It all happened so quickly this morning that it seemed practically anticlimactic—perhaps because after more than two years of sleeping in bed alone, it was. I’m fairly sure I spent more time making my way through the security checkpoint with my mobile office in tow than I did in the hearing room. In any event, at 9:35 this morning I was leaving the Polk County Courthouse carrying a copy of a final judgment for dissolution of marriage and a receipt for $10.70, the amount paid to have my quitclaim deed on the house recorded with the County.

And with that, it was over. Divorced. A statistic. Just another one of those 70.4 percent of marriages in Polk County, Florida, that end that way (according to the mediator who taught the co-parenting class I was required to attend last month). I came into the marriage with practically nothing, and leave it the same way. I now try to start to rebuild in a part of the country where I have always felt like a fish out of water, with no way to get back into the water (I checked the price on my first apartment in Southern California; it’s now more than double the rent that it was when I lived in it ten years ago: $560 then, $1,106 now for a 450-square-foot studio).

It’s not that I can truly complain about the new living arrangements God has been gracious in getting me into. This is a small apartment, but I really don’t need a whole lot of room. It has the essential things I need, like a dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, refrigerator, things that I otherwise would have had to go into extreme debt to acquire on my own, for a remarkably low monthly rent. The utilities are just slightly more than half of what I was paying just a couple of months ago in a house. There are no lawns to nearly kill myself in the summer heat and humidity trying to mow, no more ant piles to forget to treat, no bushes to keep trimmed away from the windows so I could see outside (instead of bushes I have a picture postcard view of trees and scrub out of a screened-in balcony). I have had to charge replacements for items I had to leave behind, like a television, a DVD recorder, two tables for workspace, two bookshelves and plastic bins for storage, and a mattress to sleep on. Stores, medical facilities, historic downtown Plant City are all within walking distance. In those terms, I am content.

There are things that I will miss (besides sex). Having the warmth of a woman in the same bed with an arm draped over me or spooned against me at night. Laughing at the four-year-old superhero who’s trying to shoo the dog away from licking his face telling her “Don’t kiss me; I’m the good guy.” Hiding under the covers in the master bedroom with my boy and whistling for the dog while snickering and giggling and waiting for her to jump on the bed and go after our feet.

Nine and half years ago I was absolutely convinced after prayer and fasting that God had put this woman and me together as husband and wife, for life. Was I wrong then? Did it take nine and a half years just to figure that out? Or was I just too naïve/foolish/stupid (pick your term) to pay attention to anything else and blindly rushed into something that was never God’s design to begin with and was doomed to failure from the start? All indications seem to point to that.

Of course, nine and a half years ago I didn’t know that I could be a high-functioning autistic, unable to make personal emotional connections or sustain truly meaningful human relationships, living in the effects of arrested emotional development by the bullying and abandonment I felt as a schoolchild. Then, I was a pornography addict who was still in denial and thinking that marriage would take away all those temptations and thoughts (by the way, Men’s Health magazine is a fantasy, guys; get real) and I could keep my addictions and my marriage in separate mental compartments until the pornography crept its way into emotional lenses through which I saw the world.

In the end, as I wrap up this chapter of life and prepare to move on, I have to simply come out of the denial and admit that beyond “strictly professional,” I suck at interpersonal human relationships, especially ones that have any semblance of romance. That this one lasted as long as it did was a divine miracle that I had nothing to do with, and for that, at the least, I am grateful. I have met very quality and sometimes humorous people and been personally challenged in ways that I would otherwise would not have been because of the relationship, and for that, I am grateful. Most importantly, I have learned a great deal more about myself than I would have without that relationship, and for that I am ultimately grateful and take many lessons learned into the next chapter of my life.

I guess it begs the one question that seems to be on everyone’s mind as this process ends: Would I marry again?

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31–32)

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matthew 19:3–11)

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

“What did Moses command you?” he replied.

