We Fail Love

Holidays.  Spring Break.  Vacation.  House.  Furnishings.  Vehicles. The list went on.  

I was sitting on my side of the king size bed, head leaned back against the headboard and turned to the left, watching my sweet baby girl asleep in the pack n play while I made a list of items to work through with my husband for uncontested divorce.  I hated it.  How did my life come to this?  How could I simplify fifteen years of building a life and family and a twenty-years-in-the-making multifaceted kind of love into neat little emotionless categories?  

I couldn’t even think about the holidays without crying.  I didn’t want to divide the hours that made up Christmas day.  I wanted to stay up late with my husband on Christmas Eve, putting toys together and doing last minute things.  I wanted to wake up next to him too early on Christmas morning when the kids came running into our room, excited to go see what was under the tree.  I wanted us to watch together as they opened gifts, then I wanted to watch him play with them and their new toys for a while before I went to make Christmas brunch.  I wanted to spend the afternoon being lazy, making memories like so many Christmases before.  

I didn’t want to discuss how to split Spring Break or who got what material possession.  I didn’t want any of this.  What I wanted was to go back and figure out what I missed and what I could do differently.  I never had fairy tale notions about marriage.  My parents were divorced before I was born.  I was raised by grandparents who readily taught us that marriage wasn’t easy and life wasn’t easy, but you hold on and fight and love for better or for worse.  I hoped this was just the “for worse” part of my vows.  I didn’t think it would be easy to rebuild, and I didn’t think I would ever forget…But I was willing to forgive and try.  At that point, all I felt I could promise was to try, but I wanted to do that much. 

What if we got a sitter more often, even for weekends here and there so that we could get away by ourselves?  What if we put more priority on having fun together?  What if, what if, what if?  What ifs can make you crazy, and they only matter when both sides invest in the what-if scenarios.  We met twice to discuss the divorce terms.  My husband’s demeanor and words implied a possible change of course, some consideration of giving the what-ifs a try.  But it wasn’t only about choosing the what-ifs at this point.  I couldn’t go on treating my marriage vows with disrespect and feeling hugely disrespected myself.  I was willing to forgive the act that violated the marriage, but the ongoing violation had to stop.  It was imperative at this point that he choose.  I needed tears and words to be more this time.  They had to come to action and decision.  

I guess maybe it wasn’t easy for him to sit with his wife in the family home at the table where so many meals and moments had happened through the years, discussing an end and division of so much.  I lived among the memories.  I knew it wasn’t easy, but I had an allegiance to them.  I hadn’t left.  He had, and his allegiance proved to lay outside our walls and with other company because things would change from here to there.  This was no different.  He chose divorce.  

I was sad and so confused.  Confusion had become my dreadful companion.  Some of it was my own fault.  I often made much of little, as if grasping for any tiny thing to keep my hope afloat.  I can see and admit that I held on to too little for too long, but at the time, I deeply loved a man that I thought I knew.  And that man didn’t cry easily or often.  When he did, it would be watery eyes that he would blink away quickly, or maybe a stray tear that escaped and was wiped away in a hurry.  Seeing tears streaming down his cheeks was new to me.  It made me think that underneath what had become such a callous exterior, there was a broken man with regret.  And any glimpse of what might have been regret made me believe my version of him was still in there, and I wanted that version of him back in our lives.  I wanted to love that man.

Sometimes love is blind, foolish, self-sacrificing.  Sometimes love is one-sided and painful.  Sometimes we have to love ourselves enough to let go of a version of love that is harming our view of true love.  The love God describes in 1 Corinthians 13 is perfect and something to strive for because in doing so, we strive to be like Him since He is love itself (1 John 4:8).  I believed so much in the Corinthians definition of love that I would pray it over and over on a three hour rotation with my daughter’s eat/sleep schedule.  I would walk and bounce her through the house as I prayer-walked, asking God to help me be patient, kind…not easily-angered, keeping no record of wrongs.  I would speak verse 7 and 8 as an encouragement to myself, claiming those Scripture promises: “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…”  So then why did I feel it was failing me?  Why had my husband chosen divorce? Why was love not enough?  

I was feeling wrecked by this because if one scripture promise failed, then the entire basis of my faith and hope was faulty and unreliable.  Then, just like God does sometimes when we need it most, He sent word to me through someone who didn’t even know me well.  Her story was a beautiful picture of God’s grace and restoration power.  She understood infidelity from a different perspective and gave humble, beautiful insight to my question.  In her answer was the Gospel even.   She said, “Love doesn’t fail [us].  We fail love.”