The Scarlet Letter D

Like any other storm, it starts slowly. A little cloud cover, where there used to be the sunlight of love, companionship, adoration, and respect. A little more shade in areas otherwise not prone to shadows. The loving and playful words typically exchanged between you and your spouse, now are laced with dull, and seemingly senseless banter and arguing. The distance seems to widen between where you once were, and where you currently are. There™s no escaping it, when the divorce is imminent; it seems as though you are left to your own devices. That is a daunting prospect. Then you feel the winds pick up. It™s almost as if you can look inside your emotional storm weather watch, and you can feel it.

There are many critical things that are not right. The internal storm is now brewing. At some point, you just have that voice in the back of your head that tells you, you™re on your way to a divorce. But you don™t believe it, nor should you. People bounce back from the prospect of divorce all the time. Don™t they? Then the doubt settles in. What once was a moment that offers glimmers of hope, and a shimmering of light and promise, the darkness has now taken captive. Divorce isn™t supposed to be easy. It is literally the worst breakup human beings can go through. Even worse, when the other spouse, or even we ourselves wind up subconsciously throwing ourselves away in a form of self-sacrifice and martyrdom just so that the other spouse can move on. As if this vaunted self-sacrifice is a form of nobility, fiallowingfl us to move on at their expense.

When the thought of losing my family was beginning to register in my mind, I was mortified, terrified, and scared beyond reason. I had this debilitating and paralyzing fear locked inside of my soul that the worst possible outcomes that could possibly happen in life were about to happen to me. I felt doomed. At that point, I was more concerned about being misunderstood and alienated by others, and how being labeled as fiDivorcedfl would affect my future dating prospects, and how my religion, and the members in it would socially, and characterlessly crucify me.

I wasn™t totally confident with my ability to adapt to such a high-stress, high pressure situation. I felt totally unprepared and ill-equipped to even speak of it. I expected to sink to the bottom of depression and misery. I feared my own temporal weakness. I was concerned how I could look towards the greatest source of strength, my Savior. It™s these moments of weakness, and feelings of vulnerability, that can bring us down in a mortifyingly humble stroke.

The most important, and often overlooked part, of a divorce is how you bounce back. I can certainly point you in the right direction as to how to get started. It requires a mental and emotional determination to rise from the dust, so to speak, and build upon and improve upon your current situation.

The questions I kept asking myself and will continue to ask myself is, what exactly do you want? How do you want to bounce back? How are you going to build your life back? It is a case-by-case basis how long this will take for each individual. Everyone™s circumstances are going to be different. It requires us to look inward to see where we want to be. Some people don™t have that far to go, while others have mountains to climb. So what is it that you want? Write it down. Our mind and subconscious have a way of creating whatever it is that we want, and uncovering a pathway to that destination. fiA dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.fl Greg S. Reid.

The fiimmaterialfl somehow then becomes fimaterialfl. It™s no longer abstract, it™s now tangible. Once we are filled with resolve to better our lives and better our future, step two is staying focused and staying motivated. The execution of such is never easy, nor is it supposed to be. Nothing great ever came easily. And it never will. You™ll face opposition, repeatedly, and relentlessly.

A deciphering factor that has kept me motivated to achieve my goals and dreams is knowing that I have heaven smiling down on me, the hosts of heaven and past relatives cheering me on. What is also equally motivating is knowing that there is a dark force out there that would love for me to fail. This same dark force not only wants to see me fail, but wants to see me blame God for my misfortune, and then resent God for not spoon-feeding me what needs to be earned and worked for through faith. One of my favorite attributes is my competitive nature. I love to win. I love to prove nay-sayers, and other forms of doubters wrong about me, and my potential. Knowing that I have doubters and haters on either side of me, whispering doubts and fears into my fispiritual earsfl motivates me. My primary trait that has helped me keep my fieternal eyes on the eternal prizefl is my Eternal Perspective. Church leaders often refer to this unlimited weapon against the adversary and his plans against me as fiseeing with the eye of faithfl and fiSeeing beyond what™s visible to the natural eyefl. This gift, this all-essential tool, this mission-critical attribute is freely given of the Lord, but like most spiritual gifts, it™s earned. Line upon line. So how does one gain this crucial gift? How does one start seeing with the eye of faith? How does one build upon it? We need to start to want it. Even desire to develop it once we have it. It starts by wrapping our head around the realization that God wants us to see what He sees.