They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:2–12)

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Luke 16:18)

I know that the overwhelming majority of Christian culture nowadays seems to reject these scriptures, and it’s not my position to evaluate another person’s spirituality upon whether they are in their first or fourth marriage. After all, that’s what God’s grace is for, and I believe that God holds each of us accountable according to our individual knowledge and ability. But speaking solely for myself and for my own spiritual journey and the direction that I feel God wants to take me in, I don’t feel like I can pick and choose which parts of scripture I should apply to my life—even if I don’t always agree with it—and that my spirituality involves living in accordance with the Word of God rather than trying to make the Word of God somehow fit into the way I think I should be able to live my life. It’s not to say that I am or every will be “perfect,” but that I should at least be trying to “walk the talk,” and be transparent and reliant on God’s grace when I don’t or can’t.

I mentioned in a previous entry about the fact that the road to recovery isn’t always smooth. I started my recovery process in April, 2005, fully aware that it could cost me everything.

Today, it has.

I spent the afternoon helping set up for the Celebrate Recovery One-Day Seminar and Advanced Leadership Training , getting my laptop set up and connected, testing everything, converting the PowerPoint files to Keynote, etc., and decided to check my e-mail on the iPhone as I was entering the Shells restaurant in Brandon to have dinner with the Saddleback Church staff and John Baker (the founder of the program).

E-mail #1 in my mailbox started (for the sake of privacy, this is the only portion you’ll get to read):

I write this with sadness, and probably should have
talked but we have always communicated better in
writing. I am convinced it is time for us to live our
lives separately. We both seem to be happier that way.
We actually lived separately when we were in the same
house.

On New Year’s Day I gave my wife until January 15th to decide whether to move back in to the house or to file for a divorce, because I was tired of excuses and game-playing and it just seemed that it was time to come to a decision about what’s next. She chose to file.

In today’s postal mail, there was a solicitation letter dated January 10 from an attorney in Lakeland. It’s not unusual for attorneys to look through the local court files for recently-filed cases that may provide them with a potential client.

Re: Case # 2008DR-000200-0000-00

Dear Sir or Madam:

If you have already retained a lawyer for this matter, please disregard this letter. A recent review of the Polk County Clerk of Court’s files show that someone has recently filed a civil action against you.

The letter continued on about his experience in “cases involving divorce, child custody, or child support issues” and to offer a free consultation. It was stamped “ADVERTISEMENT” in red at the bottom of the letterhead as well as on the envelope. I’ll probably see a few more of this kind of letter in the next several days.

So, with an e-mail, it’s over. Somewhat perversely poetic that a relationship that started online, ended online.

In life, and in recovery, some stories and some chapters don’t have happy endings. Sometimes God has to strip all the way down to the foundation in order to start building again. Such is my case, and I must accept it.

I’ll be honest, here—I suck at resolutions.  Most don’t last past Noon on New Year’s Day. The one to “eat better” died less than a minute after midnight in a Family Size bag of Doritos®. That said, there are some goals and things that must be accomplished before next New Year’s Day rolls around:

• Priority One is getting a job, since I only have just over a month or so of severance package left to live off of. Much longer, and I’ll be on the street. But at least I’ll still have health insurance.
• Secondly, a significant decision needs to be made about marriage and family. Do I keep fishing, or cut bait and move on? April will be a year since my wife left for her parents’ house, and I’m just about out of patience.  I think what makes me the most righteously indignant about the whole thing is that the “mentor couple,” who should be setting the example and know better, are letting her get away with what she’s doing.
• Make a decision about getting the virtual business off the ground.  Right now it’s a necessity—I need income. But what if I find a full-time job?  Do I keep it going?

One significant thing I’d like to do in my spiritual journey in 2008 is take a good, hard, close-up look at the first-century Church, and compare where we are in 2008 with where it was in its beginnings.  It was a very different Church then, and it seems we are so far away from where it began that I’m not sure we can call our current religious practice “Christianity” in its original sense.  People like Keith Giles, Rob Bell, and others in the emerging church movement are beginning to capture my interest with an integrative spirituality that is making more of a difference in such a short time than most of the mainstream church is able to do in years.  These are people who are digging into the scriptures and doing real exegesis, finding out what it meant to them in the first century before relaying that meaning from then to now.

