God and Row Boats

Well, I have no specific intentions of separation or divorce at this point. I just have never been able to figure out where my marriage fits in. There's an old saying about where one rat is seen, there are actually twelve. So it is with anything I might say about my marriage: for everything I say, there are twelve unsaid things.

What I do know, and which my mother has also said, is that like the evil spirit seemed to "depart" from Saul when David played the flute, however irrational my husband may be, my presence also does that to a certain extent. It is simply very, very hard to get nothing back. He is not my rock, nor my "soft place to fall."

As to what God's plans are for me, beyond doing unto others as I would have them do unto me and forgiving until it hurts, I do not know. I believe that is God's plan for every Christian, and for my every interaction with human beings, so there's no reason to believe that my husband is somehow excluded from that.

I tell myself that the God who was able to release the Israelites from Pharaoh, is able to release me from my marriage. At his time, not mine. Then at other times I think I am bullshitting myself because I am too much of a coward and am using God to avoid making a decision.

The pacifism I believe in, is a pacifism that reflects in every aspect of life, from the personal to the international. And the sorts of violence I am against, is every sort of violence - not just physical but the emotional harm people can and do do to each other. It's not the Mennonite church per se, that upsets me in terms of how it sees divorce or marriage. I went against, in a way, my own beliefs when I left, which is that God sees and knows everything today as he did yesterday and was in fact able to deliver me, but chose not to. But after years of my head feeling like it has been batted around like a mouse by a cat, I can't be sure that makes any sense to anyone.

I don't want to be like the guy who is caught on a rooftop in a flood and prays to God for someone to help him and a rowboat comes along. The guy sends the rowboat away and prays some more for God to deliver him. Three times he prays and three times a rowboat comes along and the guy sends it away. Then the fourth time he prays, a voice from Heaven says, "I sent you a rowboat three times to save you and each time you sent it away."

I don't know if I've been sending rowboats away. I also had a lot of Mennonites who are seriously religously against divorce, tell me to leave as fast as my feet could carry me. They were more than those who thought I should stay.

If God wants me to leave, He'll have to be real clear about it. Writing on the wall would do it or a sheepskin filled with dew and a dry ground and a dry sheepskin with a dew-wet ground. A light on the road to Damascus. All of the above.

Layla