In the middle of my divorce, sometimes I wanted to just go unconscious. I was in so much pain I was having trouble dealing with the reality of what was happening. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up and it would all be resolved.
Here’s a quote from Marianne Williamson that’s so appropriate for this blog: “Watch. Wait. Time will unfold and fulfill its purpose. While we wait, we must not go unconscious. We must think and grow. Rejoice and dream, kneel and pray.”
While we are trying to recover from a midlife divorce, we are often just washing around in a wild, uncontrolled sea of erratic emotions. Time seems to stop. As we try to see who we are and what our new life is going to be, we often become zombies just trying to survive from day to day. We walk around in a fog of disbelief and disappointment, fear and worry and more sadness than we can assimilate. We are afraid to think very much because we’re afraid we might discover a cave of grief that we can never find our way out of.
As hard as it is to realize, this time is very important time. Even as we are overcome with grief, important work is going on. We are growing even though we think our real life has stopped. We slowly learn to rejoice in those very small things that keep us tied to this world, because we feel as if all the big things have been destroyed. We definitely are driven to our knees because the earthly solutions have failed and all we know is to fall on our faces and cry out for comfort and some sort of answers to questions we can’t even put into worlds.
I know all these things are true because I’ve been there. But I am far enough away from those days that I know the other part of Marianne Williamson’s quote is also true. “Time will unfold and fulfill its purpose.” I think it’s purpose during those early dark days is to give you space to discover who you really are and what your best life is really all about. The lessons you eventually learn, though often agonizingly difficult while in process, make you strong and acutely aware of all the glories and beauties of this journey called “Your life.”
Watch and wait. Cry when you need to. Grieve fully. Then your purpose will become clear and your light and your life will be brighter than you ever dreamed.
This weekend watch some fireworks if you can. See yourself in that time after the thump of the send-off … then enjoy the amazing explosion of light and color. That’s going to be you … your new life. Just Watch.
Enjoy the weekend. Talk to you again on Tuesday.
“So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” James 1: 16-17.
