Stones and Shoulders

Everyone tells me how good I'm doing. They say they are impressed with the way I've handled myself and how I seem to be coping so well. For a while I believed this too. But today I'm not coping well. I'm not handling myself well. I'm emotional. But is being emotional really a bad thing? That's what I've been conditioned to believe. 

I just feel so let down by so much. And it just hurts. I can't even think of anything elaborate to describe the hurt. It's a pain that lives inside me. And a lot of the time I just ache from the hurts. 

Obviously JG let me down. He wasn't the man I thought he was. But there is another hurt that is sometimes even greater than that. It is from the church I attended the past four years. I feel quite abandoned by the people of that church. The way that pastoral staff treated me is abominable. In my dark hours of need I was judged by that church like I've never been judged. I feel like the woman in John 8. (Since that particular woman was being judged for adultery let me add for clarification there was no adultery in my marriage. Nothing even close to anything like that by either party.) I made plenty of mistakes in marriage. I owned up to them and sought forgiveness with a truly repentant heart. I know I am not blameless but neither are the men who threw stones at me.  No one ever reached out to my from the church I loved so much.  They just listened to JG and judged me. The elders had multiple meetings where my marriage was discussed at length. Most of the men in that group have never met me or ever even uttered a word to me. Yet they felt they could judge me and discuss me and tell me what to do. 

The day after JG left I immediately called my church to set up a meeting with the pastor. I had grown to trust these people and needed their help. That's when I learned JG had already been talking to the church staff. They had already stoned me in their minds before I even knew my husband was leaving me. I reached out and got nothing. In the darkest time of my life I was actually told by an elder that there were bigger worse fires in the church and that is why no one reached out to me. I guess I just wasn't important enough to them. Once the church did try to meet with me three months had already passed. It was too late. The hurt and disappointment from them had been done. And they had only further solidified in their minds my guilt. I was also told that once the divorce was finalized they would talk with me again since I wasn't being completely truthful due to legal reasons.  Even more judgement. I never ever held anything back with anyone who asked. I was pretty horrified to find out a staff member had asked a close friend of mine recently if and when it would be ok for him to reach out to me. Well it would have been nice to have heard from you nine months ago. So yes this may ruffle some feathers. But that church let me down. And I've lost respect for that church and the men who lead it.

Today is not a good day for me emotionally. And I want to be honest. I want to purge all the hurt and just get it out of me. I don't want to burden others with my hurts. But today I am emotional and need a shoulder to cry on. I need my husband's shoulder. The one who promised me and The Lord he would always be there for me.