There is a temptation (a prideful one in my case) to draw parallels between your life and the experiences of characters in the Bible. I confess to having had these tendencies, but I realize now that I have to step back and resume my role as a humble ant skittering across the surface of God’s creation. That said, I am not Hosea. God never asked me to marry a woman of easy virtue, nor did he tell me to repeatedly overlook / forgive her infidelities. The choices I made were mine, shaped not by pious devotion but rather by love. Love, they say, is blind. I never gave too much thought to that aphorism, but I now can correlate it with the reference in I Corinthians 13 where Paul notes that “now we see through a glass darkly”. What I saw is what I wanted to see, allowing my desires to shape the vague shadows into a clear vision of perfection. I will never cease to love that person – deeply and irrevocably, but I have slowly come to terms with the truth and the reality that the person I loved so dearly never actually existed.
Yet, thanks be to God for the gift of the limited clarity I now enjoy. I can say with some certainty that the reality which was thrust upon me by events has allowed me to arrive at a place of liberation, unbridled by false illusions cloaked in pain. Even with illusions so dispelled, I can comfortably treasure the memories and recollections that include that person I loved so dearly. I recall having once been counseled that divorce is like a death, which I countered by suggesting that it was worse than death, as in the case of divorce the dearly departed didn’t have the decency to be dead. In my case, though, I now see the wisdom of that comparison, as the person whom I loved and thought I’d lost never really existed. Like an imaginary friend from childhood, she is gone; leaving memories only of a relationship that was shaped by love and shattered by reality.
So, how does one forge a path into a new relationship? Having taken tentative steps, I find myself self-sabotaging by looking for a person who is like the former, all the while forgetting that my recollection of that person is not true. Like looking for a new friend, just as real as the imaginary friend you had before, it does not promise to be a successful endeavor. Seeing the truth, though, is liberating. I don’t have to imagine a parallel with Hosea, meaning I can release my Gomer and move on with my life. I have always said that I can have any woman that I please, so here’s to hoping that I can please one more. God is good and God is faithful. God breaks chains, but it is our responsibility to walk away from our captivity.
In a dry and thirsty land 