Has your spouse cheated on you? 

Here is some counsel to help you going forward - 

"First of all, I hope you are finding sounding boards to help think through the difficult journey you're on. 

 I’ve walked through, with a number of parishioners, who had very difficult divorces as a Pastor over the years.

I am intertwined into people’s lives, families and souls through the work I do.

 My place is often right in the chaos of unraveling, attempts to reweave, and sometimes the dire hope of resurrection. 

I wish I had more stories of rebuilding instead of burying, but that’s been my witness.

 

Relationships are surprisingly difficult to save once the fabric of trust is severed. 

I’ve seen it happen but it’s painfully rare.

What I have seen more is the slow suffocation of people’s souls who try to carry the dead in their life beyond the graveyard.

 There’s a time to lay to rest our deepest hopes, 

our longest battles, our best attempts.

We can’t ever give up before we should, 

but the stench of a fool’s hope is often dragged too far in relationships, when it should have been washed off through repentance, grieving, mourning and healing. 

I’ve seen people build such an apocalyptic view of divorce, that it is more often built on the failure of mature people to walk out and divorce, than the actual divorce itself.

 I know that in some children it isn’t the divorce that devastates the child but it is the way life and relationships are handled by the parents. 

So much could be far less damaging, and life could be put together far sooner, if that season would have been handled better. 

It doesn’t have to be so dysfunctional. 

I’ve seen families break up but go on to mend and actually act like mature people in the aftermath. 

Yes, there were difficult moments, big emotions etc. but the driving desire to do what was best for the children resulted in being able to reign in the drama, and trauma, of it all.

Children need healthy parents. 

Doing what is best for the children isn’t about maintaining a family structure, as much as it’s about having a mom and dad that are healthy in their heart, mind and soul.

 Life isn’t formal, it’s organic and the light or dark in one’s inner life spills out in parenting. 

We can’t “play parts,” we must live in truth, our children need us and if we are lost in the process, nothing we gain is true.

Children don’t want just to see their parents together, as much as they want to be happy, and to see their parents happy. 

Seeing people suffering out-loud, is very difficult for children, but absorbing their silent suffering is even more deforming to an inner disposition about life, love and marriage. 

Children need light to grow and sometimes what’s around them needs to be pruned out to get more light in. 

Suffocating, tense, despairing, soulless living, 

poisons the soul of children.

 Dark tales need to end, and sometimes it’s the parent that needs to close chapters or books sooner than later. 

Some stories don’t need to be read, and some need to come to some sort of conclusion, either as a “tragedy” or “happily ever after.”

 We need to resolve stuff, much more than we do, for the sake of tomorrow.

I’m not advocating for divorce, but I am not advocating for prolonging something that needs to be dealt with honestly and bravely.

 There are many seasons of life that I wish I would have been braver and most of those matters revolved around endings, more so than beginnings. 

 We know how to start, way better than how to end, but both are a part of life.  

Just remember to give your children the best YOU they can have, and if that isn’t possible, then do whatever it takes to get there, no matter how dark it may be to let go of the dock.”

Pastor Eric.