“The Girls”

“The Girls”

            The dream of an intact family vanished.  The children have moved forward, though they are changed forever.  When a child of whatever age believes he is a part of a secure and loving, two-parent home and when that child wakes up the next morning to discover he is wrong, that child is forever changed.  When a dream is lost, what can be gained?           

God can take loss and turns it into gain.  God can take down and flip it up.  God can move minus into plus. God was at work changing my life before I knew it.  God dissolved my pain and gave me a future.  God removed my misplaced trust and offered me self-worth.  God calmed my fear and bestowed His peace.           

What good can come from a lost dream, lost intimacy, a lost marriage?  Hang on to your belief system, because God can turn anything into good for those who love him.  I further encourage you to walk through open doors, and reconnect with your girlfriends.  Unlike men, we girls thrive on friendships and there is nothing, no relationship more special that that between “sisters.”  We are always there for each other.  Find your resting place and take comfort with “the girls.”

Social Life – to encourage a newly divorced diva 

Book Clubs <a href:http://www.bookclub.com > </a>                Bunco Clubs         Bridge Clubs               Girls Night Out activities                       

Invest in a bedside reading lamp.  Pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate or a glass of wine.  Plump up the multitude of pillows you can now strew across your bedding.  Lean back, sip, read, and enjoy the peace, quiet, and solitude.           

Consider these selections:                       

Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love – Brown <a href:http://www.sweetpotatoqueens.com > </a>                           

Same Sweet Girls- King 

Secret Life of Bees- Kidd                                                         Memoirs of a Geisha – Golden                                            Someone to Watch Over Me – McNaught 

<a href: http://www.cassandraking.com > </a>

<a href: http://www.secretlifeofbees.com > </a>

Consider these authors:

Navada Barr  <a href: http://www.navadabarr.com > </a>              Janet Evanovich          James Patterson                                     Anita Shreve                Stuart Woods         Richard North Patterson Barbara Delinsky          Nora Roberts                                   Danielle Steele                       

Try these Classics:

Jane Austen -Pride and Prejudice,     Sense and Sensability,       Persuasion                                   

When a week or two pass, you might realize that you have control over the “puncher.”  You can decide when to change the channel and what program to watch on television.            

After a while, you can actually throw your leg over a little bit and claim an entire bed.  Why do you think the mattress is “Queen-size?”After about six months, you can clean out the chest of drawers.  Get a good size, black, heavy-duty garbage bag and have a wonderful day.  Speak to each item as you toss it into the trash. Lay claim to more space for your sexy and colorful lingerie.           

After a year or so, you can clean out clothes and shoes. It’s time to have a party and celebrate with “Hers and Hers” closets.            After a number of years, the pain, however great, diminishes.  The stark reality of the divorce does not change, but clarity of focus and eyes of truth open.  Remember that God has plans for good.

“The New Reality”

 “The New Reality” 

In March of 2000, he took out a loan and took me to the cleaners.And, he moved out. He left the marriage, the mortgage, a leaking hot water heater, an overgrown back yard, crumbling shutters, all the past-due bills, and a depleted bank account.   The new reality he professed is that “he gave me everything.”

Too long in denial, it took until January of 2001, actually on my birthday, before I filed for divorce.  It took that entire year before I gave up the senseless struggle and I filed for divorce.  The painful legal and spiritual process of ripping and tearing apart a thirty-year marriage leaves deep wounds and gaping holes where hope and trust and love had been.

When two people become one flesh, there is no clean, surgical incision that can separate the two people involved.  When the covenant of marriage is broken, when intimacy is lost, none of the individuals will ever breathe in quite the same way.In February of 2002, it was final.

Food Tip:

Though you do not want to eat your way into another dress size, there are some delicious comfort foods available.

Divorce Foods – Liquor, Death, and Worms to cheer a newly divorced diva

Amaretto Cheese Cake         

Recipe:  Go to SAM’S and buy a Cheesecake. Go to your favorite liquor store and buy a small (or large)bottle of Amaretto.  Either eat a bite of cheesecake and take a drink of Amaretto on the Rocks, OR Prick (no pun intended) little holes into the cheesecake and pour Amaretto over   the cheesecake so that it dribbles into the cake.                              ENJOY!

Death by Chocolate

            Recipe:  Make your best and gooiest Brownie recipe and prick holes.     Measure 1/4 cup Kahlua    (or flavoring) and pour it into pricked holes you’ve made in the Brownies.   Prepare according to package directions 1 pkg JELLO Chocolate Mousse.Open a container of Cool Whip (8 oz)Chop up pecans (1/2 cup of chopped nuts)Crush 3 Heath bars.Alternately layer the Brownies, Mousse, Cool Whip, Pecans and Heath BarsFinish off with dollops of Cool Whip and Crushed Heath Bar.Call all your friends to come over and enjoy with you OR Eat it all yourself, preparing to call 911.                         

