It all started with a comment about a book and I was sent in to a long, thoughtful, soul searching and mostly cranky, mood. When I was married, books were a passion that we shared. We had bookshelves along every wall in every room of all the places we lived. There were also many boxes in storage and we spent weekends travelling around, scouring used book stores all through England. He collected theology, philosophy, linguistics and classics - I collected children's literature, classics, Bibles and travel. We read all that we collected and we treated each book shop like a treasure trove. We were so excited when we found first editions, out of print specialities and unique books. Reading was more than a hobby - we had books everywhere and we read wherever we were. When our marriage ended, I was in Canada and Brook was in England with all of our possessions. I didn't see my things again - including the books. For the last 7 years, I haven't really owned books again. I stopped reading anything beyond fluff novels and the sight of a second hand book store turned my stomach. So, with a comment about books, the past that I thought was long dealt with, came rushing back. That coincided with the feeling, for the first time in 7 years, that I was alone. The kids are growing up, Dylan is doing well and they haven't been filling my brain space like they have for the past years, so I was able to have my brain filled with my own life instead. Books were the last thing to let go of - well not books exactly, but the memories that I had attached to them.
If you have been following the blog you know that there have been some challenging circumstances at the farm in the past month. Well, when the snow started falling, and i tried to keep up with shovelling, I just wanted a man here to take care of me. I don't think i have ever felt that before! I was tired of being the only one to solve problems and make everything better.
Now in the time of all this thinking about the end of my marriage and trying to let go of the last bits and pieces, a bunch of different people kept bringing up things about me and marriage. I have never been asked so many ways, by so many people if I was lonely, did I miss being married, was it hard to be alone at Christmas, would I like to get married again and then just today, what was my theological position on remarriage after divorce. It was crazy! None of those are really questions that I have honestly answered for myself and the theological one was a question that I had purposefully avoided studying. I didn't want to study a subject that I wasn't prepared to deal with. In truth, I didn't want to know what my opinion really was because i wasn't prepared to deal with my own feelings. For whatever reason, today was the day and i spent hours reading and studying and talking with my theological go-to guy. At the end of it all here are my two conclusions in their basic forms... (I'm not going to put all the scripture references in - are you really going to look them up?)
1. according to Jesus and Paul, divorce is acceptable for the reasons of adultery and abandonment.
2. the covenant of marriage is broken with the death of one of the spouses or the remarriage of the leaving spouse.
The question left for me is why all this talk and questioning to me about remarriage? At first it made me a bit panicky, but at the end of the day it's about what God wants for me and my family. I have never really been open to the idea of remarrying, but tonight I find myself sitting in bed wondering what the future holds.
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