Homeless ...

[OldeThom]

My journey to God’s Truth has led me up many mountains and through many valleys. Being cut off from my family (separated by divorce) is for me the lowest valley of them all. Home was always my family, not the roof over our heads - they were my treasure, but tarnished by my ineptness and arrogance. In my loneliness and spiritual frustration, I turned my eyes and heart to God, and He has awoken a desire within me to not only know Him better, but learn to serve Him.

Raised Baptist, raised in protestant dogma and trained in church history, God began to challenge me on my belief and faith, i.e., what I thought I “knew” I “believed.” Being the kind of person that I am, I started with Religion 101 all over again and to my surprise it has led me to the Catholic Church, both on an emotional level and doctrinal level. In all my prayers and meditation, in all my reading and writing and all my research to date has brought me to an understanding adequately summed up by St. Thomas Aquinas when he spoke of the three needed for Salvation (paraphrased):

Know what you ought to believe; know what you ought to desire; and know what you ought to do.

I am confident (now!) that my wife and I could have worked out our differences, for our divorce was not over money, addiction, adultery, or abuse, it was over her wounded pride and my self withdrawal. She hardened her heart and I turned away from her loving embrace. I am still walking along those peaks and ravines, but they are not as deep nor as steep as before knowing that the family of God, the Catholic Church, has always been right here to help me see that Gods’ home is in my heart and that is where I need to store up my treasure.

Respectfully,
Thom

 

[Sam_Maloney]

I hope your journey continues to be blessed…

I wonder if you should get in touch with your ex-- sounds like you have a lot of regret over the divorce, maybe she does, too.

 

[OldeThom]

I hope your journey continues to be blessed…

I wonder if you should get in touch with your ex-- sounds like you have a lot of regret over the divorce, maybe she does, too.

Thank you for the kind response . My wife and I are in constant communication, well, rather, I communicate constantly and she responds occasionally. I love to write and talk, she is more of a thinker and tends to hold onto to things deeper and longer. I respect her space and her time, so I try to limit my words greatly and keep things mostly on a polite social level and of course conversations about our daughters, who live with her, ages 13 and 15. However, they now live about 150 miles away and I don’t drive, but I talk with them at least twice a week and email.

My wife says she wants to be “manless” for awhile. We have both been to counseling but never together, something she could never bring herself to do with me, even after we agreed to see a secular counselor we chose together. She has a long history of emotional damage caused by her father and previous male relationships. For me I have a long history of emotional and physical damage from my mother and my previous female relationships. Her parents are divorced as are mine, both when we were around 13 years old.

I am sure it is a common story among professional couples today, esp in the US. What’s distressing is that it all could have been avoided had I been more proactive and understanding, and less consumed with my own disabilities and selfish. My wife, bless her heart, tried to tell me I was losing her and needed help, but I did not listen; she made suggestions, but I did not listen; and she helped me continuously to find relief for my disability until I turned her away. No, I am greatly to blame.

As if that were not enough, it was I that decided to leave our church at the time, right after Bush decided to invade Iraq and our preacher at the time did nothing but spout politics from the pulpit week after week. We both were disgusted, but I made the decision (in fact many of our friends left the church at that time as well.) We bopped around churches for a bit (it’s great to be protestant isn’t it?), but that stopped eventually. Funny thing, she was bapitised Catholic and I was baptised, well … Baptist. It did not take much for me to convince my wife to join me in my church since she was not a practicing Catholic anyway. It may be easy to see now why I wish things back then went differently. Ah the ifs, could, shoulds and woulds … still equal didn’t’s.

On my way to becoming a Catholic I knew I had to resolve my divorce issue so I tackled that with our deacon when I first started my journey to the Church. We did not have any of twelve impediments to a valid marriage, but to truly make it a valid marriage, meeting the four necessary ingredients recognised by the Church, we obviously could only tacitly meet the fourth requirement, follow the sacrament properly. I want to uphold the truth and the sacrament of marriage. My wife and I married late in our lives and have young children, but we knew what we were doing.

I now see that God holds marriage as one of the highest level commitments a man and woman can ever make. My view now is that dishonoring marriage is dishonoring God. So I have chosen to remain committed to my marriage, such as it is in it’s present state, and will not seek annulment. My daily prayers always include the hope that we will one day be able to reconcile our differences, forgive ourselves and each other, and live in holy matrimony once again (remarried in the Church next time, too!).

So there you have it. Sorry for the lengthy post, most I have spoken about this thus far anywhere and on a public forum to boot …

Respectfully,
Thom

 

[Ruthie]

I’ll pray for you both, and your daughters.

Ruthie