LDS Divorce Support
Finding Hope and Healing
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When The Vow Breaks:
Surviving and Thriving After Divorce In The Church : How Do I Apply The Atonement?
presented by Kevin Hinckley and Christi Turley (Roberts)
We are each at different places and have different experiences with divorce. Divorce can be devastating. It is the tearing apart of 2 people and sometimes leaves us feeling like half a person. We need to grieve our losses. There are many losses that come from divorce. There are different stages of grieving as well that come with it. It is like a death but it is worse than the loss of a loved one because we don't have the hope of being together and there is the mistrust and rejection and pain of losing the dreams you had together.
When I went through my divorce I put up a sign on my mirror that I looked at everyday and it said 'Pain can do one of two things- we can let it destroy us or make us reach for the highest within" Every day I looked at that and made a choice as to which path I was going to let pain take me down.
I was depressed, there were days I didn't want to get out of bed. I was devastated and hurt and angry but I decided I wasn't going to let divorce define me. I never got angry at God. My divorce was the consequence of someone else's choices.
Going to church was hard. There were many judgements of others and I felt like a piece to a puzzle that didn't fit in anymore. I had to rely on my relationship with God and put no value on the judgements and opinions of others.
Pain is one of Satan's biggest tools. If he can keep us in our pain, he can keep us from our purpose and who we are. All addictions come from pain in some way. They are vices to help us push down and avoid the pain. We need to embrace the pain and feel it and ask God to help us through it. It is a process.
Many of us don't know who we are without anyone even before we get married. Many of us have baggage even before we get married. We have to let go of our baggage and move forward. Divorce puts us in the place that forces us to find out who we are without all the labels or roles that we have put our identity into. When we take all of those away, who are we? I felt like I lost my identity....I lost my best friend, the role of wife, couple friends, friends at church, and on and on and I didn't know who I was anymore. When you lose everything......there is the possibility of anything!
I quoted from the book A New Earth
" There are many accounts of people who experienced that emerging new dimension of consciousness as a result of tragic loss at some point in their lives. Some lost all of their possessions, others their children or spouse, their social position, reputation, or physical abilities. In some cases, through disaster or war, they lost all of these simultaneously and found themselves with "nothing". We may call this a limit-situation. Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their sense of self, had been taken away. Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish or intense fear they initially felt gave way to a sacred sense of Presence, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear. This phenomenon must have been familiar to St Paul, who used the expression "the peace of God which passeth all understanding." It is indeed a peace that doesn't seem to make sense, and the people who experienced it asked themselves: In the face of this, how can it be that I feel such peace?
The answer is simple, once you realize what the ego is and how it works. When forms that you had identified with ,that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, in can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I AM, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That's the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I AM.
Not everybody who experiences great loss also experiences this awakening, this disidentification from form. Some immediately create a strong mental image or thought form in which they see themselves as a victim, whether it be of circumstances, other people, an unjust fate, or God. This thought form and the emotions it creates, such as anger, resentment, self-pity, and so on, they strongly identify with, and it immediately takes the place of all the other identifications that have collapsed through the loss. In other words, the ego quickly finds a new form. The fact that this new form is a deeply unhappy one doesn't concern the ego too much, as long as it has an identity, good or bad. In fact, this new ego will be more contracted, more rigid and impenetrable than the old one.
Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some peole become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life. Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell of the ego. You are closed. Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (which we could also call negativity) will create more outer resistance, and the univers will not be on your side; life will not be helpful. If the shutters, are closed, the sunlight cannot come it. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one
with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace an inner stillness that come with surrender. You rest in God."
end of quote
I myself experienced this peace:
This is the peace I had experienced at some of the most painful moments in my divorce...that peaceful moment where I felt the calm right in the middle of the biggest storm was when I felt I had lost everything and I just let go and God carried me and held me and the peace came. I let go of everything I had identified myself with and because I had nothing left in me, I even let go of fear because I was now experiencing my worst fear. So i realized that when I had let go of fear, I no longer feared anything because I was in the worst place I ever imagined being in my life....i had lost the love of my life, my husband, our togetherness, our family unit, our eternity, our eternal family unit, my best friend, my cheerleader, my confidante, my dreams,.....everything I had identified with as being me...so when I lost all that...it felt like i had lost
everything and since there was nothing else to lose...i let go of fear and feared nothing. When I had nothing left to fear or identify with anymore, it gave into spirit and who I really am and i literally felt the Lord holding me because all I had left was Him and his love for me. That is where the peace that surpasses all understanding comes from. When you end up losing everything...there is just the sacredness in having no fear....a true surrendering. Letting go of the control I had fooled myself into thinking I had. Because in essence we really don't have control. It's a facade.
When we let go of fear and hand it all over to God, we become one with him and when we start to have fear again and gain control we once again seperate ourselves from him.
The sad thing is we start finding things to once again define who we are and we let our ego take over again and then we let fear in again and then we have whole new things to identify ourselves with...our job, our parenting roles, our callings, and on and on and then when we lose those or fail at those, we once again cling to fear.
This was just an epiphany for me. I realized that the victims I work with at MADD were this very example. The ones that experienced the awakening it speaks of in the beginnning and turn it all over because they just can't do it anymore, experience that calming peace, and they are the ones that make it and move forward in life and keep going and the ones that create another identity with something else rather than letting go are the ones who don't. They stay in their pain and in their bitterness and years go by and they are still stuck. I see it every day and every day, this rings true.
When we come to a place where we have to face our biggest fear and there is a great trauma or loss, there is nothing else to fear because you are right in the middle of it and when you hand it over to God, in your biggest moment of trial, you can also feel the greatest peace.
Until we are okay being alone, we are not ready to get married. It needs to be two whole people become one, not two halves trying to find someone to complete them. We need to be complete within ourselves. It doesn't matter what others think and say. In the end it is between ourselves and God and in the end, that is all that matters, what he thinks of us and how we have lived our lives and answer to him.
In the end, the truest form of healing comes through the Atonement. It is the answer to everything. We have to let go so that God can take over.
People are often unreasonable, illogical,
And self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you
Of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
False friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank;
People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis
it is between you and God
It was never between you and them anyway.
Kevin Keith
Brother Hinckley asked us to ask ourselves, "who am I now?" as, if everything had been stripped away. In reality we do lose our identity which can (and was is my life) a HUGE blessing! The caveat to this challenge is, we cannot answer the question while we are in pain... pain "keeps us from being who we're supposed to be." Bro Hinckley referenced a book by C.S. Lewis called "The Problem with Pain" and I don't know about you, but I want to read this! Some quotes, "You can't see properly through tears." "Perhaps your own cries deafen the voice you want to hear."
We then turned to Alma 41 which is the "Doctrine of Restoration" as in:
The things we have lost will be returned to those that remain faithful.
What you give (good or bad) in your actions is exactly how/what you will be judged by (I hope to have serious
forgiveness and compassion as the majority of my being!!)
