Stranded
I am so tired of this life. What is it within me that causes me to feel compelled to stay in this life when freedom calls, so close at hand?
When I got married ten years ago, I never thought that lightning could strike me twice in the same place. But it did. I ended up simply moving from one selfish spouse to another. There was no warning either time – actually, there was more warning the second time than the first, if you can believe it. But both warnings were so small, so subtle, that I don’t think any rational person would have heeded them.
So here I sit, trying to do the right thing by staying in yet another crappy marriage rather than getting a divorce and moving on with my life, and getting nothing out of it. Do I somehow think that I’ll get some eternal reward for this? Or is it just trying to avoid some type of eternal consequence? I am like the man who spends his entire life doing his best to serve an angry God that is only interested in punishment, and failing at that service anyway by the very nature and burden of the tasks put before him. It’s as if I’m being set up to lose, and the answers that seem correct and turning out to be wrong.
What to do in such a situation? The answers are at once clear, and unbearable. The "right thing" is to stay in this situation, slowly dying, watching my so-called spirituality drain away from me like syrup through cheesecloth, while I spend each day wondering how much longer I’ll wake up every morning in this living hell, losing my ability to ever do enough to merit anything close to celestial glory. There is no other option, because my child is an innocent victim, and wants and deserves a complete family.
But by dying to save and protect my child, I am still dying, spiritually, and will never make it to the so-called promised land, here or in eternity.
