Blind Sighted
Discovering your husband or wife’s infidelity can temporarily blind you. Your world is in chaos. Anger consumes you as you replay your partner’s betrayal countless times over and over in your head. Like me, you may experience deep shame and guilt. What did I do that pushed them away? You imagine a blissful world where you made different decisions, different choices. Only a week or month ago, you thought you had your life together and then without warning you’ve been thrust into a blinding blizzard, a whiteout, without a compass. Each day is a wing and a prayer, that is, if you have the energy or faith to pray. In the midst of my unraveling marriage, I felt so lost that I didn’t feel like I knew who I was anymore. I second guessed every decision I made in our 17 years of marriage. In fact I began to second guess almost every life choice I ever made. I was experiencing a straight out identity crisis.
We are conditioned to believe that tragedy has a direct correlation with our actions. If we are ill with a terminal disease, hit by a dangerous storm, or experience a tragic accident, on some level we believe we have been directly targeted. God must really hate me! Of course we do pay natural consequences for poor choices in our lives, but even seemingly “perfect” people, those who on the surface make all the best moral choices, don’t seem to avoid tragedy or suffering either. Jesus summed it up best in John 9:2 when he and his disciples came upon a blind man. The disciples asked “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus said, “Neither this man or his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God could be displayed in him.”
The tragedies in life are as diverse as the people besieged with them. Focusing our attention on who to hold responsible for our troubles, will never bring the healing or hope we truly need, at least not on a spiritual level. Jesus encourages us to look at our suffering under a different light and it’s not an easy challenge. Instead of playing the blame game, he encouraged his disciples not to direct their attention on who to blame, but instead open their eyes to the miracle God would work in the man’s life. The story continues with Jesus spitting on the ground and making mud. He kneels on the ground and smears the soil on the man’s eyes. When the blind man washes the mud out of his eyes in the pool of Siloam, he is able to see for the first time in his life. It is a powerful story of healing and well…it’s a bit messy, like my life.
Divorce and broken relationships are likewise messy and sometimes the path to clear vision and healing might get worse before it gets better. In the case of the blind man, only after his strange encounter with Jesus did he see for the first time. I am the first to admit, when tragedy strikes, the journey through that tunnel of suffering is straight out awful. I have only compassion and care for other women and men going through the tunnel I traveled through, but my hope for you is to remember that suffering is not without purpose. The pain does force us to reassess. In our desperate state, we cannot help but cry out to God or whoever we think might listen. The questions that have lingered unanswered in the back of our minds demand our immediate attention. Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I want for my life? People have different answers for these questions. Tragedy forces us to come to terms with raw truths that make us deeply uncomfortable. As I mulled my own life’s purpose in my head, I realized that I didn’t have much direction or focus. Most of my time and energy had been directed on my marriage, fighting to make it work, striving to make him happy. I had been playing the game of avoiding my own pain by cloaking it in the distraction of being the caring wife while finding solace with temporary pleasures like Netflix and ice-cream. In the process, I had neglected my spiritual growth. I was not fulfilled. C.S. Lewis called pain “the megaphone of God”. Pain screams at us. It cannot be ignored or pushed to the side. Netflix and ice-cream just won’t cut it in these circumstances. Pain and suffering shed a light on what is broken in our lives and believe it or not, shedding light on what is broken can be a very, very good thing.
My own identity crisis forced me to prioritize what I really wanted in my life. I was now considering the unthinkable: a future where my husband would not be there beside me. I had to think deeply about what I really wanted and shape a new identity. What would the future look like for me? My marriage was the foundation of my personal identity. Now, I needed a new vision, a better vision for my life. I’m a teacher and a mom, so I went to a tried and true method: I made a list of priorities, while praying to God to guide me and provide wisdom. My sons were first on the list. I wanted them happy and healthy. My next priority was my job. I wanted steady income to take care of my boys and I wanted to continue to find joy in my career. As a teacher, maintaining positive relationships with students and helping them learn and grow would be just as important to my personal healing as to my student’s academic growth. Another priority that had been neglected in my marriage, was time to create and work on projects I deeply loved. As a creative personality, I wanted to finally find the time to work on that novel, write that song I’d always talked about, create a work I was proud of (the inspiration for House on Sand). Lastly, I wanted to enrich and build the personal relationships in my life that gave me joy. Without a husband in my life, I would need the support of friends and family and I would need to find fulfillment from these relationships. My first blueprint cleared the fog of tragedy and became my compass in the storm. I knew who I was, what was important to me. My priorities would direct my time and energy, bringing order from the chaos. This process helped me to realize that there were still so many opportunities to live a full and meaningful life even as a single mother. God opened my eyes and I could see.
Tragedy can blindside us and leave us stranded and alone. We can stay permanently blind by clinging to our pain and stewing in the injustice of our current situation. We can also be “blind sighted”. Our temporary loss of sight, the panic, fear, and loss may also work to wake us from our stupor and force us to see clearly what’s broken in our lives and reshape our priorities. God may in fact be providing an opportunity for an incredible act of power and resurrection in the midst of tragedy. God always supplies hope and He opens our eyes to new possibilities, much greater and more fulfilling than what we imagine for ourselves. I started with a blueprint, but God had more plans for me than I even thought possible. I never guessed that I would have the opportunity to minister to others by writing a book and weekly blogs. The experience has been amazing as I’ve heard the stories of so many amazing people and received affirmation of God’s incredible love for all of us. Like the mud Jesus put in the blind man’s eyes, you may find that the road to clear vision starts with a journey through the dirt, but through the act of clearing the mud from your eyes, you might see clearly for the first time. When I finally cleared the mud from my own eyes, I wasn’t angry anymore about my difficult journey or the hardships I faced, but only grateful that I could finally see.
