A Divorce Observed

One of the first gifts Ljubica gave me when we were dating was a small book by Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter, translated into her native language. She wrote a nice note for me on the title page.

I had forgotten about the book and her note until yesterday when I finally unpacked my library. I came across it while I was putting my books on the shelves. Whimsically I remembered when Ljubica had given me the slender volume. I paused for a moment, holding it in my hands, unsure of the wisdom of rereading her pleasant words from fifteen years ago. I have experienced so much pain since then; the divorce has only cauterized deep spiritual and psychological lacerations that would have otherwise proven fatal. The scars have not yet healed. They still throb with pain.

I decided to reread the note. I opened the cover—and it was gone. Ljubica had gone through my library, found the book, and torn out the inscription. Whatever it said is now lost.

This is what she does: she tatters the past. Holding the evidence in my hands, I am reminded of the many times that she denigrated our marriage. I recall the innumerable times when she claimed that we could do nothing together, when she asserted that all we did was argue, when she opined that marrying was a mistake that could only be remedied by divorce. I experienced these times as an assault on myself. I felt that I was a good husband who strove to become a better one. Exacerbated, I would counter Ljubica’s verbal assault by recalling times when we had gotten along, when we had managed to enjoy ourselves together, when ostensibly we had given and received love from one another. “Don’t you remember when…?” I would cry. And then she would say it: “I was only pretending.”

Only pretending. Only pretending to enjoy herself. Only pretending that she wanted to be with me. Only pretending when she said on rare occasions, “I love you.” When my marriage would founder, I would reach into the past and find times of joy, only to have her smash them on the crags of pretense. What argument could I make in defense of the worthwhileness of our marriage when she denied that any time had been worthwhile?

Was she really pretending? A part of me wants to say, “no.” Another part of me says, “I’m not sure.” Regardless, I have invented an expression for it: painting the past black. This is what Ljubica does: she paints the past black. Where do you rest the goodness of your marriage when all is painted black? Nowhere.

Dear former minister,

You’re an idiot—well, actually, you’re not an idiot. You have a great deal of education. You have an almost-but-not-quite-complete M.Div. from a local seminary and your undergraduate education was in Bible. I remember, when we used to get lunch, you telling me that you didn’t complete your M.Div. because you did not do the co-curricular component of your degree. Some schools call this “the supervised practice of ministry.” It is an opportunity engage in ministry while being in dialog with a mentor about that ministry. Many seminarians find it to be a rewarding experience. But you didn’t do this. In part, if I recall correctly, you didn’t do it because you would not be able to use your own church as the context for your ministry experience; you’d have to go somewhere else. Regardless, in the end, you were willing to subject your academic abilities to your professors in the form of tests, papers, and other assignments, but you were not willing to subject your ministry to professional evaluation. How ironic that as my marriage came undone, you called your level of pastoral care for me “inadequate” and admitted to “have probably not been up to the task.”

Not up to the task. How so? I do not even know where to begin.

Perhaps I should start at the end, with the letter you had sent to my home address after I resigned from the congregation, calling my conduct “egregious” and warning me that I was throwing away my own potential for ministry simply because I was in a relationship with someone new. (Did it occur to you that my marriage to Ljubica had already quashed numerous opportunities for ministry?)

I could start with your kind gesture of taking me out to dinner less than twelve hours after I spent the whole night in the emergency room because of a major anxiety attack brought on by my ex-wife’s abusive behavior. It was so nice of you to use that opportunity to berate me for having a girlfriend. I especially appreciated your comment that you might be able to approve of me starting a relationship with someone new five years after my divorce. (I wonder what your biblical precedent for that is.)

Or maybe I’ll begin with your complete and utter inability or unwillingness to address adequately the lies Ljubica spread in the congregation. As you know, she did send an email to almost every woman in the congregation claiming that I “hurt her every day” and stating that it was “[her] decision not to stay in an abusive marriage.” (By the way, did you know that one woman in the church displayed visible fear of me when I simply walked past her?) (By the way, why is it that you blame the divorce on me?) I could mention, I suppose, your general minimization of Ljubica’s abuse. You wrote, “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.” You also wrote, “I don’t agree that words and actions like those necessarily, by the fact that they happen, end a marriage.” Why not? You give no explanation.