My interest in Christianity at its foundations comes from a not-uncommon observation that I’ve noted in the past two and a half years (closing in on three years) of my recovery from pornography and sexual addiction. 

The observation is this: over these past few years, I would say that nearly all of the rejection, stigma, negative remarks, vindictiveness, etc., has come from those who claim to be Christians. Instead of being a hospital for the sick, we’ve become a country club where those who don’t fit in are thrown out.  We’ve put God in this box of how we expect Him to act and behave and anything that attempts to go outside that box is “not of God”—it’s like God’s in that box and we’ve relegated to Satan everything outside that box.  We’ve made God our butler, not our Lord.  I often find more personal acceptance from the non-religious community than I do from Christians.  It was never intended to be that way.

Observations like this have been driving me away from what most people call “church” this past year as I’ve continued my recovery journey. Places like Celebrate Recovery (where I volunteer full-time) have become “church” for me every week, because people that come are allowed to be not just Christians, but human beings with hurts, habits, and hang-ups.  We’re allowed to have time to let God work on those things instead of being forced into someone else’s cookie cutter.  People are accepted as they are, and then treated like the new creations in Christ they can become.  Because of that, people grow. People change. People don’t remain spiritually stagnant.  That, friends, is Church as I believe Christ intended it from the beginning.  We become salt that adds flavor rather than blandness.  We make a difference.

In balance, the scriptures we hold to as Christians definitely contain some absolutes and some basic foundations that are prerequisite to being called Christian.  But if we were to take a careful look, those prerequisites are actually very few.  We’ll find that the rest are things that we, like the Pharisees, have piled on top of that foundation over the years that, while they are generally in keeping with the Word of God and don’t contradict it, in reality have nothing to do with God’s intention and design for followers of Jesus Christ.  Not that everything we know as Christians is wrong, but that there is a lot of “fluff” that we need to take a serious look at in light of the scriptures and in light of how the church actually began.  This will be my personal and spiritual challenge this coming year. I want to know what being a follower of Jesus Christ meant to them in the beginnings of the church in order to understand what it should then mean to me.  I want to look at life—what are people truly, deeply searching for, and how can we as Christians provide that in a way that is meaningful and fulfills that basic human need?

My other challenge this year is to take a look at the rising tide of social media and find how we can integrate into not just our personal and social lives, but also into our spiritual lives.  The fact is that the world is rapidly changing, and we have to adapt in some way to what’s coming in order to remain effective at what we do.

I’ve been watching some videos that I had downloaded for free recently from a company called The Work of the People. They sell video shorts for use in church services, Bible studies, etc., designed to complement a service or stimulate a Christian’s thinking.

There is a series of short videos on the site that has started me into thinking about whether or not we have “sacred spaces” in our lives. We get busy in today’s world; we get our calendars and planners cluttered up with “meetings” and “things to do,” and I wonder whether we so clog ourselves with “doing” that we fail to set aside a sacred place, a sacred time, to meet with God. True, we are to be in constant conversation with our Creator in the everyday things of life, but it seems to me that each of us should have some place specifically set aside to recenter ourselves, to inventory our day before God and know what in that place we will always encounter Him in some way.

Think about this: Jesus, who is to be our example, always found a “sacred space” to meet with His Father in prayer. It was always a place alone, where He was undistracted by the crowds that constantly swarmed around Him wherever He went and did public ministry. The secular entertainment world does something like that in the form of a “Green Room,” where stars and performers are able to enjoy time away from the crowd and relax, refocus, prepare.

So—do you have a “sacred space?” Do you have a place in your life set aside for the sole purpose of meeting with God, a place where you are undistracted by life and can focus on one thing? Where is it? What do you do there?

Feel free to post your responses as comments to this entry.