Why Do We Hide our Shit?

Within hours of sharing my first blog entry on FB, I was overwhelmed with the number of people messaging me, in private, thanking me for having the courage to talk openly about divorce and then opening up about their own marital struggles.  What struck me, and hurt me, was not only the sheer volume of messages I received, but also the fact that every single person asked me to keep their story confidential.

Here's something I immediately learned upon receiving all of those messages, We need to trust the grace of other Christians.  Not everyone will be safe, but it's worth being hurt by a few to receive the grace that will be offered by the majority.

Why don't we trust that majority?  Maybe it's our own pride keeping us from being vulnerable.
We say "I'm scared of how others will respond" but the deeper reason (the reason which we hide behind) is that we're too proud to share our failures, or too worried about how other people perceive us that we don't want to reveal our struggles.  At least, I certainly believe that to be true of myself.

I'm gonna share a story that I've processed through with several friends and therapists.  As the whole point of my public blogging is to overcome the shame I faced and to possibly help others do the same, I'll process publicly something I've already shared with various people.

We both had crutches.  We all, to be honest, have crutches.  Some are more consequential than others. I've talked with quite a few people about a couple of crutches I'm going to describe and I've been given various opinions in regards to how to interpret them.  

My first crutch, as I referenced in an earlier blog, was to check out.  And I did, check out, about 75% of the time from The Declaration till The Move Out.
 When I was checked out, I noticed how many nice looking women my age at church weren't wearing wedding rings and I began to wonder what it would be like to start over.
That wasn't great.  Not at all.  It certainly didn't help.  No, it was a strong contributing factor to le divorce.  As I've processed it with some people, they've suggested it was self-defense.  Maybe, but self defense isn't always justified.

The other crutch was an emotional entanglement.  It was basically a professional relationship, met on professional terms and with a somewhat professional goal.  Maybe the best way to describe it is that we both had a shared interest in linguistic and cultural betterment (is that clinical enough?)  I could sense where the line was and felt I only approached it once, in regards to sharing too personal of info.

But where I truly crossed the line was in using that friendship to cope with what was happening in my marriage.  Where I crossed the line was hiding that from my wife (at the time, though I eventually told her).  Even though it never became romantic, I used the fact that a smart and attractive lady was interested in my life as a crutch to deal with my pain.  Even with no romance being involved, it still felt great to get that attention.

Here's the ironic part; she never saw it that way as a result of both my subtlety and her being in a different place, relationally, than I was.  Which just goes to show how messed up my thinking was at the time, how I was desperately grabbing for anything.  Any type of attention feels like cold water when you're emotionally dying of thirst.

Those were two unhealthy crutches.

Worse than any of those crutches, though and what I believe to be the most significant contribution to the end of my marriage was that my heart became calloused.  I wrote earlier that from The Declaration till The Move Out, I was only fully engaged for about two full months.  Those were the months I felt like the engagement was being reciprocated.   Sure, there were many days in which I woke up determined that "today I'm going to love her like I should..." only to give into the emotional resistance that immediately came up between us as soon as we were in the same room.  That emotional wall felt stronger than any physical wall.  

There's so much other shit I could share, but I think this is a good start.  Shame loses its power when brought out into the open.

To quote that insightful prophet, Marshal Mathers, "... cause tonight, I'm cleaning out my closet."  Though I think the similarities between my story and that video stop with that quote...

Paris, encore et encore

 I once spent a year in Paris. It was awesome. It was also hell-on-earth.

I often summarize the year by stating, "it was simultaneously the best year of my life and the worst year of my life." I wrote all about that year on this blog, so I won't go into detail about that year. Other than to tell this story.

It was a beautiful spring day. The day before, Erin and I made plans to take Dawson to school together and then take the train into the city, spending the day together in Paris. In what was a common refrain that year, well intentioned plans fell apart.  Neither of us handled this change of plans very well, leading to yet another intense fight. This fight was different than the others, though.

Somehow we moved from the Hotel de Ville till we were standing in the middle of one of the city's medieval bridges spanning the Seine River. What happened next will forever be seared in my memory. In the middle of a raging argument, time seemed to slow down and I became intensely aware of my surroundings; the feel on my skin of the warm sun combined with the chill in the air, the tourists passing us by and the cold, grey stone which composed the bridge. What struck me most, though was the beauty of the sun's rays dancing on the waves of the Seine. The bridges over the Seine, linking the two sides of Paris, quite possibly one of the most romantic sites in the entire world.

