Staying Open to Life

Hello Sisters,
Congratulations. We made it through the darkest day of the year. From now on, there is a little more light each day.

I’m not much of a pollyanna. In fact, lots of people on this site have found my perspective on SA’s and saving marriages more negative than they wanted. And it’s true that I have a low tolerance level for nurturing false hope, for religious power used to keep women in abusive situations, and for therapists who use theories to do the same.

But I have loads of positive energy for the potential of our lives to be free and happy, for love to come again, for us to heal and be wise, and for us to be good mothers. That’s why I’m involved here, because JoAnn’s perspective also focusses on the well-being and the potential of every woman who comes here in pain, traumatized, a little desperate but still willing to learn and work away at life. That’s sort of how I arrived here, too.

Last year I was sitting in hospital with an older woman from my congregation. She was fine. The man I thought was her husband was not. He was dying a slow and ugly death from mouth cancer. He was sedated most of the time. One night I asked her to tell me their love story. She began by telling me about her marriage to another man, and as she described its destructive path, I recognized the trail of the sex addict. I didn’t say anything but just listen to her talk about what he did and how it affected her. Lies and betrayals every day discovered one day without any warning. She had been married 15 years when she kicked him out. It took her 5 more years to set things up carefully so that she could divorce him safely and keep the house. Meanwhile he thought she would never do it. She was weak and didn’t know anything about money. That was true, but then it wasn’t true when she changed it.

Then one evening at a community dance she met Karl. She remembered how clean he smelled when they danced. As she told me about him, her face lit up with joy and wonder. They talked until 3 in the morning and she knew she loved him. But she was afraid. He knew he loved her but knew she was afraid. This was back in the 70s. Finally they couldn’t be apart, but because of her trauma from her first marriage, she would not marry him. So they lived together all those years without being married. No one knew this at the church. They were very conservative in every way, but when it came to their love they did what they had to do in order to keep it alive. At the end of her story, she took my hand and told me she knew my heart was broken, but she also knew that if I would just stay open to life, love could come again. And that if it came I needed to be open to living differently with it. By this time I was quite teary. Here I had come to support her, and she had given me a far greater gift—the hope of love and the call to stay open to life.

As Karl reached the end, they let him come out of the drug stupor long enough to say good bye. The pain was excruciating, but she and Karl pledged their love again. He looked at me, pleading his love, and I promised him we would look after her, with God’s help.

We buried Karl. She took me in to view him in the casket with her. She touched the buttons on his jacket, commented on him being the most handsome man she ever met. I stood beside her, looking at his half-gone face through the eyes of her love, and saw what she saw. She took my hand, and again told me to stay open.

That’s the one thing I’ve tried to do since that day last February. Stay open to life. I’m not open to death—to the lies, the dead ends, the abuse, the patterns that kill us slowly, the betrayal, the blaming, the harsh scolding of family, the oppression of religion, the hopelessness of the role the therapeutic models cast me in, the fantasy I was living, or the cruel destiny it wants for me. I stay open to life.

And that has made the difference for me. This fall, when I told this same parishioner about the new man who had come in my life, she cried and squeezed my hand. Stay open, she said again.

Life holds many kinds of energy. Some comes into our lives bidden or unbidden and brings pain. It’s there, but it’s power is diminished if we don’t CHOOSE that for ourselves. We can choose differently. We can choose to stay open to the streams of beauty and truth and wisdom and generosity and courage and laughter and healing and new beginnings, and yes, even love. That’s how I found hope within me and why I tell you its within you.

Yes, it is in the Christian story that I find what I need to follow this path. You go find the sacred story that gives you what you need. Trust it. Don’t worry about whether it’s “right”. The proof is in your life.

So a little more light today, than yesterday, and less than tomorrow. Stay open.

with love,
Diane.