Other Waters Are Ever Flowing

Last April, unexpectedly, the Presbytery decided to close our home church, a church my family had moved to Colorado to work with. The news was heartbreaking. I remember watching Michael serve communion at one of the last services and starting to weep because he would soon no longer stand before the church in that capacity. In the last service, our pastor cried during one of the hymns and, chin trembling, voice louder than usual with no amplification, he pronounced the benediction. I huddled with the other women after the service, shared hugs, and cried in grief for the loss and in fear of what Michael would do for work. Outside, the mountains were clearly visible through the floor to ceiling windows.

Within about a month, through a long process and many meetings, the Presbytery changed its decision, and the church was to reopen. I was confused by how to feel and act. I did not know how to turn around in the path I was in and enter that door again. How does one relate to something resurrected after one has grieved its death?

I tend to take my time in making decisions, often quietly weighing the possible paths, then making a decision and standing by it, living it. Staunchly. I have difficulty turning around after a decision. I am not one to pine. After Clare left for Iraq and Jaden had settled into a rhythm in our house, Michael questioned whether we adults had made a wise decision. I was furious that he had not brought up his concerns the the decision making and was unable to entertain the questions. It was made. It was done. We had struggled with it, cried, been exhausted, explained to friends and families, and I was moving into living the decision.

At the end of July, Michael withdrew his petition for divorce. I am wondering how to handle this change. For nine months, I struggled to salvage a relationship with Michael with emotional outpourings, admittance of wrongdoing, frightening confrontations, cries for help from friends to no avail. After a final discussion about a divorce and Michael's filing, I stepped onto a path that I knew would bring healing. And it didn't include a spousal relationship with Michael.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is when Christ brings Lazarus back to life. Christ performs a divine miracle after having wept over Lazarus' death. The Bible says so simply, "Jesus wept." I wondered as I read this passage recently, if I was supposed to perform some sort of divine miracle on my and Michael's relationship. And wondered how in the hell I was going to do that. Dead is dead. I've grieved. I was done. I was way down the path from the pile of divorce dung, the scent barely carried on the wind.

In the last month or so, I have reconnected with some college friends. I talked to one of them, Gillian, this last Tuesday, her in her university office in Melbourne and me feeding Harper dinner in Colorado. I told Gillian that I didn't know how I was going to bring back a relationship with Michael from the dead. She replied that maybe the relationship had to be something new, not a bringing back.

A sigh of relief. A FedEx from God. I am thinking now not about attempting resurrection but about spring, a time of resurrection. As the snow melts, the perennials burst forth through thawing dirt, new growth sprouting from something left over from the last season, through the winter, some root similarity. Bright new leaves appear on the same tree branches over our house. I have been thinking tonight about Prometheus and Heraclitus. Poor Prometheus punished by Zeus to be chained in the Caucasus forever, his liver eaten by an eagle, only to be regrown and the liver torn out endlessly each day until Heracles rescued him. Life is not the same endless pain, a resurrection of what was torn out, killed and digested. For, as Heraclitus wrote, "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."

(Footnote: Interestingly, the liver is the only human organ that can regenerate itself to a significant extent, and the Talmud refers to the liver as the seat of anger. How anger likes to regenerate itself. How we might have to tear out our liver repeatedly until Heracles - great strength - rescues us.)