Worms in Dirt

Recipe:      Buy a nice size plastic flower pot.  Line it with aluminum foil first and then cling-wrap. 1       3 oz. pkg. Cream Cheese2       pkgs. Vanilla Instant Pudding 1          12 oz. carton Cool Whip1              stick butter (margarine)         31/2 cups Milk       1   pkg Oreo Cookies           Prepare the Vanilla Instant Pudding using the Milk.   Mix together the butter, cream cheese and 3/4 pkg Oreo Cookies.          Layer Cookie Mixture/Pudding Mixture.       Crumble the rest of the Oreo Cookies and put on the top.           BUY SOME WORMS – Gummie Worms, that is.    Bury the worms randomly in the Top Layer of Dirt.      Place a pretty Gerber Daisy or other cheerful flower into the Flower Pot.     Bite the heads off the worms or chop them into little pieces with a cleaver.     Whatever is your pleasure, do it.      You could also put these worms into the garbage disposal and turn it on with some crunchy ice cubes!

Next:  “The Girls”

“Puppy Love”

“Puppy Love” 

Earlier in this story, I shared the struggle of coping with a horrible, life-threatening cancer. Because of fantastic and professional treatment with phenomenal oncologists at a well-known regional cancer clinic, <a href=http://www.westclinic.com > cancer clinic </a> I am still alive and at that time I was in a tremendous fight for my very life.  For my husband, it would have been easier had I died. No, not at the time and that is rather melodramatic, but it’s what I felt at times. 

I am not saying that as an overly dramatic sentiment.  Truly, it would have been easier for him.  He would have been set free much earlier.  Then, he could have taken my children to be raised by relatives, and he would have a reason everyone understood to be without a wife.  He would have received sympathetic assistance and been elevated to martyrdom.  At one time, I recall telling him that I was sorry I had inconvenienced him so greatly by living!

As a true Gift from God, I underwent a rare second surgery and in September of 1999, life was looking good.  In fact, the loyal-in-name-only husband told me that when I left the treatment center with a wonderful outlook and a miraculous report of “all clear,” it was the happiest day of his life.  I thought it was because we could start our life again with good health all around. 

Again, I was wrong.  He was happy because he was planning now to leave me.  Now, without my knowledge at all, he began stealing money from our joint checking account and depositing it into an account of his own.

In January of 2000, he gave me a puppy <a href=http://www.maltese.com > dog </a> and never slept in my bed again.  Two months later, he uttered the fateful words, “I have an apartment.”

HERE IS A SLEEP TIP:

If your bed seems empty without him, DO NOT RUSH to invite another man into his place.  Instead RUSH to the Linen Sales!

Sleep Aids – to comfort a newly divorced diva

My dear, dear friend, go shopping and indulge in 400+ count sheets.  Shop the clearance racks and bins.  Check out the Clearance Sales at discount variety stores.  Go to Outlet Malls.  <a href=http://www.oprymills.com > outlet mall </a> Don’t shy away from oversized sheets and pillow cases if they are ON SALE.  You can also get ODD colors and then Mix and Match.  Actually, better pricing comes with different colors and mixing colors is much more fun.  Just remember, these linens WILL NOT BE RUINED by unshaven stubble, hairy legs, stinky feet, or other man-smells!

 There is more, much more, so please check back tomorrow.

“You Ignorant Slut”

“You Ignorant Slut”             Chevy Chase’s words to Jane Curtain wrap up the feelings I have about my lack of perception about my marriage.  The three words were often spoken after a segment on SNL when poor Jane was going on and on about certain factual situations and ole Chevy was just off camera mocking her with tongue-wagging, eye-rolling condescension.  “Ignorant” is exactly what I felt. <a href=http://www.saturdaynightlive.com > television show </a> I was/am not/never will be, however, a “slut.”   

Looking back on the actions of a wayward husband brings plenty of pain.  I was the one in the marriage who “hopes all things, believes all things, bears all things.”  Imagine these scenarios:  

1.  Receiving phone calls at 2 AM to ask if I know my husband’s whereabouts,

2.  Spending an anniversary night alone, trying to reach him by phone after midnight,

3.  Finding him anywhere but at work, after phone calls to reach him, 4.  Locating him at 2 AM in a bar

5.  Hearing a father’s refusal to leave the bar.

6.  Fielding calls from bill collectors, 

7.  Telling the children cover stories for the sake of their father,

8.  Explaining away his absence for holiday afternoons, 

The list of humiliations was unfathomable.

Gentle reader, you may ask why a woman would continuously accept this kind of behavior from her husband.  I simply believed he was the man I married and he would eventually move out of this behavior, not move out of our home. 

I was totally wrong.The abrupt departure should not have been a total surprise.  He had actually emotionally left the marriage years before he physically left the house.  

