Kissing Cement at Full Speed
Grief Has Five Stages. Divorce Might have a Sixth
Life was full speed until that cement wall jumped out of nowhere. The nerve.
“You got this.”
“It’s just a season.”
“Your breakthrough is coming.”
“Acceptance is defeat.”
These slogans scroll across the news ticker of your life as constant dopamine hits to keep this hype train rolling. You’ve got meetings, phone calls, sermons, and deliverables all needing your ‘A’ game. You don’t have time to feel.
Rushing to finalize Sunday’s notes has you striking keys at light speed before the media team arrives in an hour. You thrive on deadlines. “The 360 Life” series is set to challenge people to live their full life in Christ and launch into the small group campaign. The future looks bright! It looks busy.
Last month had record attendance. Momentum swells with new energy filling the room. The noise is palpable. Rows sat empty for five years and now fruit is finally showing up. All that labor in the desert is finally paying off. Or maybe it has something to do with the church split down the road.
Home is chaotic as kids shovel down dinner to make it on time for youth group. Life is school, practice, events, & church. The frantic shorthand of a busy schedule. Braces make it more expensive. Lukewarm spaghetti and dried out French bread meet you at the table. Stampeding teenagers trample past on the way out, with a quick wave and a “Bye bruh.”
She runs her hand through your hair on her way to the chair next to you. Something about her touch always calms you down after arriving home. Just the two of you, sitting in the aftermath of chaos, enjoying a quiet conversation. You download your day with its ups and downs and mention the couple that want to start meeting for pre-marriage counseling. You ask how her day was and she gently grabs your hand and says:
“Dave, you’re living in a fog right now.”
Jerking your hand away, the jolt surges through every fiber as you blurt out, “What’s wrong with your voice?!” She sounds like a man. She sounds like your therapist!
“Go away bad dream!”
“Who’s Taylor Johnson?! I don’t like what he’s saying!”
Noodles disappear from the plate. French bread blows away as dust. Every chair around the table crumbles to the floor. Ocean foam green paint is violently stripped off the walls. Calming powder blue curtains rip off their rods and vanish out the windows. Utensils zip past into the vortex. A hand smears away the face of your wife, revealing the stranger you’ve been talking to for months.
“This is garbage. This Taylor-Johnson stuff is a joke.” Your thoughts sneer.
You check the church Facebook page, annoyed at the fact your series hasn’t posted yet. What’s the deal? You scrambled so they could get all the media ready. No one’s responding to your texts. Heads are gonna roll. Then a reel pops up on the scroll. “Who’s that guy and why are they welcoming everyone to my church?”
“Dave, did you hear what I said?”
“Not now Taylor!”
Texts shoot out like orders from a general fending off an enemy strike. Whatever this attack is, it won’t prevail. Your army stands ready.
“We love ya bro.”
“Hang in there.”
“So sorry man.”
“We love ya?!” What does that have to do with fighting? You’re under attack! Sound the charge!
“Where’s everybody at?!”
A singular chair faces you amid the rubble. Smoke rolls off the embers of torched two-by-fours. Paint still bubbling off the siding. A foundation left dismantled. Ash gently falling from a winter of death. There’s no war to fight anymore. “Can someone please turn off the fog machine?”
Welcome to life after divorce.
They sit down with your file in hand and begin reading it off like a post-war assessment. It doesn’t look good. Taylor has a lot to say. Life as you pretended never existed. It’s a harsh pill to swallow. A cement one.
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, & Acceptance.
The five steps of grief. Every one of them applies to divorce. Divorce is a death. It’s tremendous loss. That grief may stretch out for years. Divorce has an added layer in the grief process that comes before denial:
Disillusionment.
It’s not even acknowledging there’s anything to deny. It screams, “Your life is still the same. Believe it! Claim it!” They are still your spouse. No one will tell you otherwise. There’s no such thing as divorce. That ring still on your finger proves it. You revert to a childhood of playing ‘pretend’. You’ve created your own Matrix. Ignorance is bliss.
It’s a stage you never want to leave. Living in a ‘fog’ is the plastic peace you need right now.
Running through it, waving your arms in the mist, bliss suddenly smacks headfirst into a cement wall. You weren’t even wearing a helmet.
That’s where denial begins. It’s where you met Taylor.
Taylor-Johnson’s wrong. That’s not where you’re at. “Don’t tell me that.” You’re still wobbling from that cement wall. Fog smells like smoke now.
You’ve been divorced for six months. Haven’t pastored in over a year. She’s already moved him in. You fought for your marriage and now your kids have a live-in boyfriend for a ‘dad’. Your church has a new pastor.
It’s okay to take the ring off. It’s time to remove her picture from your home screen. End the fantasy. You’re not preaching Sunday.
That reality burns deep.
When it hurts, hope has a chance. You can’t heal from a wound you refuse to see. Being jolted from fantasy isn’t the first phase of grief, it’s the first step toward healing. Cement walls are your biggest blessing.
Thank you Taylor.
**The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis is a tool used in evaluating behavioral tendencies and relational patterns.
**The five stages of grief were developed by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying.
Thank you for reading!
If this has been a blessing to you, would you consider sharing this article with someone struggling through divorce?
BackwardPastor’s mission is to walk alongside people experiencing divorce and encourage them in the journey.
Disillusionment. Yep. Good add. I can see that.
I've been there and felt this piece viscerally. Divorce, especially after an affair, is in my opinion worse than a death. I've experienced both. Recovering from deep personal betrayal is the death of the ego. We give up not only our dreams for the future, but often our very identity. I thought my husband and I were building a life together. We had put over fifteen years of shared work into it, and then it all went up in smoke. We have two children and what it put them through, still hurts me deeply.
I also agree that the painful experience of divorce can become a gift if we heal from it without bitterness. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” I didn’t intend to lose my life for Jesus, but in the pain of divorce and the humiliation I experienced in front of my church family, Jesus became all I had and all I needed.
With that said, I still cringe at the pain of that season and wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But now I can also see how God provided for me, gave me wisdom, and helped me release unhealthy things I wasn’t even aware of. I like myself now a lot better than the woman I was then. I feel more centered and closer to God.
Thank you for making yourself vulnerable enough to share this. It was a little painful to read because my heart ached with recognition. I appreciate what you're writing.