And what about Ljubica calling me “worse than a rapist” and “worse than a child molester”? What about her assertion that I raped her—on our wedding night? Do accusations such as these end a marriage? And what exactly do you make of Ljubica’s abusive behavior? As you know, it made me suicidal. So her words and actions, according to you, are not enough to end a marriage even though they were almost enough to end my life? Would it have been better for you if I had died?

You are an idiot.

Counseling—that was your advice. Do you even know that counseling is contraindicated in situations of abuse? I didn’t. I learned it on the way as I’ve tried to make sense of what happened to me. But did you know it? I suppose not, since you advised it.

You are a preacher; you can get up in front of a church a talk. But you are not much of a minister or a pastor. You did nothing to assuage the suffering of your congregant in the midst of his desolation. You condemned the innocent with the guilty. You should be ashamed.

Sincerely,

Your former congregant

I made a quick dinner for my kids and me tonight: spaghetti. Afterwards, while the kids watched TV in the living room, I cleaned the dishes in the kitchen. It is something that I did hundreds of times during my marriage.

When our daughter turned one, my wife invited most of the children living in our apartment building for a party. There was food and cake, and in the end there were a lot of dirty dishes. Our kitchen was small. We were living in the Balkans at the time, and over there is it common for each faucet to have its own small water heater. The one in our kitchen ran out of hot water in about five minutes, so I took the dishes to the bathroom, which had a much larger water heater, and washed them in the bathtub. My wife’s paternal aunt told me that there was no need for me to help, but I kept helping anyway. Why not? Being a man is no excuse for not helping around the house.

I have done a lot of dishes. Once when my mom was visiting, she said that I’d cleaned more dishes in a week than my dad had during their entire marriage.

While the divorce was in progress and I still had to live with Ljubica (my wife—not her real name), I kept doing the dishes. Once I was in the kitchen cleaning up and Ljubica came in and started talking at me. She said that I had “always” done the dishes, but that I only did them as a way of pardoning myself. During the day, according to her, I would carry on affairs with different women while I was away at work but at night I would absolve myself of my sin by washing plates. It wouldn’t work, she said. No amount of dishwashing could remove my sin.

This is the conservation that I remembered tonight while I was washing dishes.

I am divorced. What more is there to say? A lot, as it happens. But knowing where to begin is difficult to ascertain. Do I begin at the beginning? Or at the end? Or at the post-end, with all of the drama that has ensued since the divorce was finalized a little over a month ago? I am not sure.

What I know is that when I began writing this post, with my kids asleep in the other room, I immediately began to feel tightness in my left shoulder. Tension always begins there, and if the stress and anxiety increase, it spreads to my right shoulder. If it gets even worse, my hands start to shake.

I could say that the divorce has left me bruised and traumatized, but this is not entirely accurate. My marriage left me bruised and traumatized. I was married to an abusive woman. Over the course of thirteen years, the level of abuse slowly increased until I could no longer remain in my marriage. There is so much more to say, and I hope to say it, unless at some point I decided to think better of this entire blog endeavor. But even if I do—and there is so much more to say—I hope to somehow regain my voice.

I am pressed by the conviction that many, many people out there, former “friends,” friends from church, friends from school, friends from the neighborhood, believe that I am an adulterous bastard who left my wife for another woman. It is a simple story and easily accepted. The story rings true to many. After all, is this not the way of the world? Doesn’t this sort of thing happen all the time? So I write, but feel myself pressed against a multitude of doubters who lend no credence to my voice. These are the people who greet my children after school when they walk past, yet ignore me. They are the ones who would rather not see me, but I inconveniently fail to disappear.

The story of adultery and betrayal is not true. Pilate asks at Jesus’s trial, “What is truth?” The truth of my marriage has a hidden complexity. It is a woven tapestry of black yarns contrasted with even blacker yarns interspersed occasionally with light and delightful hues of joy dyed black by words. My marriage is a tapestry of black.

This is the story of that blackness. There will be very little to enjoy.