Jesus Is Present In Our Suffering

Welcome to your life; there's no turning back - Tears For Fears

My divorce was final soon after I moved into my small, rented room in a large Victorian house at the heart of downtown San Jose. The feeling of freedom was incredible. I was on my own for the first time in my life, answering to no one. After work I could sleep until the next morning if I chose, and for the first several weeks, did just that. After a time I was able to stay up for a couple hours, then another. I was on the road to recovery.

I met my first Buddhists here in this house. One did a fair amount of chanting and when I expressed interest in her altar, she explained what all the items symbolized. It was my first real look into a non-theistic religion and was slightly surprised that she did not proselytize. Both young women had intense personal issues, like me, so it seemed more like a curiosity than an answer.

As strength returned so did pangs of guilt over my children. I missed them terribly and felt like a failure for leaving them behind. My ex had hired a divorce lawyer and while in my weakened state I signed away custody and agreed upon an order to pay child support. The $250.00 dollars a month was almost a third of my take home pay. I wanted to do this, at least it was something for my children but any satisfaction was not to be.

My ex dropped the kids off on Saturday mornings and once a month I gave him the child support in cash. When picking the kids up later that day he would show me his new leather jacket, boots, etc. while saying with great amusement, "You like these? It cost $250.00."

But I had bigger problems. My simple expenses were still not enough to buy even a reasonable amount of food. I budgeted carefully but still, no dice. I began to ration food to survive from day to day. On a good day I could eat two rudimentary meals. Cereal for breakfast and pasta with a bit of butter and cheese for dinner. Lunch was a no-go. Jim took me out to dinner two or three times a week to Spaghetti Factory or Henry's Hi Life. The rest of the time I ate stale bread.

The briefly attended Pentecostal church had a food bank and I called to see if I could sign up. Unfortunately they were unable to squeeze me in but if I could come down after hours, they would give me a few items on a one time basis.  A few items ended up being a trunk full of meat, cereal, milk, granola bars, chocolate, and many, many other items. They were the poorest church I had ever been to and by far the most generous. The carefully rationed food kept me going for weeks. After that I continued on the slow road to starvation.

A lovely concept that brings a marvelous sense of comfort to millions of Christians is that Jesus is present in our sufferings. Just imagine. When I am in pain, Jesus is right there, suffering along with me as on the cross where he died for my sins. In my opinion, it is the finest teaching in all of the Christian belief system.

But where was he? It was a cold hard fact that I was experiencing all this pain as a direct result of losing his covering of blessing. At that time, I completely believed this to be true. But I was starting to see things more clearly. Why not perfect, it was beginning to occur to me that this "punishment" was a little over the top. And just how do I get his covering back? Where was the peaceful passage that I was promised to have throughout life if I just had faith? Was is ever really there to begin with? I felt conflicted as I began to resent a God who could reject me after a lifetime of faith and service for issues that were becoming more and more clear were not my fault. On the other hand, I loved God and wanted him  to love me again. Oh wait. He never stopped loving me, he was doing this for my own good.

My long term health problem is a heart murmur brought on by severe anemia. The short term problem was that I could not feed my children on Saturdays. The situation became desperate and I had no choice. I dialed my mom's number. She was smug when I explained the situation.

"Good! Maybe now you'll go back to your husband, where you belong."

I was weary. "We're divorced, Mom."

"Not in the eyes of God!"

I tried the direct approach. "So I was wondering if we could all come over this Saturday."

"Oh!" She wanted to see the kids.

So starting that week and every week for the next three years she picked us up on Saturday morning and we spent the day there. There was plenty of food and goodies for the kids and the pool was kept in working order. My mom bought toys and videos (mostly Bible stories) and the kids learned to swim. Maranatha Christian Ministries was taking off and she spent most of the day on the phone or counselling. She was so excited about her non-profit organization that my sins were almost off the radar and I enjoyed some relative peace.

She still dreamed of a reconciliation but my relationship with Jim was a real problem. He was not a Christian and that was simply unacceptable. My salvation from her skewed visions for my life came from an unlikely source. My older brother.

One afternoon my mom started going into a usual, "If you just went to counseling," spiel.
My brother spoke up. "Mom, they've been divorced for three years, why can't you just accept it?"

And just like that, it was over and never spoken of again. Thanks, Bro, I owe you one.