I left an abusive marriage. Because my ex husband (non Catholic) fought the process, it took six years and four months for a local decree. He has now announced his intention to appeal to Rome.
Everyone I’ve ever discussed this with can see how ridiculous it is, how the process is being abused in order to perpetuate control, but all we can do is look at each other and acknowledge that, because there is nothing anybody can actually do about it. I doubt the people who set up the process long ago ever even imagined it could be misused like this. I would like very much to hear from someone who has been through this and come out the other side.
Thanks.
In case a bright side to this depressing situation is helpful, I just wanted to say that normally takes quite a bit of time to get over an abusive marriage. Perhaps God knows that you need this time? I say this from experience because I was in an abusive marraige - verbal and emotional. I lived the marriage trying to please him, and obey “as unto the Lord”, which is the Protestant counsel I always got, and I wanted to live as I understood was God’s way at the time. However, it became evident that my cooperating with his kind of headship was only making him a worse person…
After divorce I did not date because I was the mom of a young son who had one parent starting a new family and it seemed better to me to be all about my son than distracted about something for me in these formative years. I intended to wait till my son was married or had begun a career before I considered marriage, and meanwhile learn to be content single - because I really needed to know if God even wanted me to marry. How do you know God’s will for that? So I did what I could do - I worked on accepting that His will might be to *not *marry. However I did fall in love unexpectedly as my son finished high school, and over time it became very clear to me that this was in fact God’s will. We pursued annulments which took 18 months, and then we married.
When I met and fell in love with my now husband, I had just received a healing of the heart from Jesus at a ministry in my now-husband’s state that God, through circumstances and miraculous encouragement, led me to. Even with the years of graces as a Catholic after my divorce, and the many ways God helped me, I still needed wholeness. Living in an abusive marriage for a long time causes PTSD, and I have become convinced that only Jesus can heal that. Psychology offers helps, but Jesus offers complete healing.
So my thought is, as painful as it is much of the time to be alone, particularly following the
worse-aloneness of being in a marraige that is *not *a marraige, the lonely-aloneness seems to be a thing you have to get through before you are able to find God’s peace in the aloneness - to be alone yet abide in the peace that passes all understanding. And its a
very good thing to know - its a pearl of great price! Worth every penny of the price you are paying now.
"The end of a thing is better than the beginning thereof". How many times I comforted myself with that phrase. I can tell you now from experience that its true. It will get better when you get through this, and meanwhile you can have the peace that passes all understanding. Seek it, and God will grant it.
I think I would have had “peace in aloneness” much sooner if I had accepted the situation I was in. My not-accepting was a deterrent to my goal of peace. It took a lot of grace to not dwell on the unfairnesses and injustices of my situation. But that’s what you need - grace - because your own effort tends to not get you too far in these big things.
Even now, when so much in my life is good, I can still go back and dwell on the injustices, the loss of my loved home, the financial difficulties and lack of financial stability that i had worked so diligently for - I suffered because of the situation and my ex who made it worse. Just recently some new information came to me that made me struggle again, and again I was very tempted to really dwell on unfairness. But I know what to do now, from experience. I ask Jesus to take away this bitterness and to make me forget the thoughts I am dwelling on. I feel the bitterness, and I offer up the pain of the bitterness while asking God to take it away and replace it with the way He’d rather me be. And He does! I am nearly over the recent incident. Like 95%. I will ask help for the last 5%. Such incidents rarely come up now because God has brought me far. But in the beginning it was constant need for help and grace, and God granted it.
I hope the annulment does not take ten years now. That is bad news to hear, and if there is any way you can hurry the process, you must do what you can possibly do, and actively trust God for the rest. One of the greatest things I learned in my long ordeal was to trust in Jesus. The Divine Mercy devotion had all new meaning. Praying the D.M.Chaplet is easy, and an easy prayer when you are stressed is a very good thing. But the Divine Mercy image means so much to me now because I truly had to learn to trust in Jesus. If it were not for the difficulty I would not know like I know now that I truly can trust Him! It makes me grateful for the bad marriage and the bad divorce, too! I sort of tell myself I must have been too thick-headed to learn this wonderful thing, so I had to go through a great difficulty in order to learn about trusting God. I am glad for it.
Praying for you now for the graces you need.