I had been seeing a psychologist who in our conversations heard some of my pain and asked me if my husband and I were considering divorce.  I said, “Oh, no.  We love each other.”  He told me then that many couples who love each other get divorced.  I had shared that my husband was going to be attending a conference in Phoenix <a href=http://www.phoenix.com > city </a> and that I really wanted to go with him.  We had not had a trip together in such a long time, and I hoped to rekindle some of the fires that had become, in my estimation, only embers. I actually believed the fires could be fanned to flame again. Or, at least, I was willing to try.  The counselor told me to pay my own way to Phoenix so that I could show him how much I wanted to be with him, so that we could have a romantic get-away, just for ourselves. That way, he could not say that it was too expensive for me to go. I would have done anything to show him my devotion.  When I made the proposal, proposition if you will, he folded his hands as I sat in front of him and said, “No.  Do not buy a ticket.  I do not want you to go.” 

 My marriage was over.  I just did not want to accept the cold reality.  The fire had been extinguished long ago; the ashes lay cold and gray.

Next:  Puppy Love

“The Airlines Did Not Lose My Baggage”

  “The Airlines Did Not Lose My Baggage” 

“I have an apartment.” 

You have a what????

“I have an apartment.  I am moving out.”   

The afternoon was Friday.  We had just met with a financial planner to obtain a loan to pay off some debt that I believed we jointly had accumulated. He said he was taking the loan himself, but I needed to be there since we were a married couple. Vividly, I remember sitting at the table with the loan papers in front of me answering questions about our marital status.  Vividly, I recall our answers.  We are married.  Actually, relations had been so strained that I was hoping his answers revealed that he wanted an improved relationship, as I had begged him to seek either medical attention or a psychologist.  I did not know, nor did I want to know, what a pawn I was.

Friday evening I went out to dinner and then over to a girl friend’s house for dessert.  Several of my girl friends and I were celebrating “spring break” and the beginning of some breathing room from our jobs in a school.  We were light hearted and having a wonderful time with stories and jokes and plans for “tomorrow.”  On the drive home, I was as unaware as I could possibly be for what lay in wait behind the bedroom door.I walked into the den and the three of us- father, mother, and child -visited for a while and then I went on to the bedroom to get ready for bed. 

Friday nights were routinely very relaxing and I was looking forward to a warm bath, my nightclothes, a Diet Coke, sleeping late on Saturday, and a wonderful week of total relaxation.  The older son was away at college and the younger son was also beginning his Spring Break.  Nothing, absolutely nothing clued me in for the bomb that was about to explode in my face.

My husband walked into the bedroom, casually over to his side of the bed, sat down, propped up and lay back on the pillows.  I was in bed, also propped up, about to turn on the television and pull out some new fashion magazines.  I knew that trouble existed in the marriage, which by now was closer to hell on earth than any part of paradise, but with every tiny nuance of normalcy, I gained some degree of hope. 

When I look back at the excuses I made for each insulting behavior, I wonder how much self-esteem I actually possessed at that time.  When I look back, I wonder why I wanted the marriage to be saved; the only reason worth thinking about was “for the children.”  In retrospect, the marriage we shared was no longer one of love but one of obligation and duty.            

 Here is a tip:  If your husband is lying, staying in another bedroomso he won’t disturb me because he has insomnia, experimenting with questionable and dangerous web sites, and staying away from home as much as possible, summons enough gumption to call his hand on the behaviors.  I was wrapped up in a marriage I wanted to save and in a family I believed was worth every insulting behavior I could bear. <a href=http://www.divorce.com >infidelity </a>   

That evening, I guess from the lines of a rehearsed speech, he began with reminding me how I had begged him to see a counselor.  Further, he reminded me that we had both become miserable in the marriage.  The difference between us was that I believed it was a phase, a cycle that all marriages must endure in order to survive.  He saw it differently.  So, while I am thinking that this conversation is headed in a positive direction, he is about to utter a statement I thought I would never hear, not ever in my entire life.           

 “I have an apartment.”  With that statement, my entire life, our entire family changed.  Everything dissolved before me.  My head spun, my heart raced, my ears rang, and my vision blurred. Since I existed on humiliation anyway, what is one more dagger to the heart if it could save our family.   I begged him to stay, to reconsider, to change his mind.  Nothing I could do or say would keep him from moving out the next morning.  Even when I went to the bed he was sleeping in and crawled in beside him and tried all my feminine wiles including tears to convince him to do otherwise, there was no response except for him to say, “I am moving out.”  Even as I stood in the kitchen and wrapped my arms around him and kissed him soundly, there was only this repetitive remark: “I am moving out.”          

  I asked him if there was another woman.  He said, “You know there is not.  I just can not tolerate being married any more.”

Next:  You Ignorant Slut