before we got married, I usually came to visit you twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. I had to walk, and it was about two miles each way.

I read your questions but I deny your implicit accusations. I only see evidence of my love for you in the pictures. I did made room for you.

You set the items in front of a box that says, “Beware!!!” Beware of what? Love?