Eureka!!

Hebrews 13:5b-6  --  "He Himself has said, 'I will  never desert you, nor will  I ever forsake you.' so that we confidently say, 'The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.   What shall man do to me?' "

It was cold.  I can’t be sure how cold, but the snow that had fallen the day before was clinging stubbornly to the sidewalk in wet, unforgiving clumps.  Dreading the short walk up the stairs to my apartment, I pried myself from the warmth of the car and stepped around to get my one year old from the back seat.  With bundled toddler in one arm and three bags of groceries in the other, I reached the toasty haven of the tiny two bedroom apartment that Uncle Sam graciously helped me to attain. 

 As long as the days were crammed with medical coding and filing insurance claims it was a little easier to focus on things other than the fact that as a wife, I was a failure.  Scheduling doctors’ appointments became a hiding place eight hours every day but as the daylight dwindled and night drew in around me, I became increasingly aware of the fact that behind the door to the toasty haven of my tiny two bedroom apartment, the place was empty.  The nights spent in it were long and cold for reasons that had nothing to do with the snow outside.

It was thoughts like these, my own personal demons, that began to crowd in around me as I tucked my son neatly into bed, tip-toed out of his room and waited for the dreamy, deep and even breathing.  The sounds of sleep that floated softly down the hall until they reached my own room where my bed lay painfully neat and perfectly made up.  This quiet time of day was when I would be hammered by those words echoing through my head; “I don’t love you anymore, I want you out of my life.  I’ve found someone better.”   

Climbing into bed the tears I had fought back all day finally forced themselves free of the achy muscles behind my eyes that tried so to restrain them.  One by one, and then in torrents they landed on the pillow that caught them there every night.  I used to believe that the thing I dreaded most about the cold was the toes at the end of my feet that simply refused to be warmed on those dark, winter Tennessee nights.  I found out, however, that even more terrible was the absence of elbows and legs bumping into me as I slept.  The tenderness of “I love you” from a spouse would not blanket me in warmth, nor would it cushion the brokenness of my heart.

As if being beckoned by name, I reached for the tattered, warn Bible I had called mine since my Dad hid it in my suitcase on a return trip to the dormitory I lived in while in High School overseas.  Just the smell of it and the familiar chicken scratch of my Dad’s sermon notes were a comfort.  Even greater to me was the simple passage that bore the pen markings of a very wise, tender and forgiving man, my Dad.  Dad’s whole life has been an example to me, a message that God loves all of His children, even the divorced ones.  The verses were these: Hebrews 13: 5,6  “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. So we can say with confidence, the Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me?”

All my years as a missionary’s daughter overseas, the Baptism at an early age, Bible drills in school and countless hymns memorized by heart had not the impact of the realization during that one moment.  Even the toes at the end of my feet began to warm up as I realized for the first time that God not only loves me warts and all, but He will always love me.  He will never tell me “I don’t love you anymore, I’ve met someone prettier, someone thinner, someone younger, someone better than you.”  So I can truly say with the utmost of confidence “The Lord is my helper, I have nothing to fear!  What can divorce do to me?”

Pulling my quilt up over me tightly I finally slept soundly for the first time since my divorce.  My creator, the One who knew me before I was born, was not calling me a failure.  He would never leave me for another woman.  It was His arms I wrapped around myself that night and I slept knowing they would still be there in the morning.  Ya know, little by little, my pillow even dried out.