I don't remember the words but I can feel the intense anger.  I can also still hear my own voice inside my head, "well, this is it. Our marriage is going to die right here, standing on a bridge over the Seine in the 'City of Love.'" Maybe it didn't end right then but it was a serious nail in the coffin.

As I wrote in the first entry in this series, the death of our marriage (an inevitable event?) was sped up during our year in Paris. And yet, as you would notice were you to read a few entries from the blog I linked to above, I thoroughly enjoyed the year in Paris. As someone in our church remarked, "Every street in Paris is an outdoor museum." And I explored as many of those museum-streets as possible. I also tried to take Dawson to every park in the city. We often spent weekends exploring parks in every arrondisement of the city.

I lead so many groups and individuals around the city, both during that year and later with a collegiate study-abroad program that I finally tried to follow the advice of all those people who told me I should be a Paris tour-guide. Last year, I tried to put together a guided tour of Paris. A lot of people expressed interest and in the midst of receiving all that interest, N decided to join me on the trip. Well, none of those people who said they wanted to go ended up joining the trip, so it ended up being just the two of us; N had her own private tour guide.

It was an amazing week. We visited the touristy stuff sure but I was also able to show her some of the more hidden gems of that city. To her credit, N convinced me to try some places I hadn't visited during that entire year in the city. We even got to share a meal with some of the people from the church where I'd served as a volunteer pastor.

Some Parisian "joi de vivre"

The Versailles Church building

The Thursday afternoon in June meal

I was able to share the many aspects I loved about that city with an amazing travel companion.  Our last night was spent walking along the Seine, observing the various ways Parisians experienced their joi de vivre in a city full of sensual delights.  N turned to me and said, "I wasn't completely sold on Paris the first few days, but now I understand why you love this city so much."

That statement made my trip.  It was wonderful to experience the joys of that city with her.

As I wrote earlier, I broke up with her a few weeks later.

In response to that emotional decision, I decided to take another trip to Paris.  I did so in late September/early October.  While my trip with N was about exploring the light and beautiful parts of Paris, the solo trip ended up being about exploring the emotional darkness of the city where my marriage fell apart and about facing and reuniting with the congregation we tried to serve while we were there.

Back in October of 14, when leading the group of college students around Paris, we had the chance to spend a Sunday afternoon in the Versailles Gardens with some close friends.  While walking around the basin, feeding ducks and swans, the husband made an off-hand comment about how he can't understand why people can get a divorce.
That was a comment that I shamefully carried with me for years.

What I'm about to share, though won't be a surprise if you've been reading this blog...
When that couple found out about the divorce, they made a point to tell me that I'm still loved and a part of the church family.  I got to spend a wonderful afternoon with that family, an afternoon filled with quiche, wine, good conversation, laughs and grace.

The church even had a post-worship meal together, welcoming me back.  It's hard to put into words how wonderful that felt.

I also had the chance to spend hours talking with the missionary whom I worked with/for while there.  We talked about so much yet I can hardly remember the details.  I do know, however that the conversation will likely be remembered as one of the more significant post-divorce healing moments.

Making the conversation more significant was where Brian met me.  He met me at the park outside the apartment where we'd lived.  I told him I'd be spending some time there that morning, sitting on a bench, looking at the apartment where Erin first said she wanted a divorce and I eventually came to agree with that decision.

I had to feel that pain.  I had to retrace my steps, immerse myself back into the dark pain caused  by  the death of my marriage.  I had to face that apartment on Rue Parc d'Ardenay.  I had to face the congregation I was trying to serve while simultaneously knowing Erin and I weren't going to make it.  I had to have an honest conversation with the missionary I'd tried to help for a year while also trying to hide from him just how miserable my life was.

And I did.  I faced it all.  The apartment lost its power over me.  The church welcomed me with open arms.  The missionary helped set me free from some false guilt and unwarranted regrets.

I did sit on my seat on the plane for the flight home, but I think I might've been able to fly back across the Atlantic with my own wings.  The absence of that emotional weight was physically noticeable.

I still love Paris.  I can't wait to go back. Again and again...

I just love wandering the streets of Paris

Paris at night, in the rain - a beautiful sight

After our Sunday meal

"Les esclaliers de la butte..."

Brian Ketchum, AKA "The Missionary"

Shame

"Miller's don't get a divorce."

We were driving home from an Iowa basketball game on a late December evening. Dawson was sleeping in the back seat.  Our family had just returned home after spending a semester working all across Europe.  To put it mildly, our marriage was a wreck.  On a high-speed train from Paris back to Busingen, Germany, we'd had a fight and there was another declaration of the need to separate. That was the last weekend of October.  We'd hardly talked since.  The tension between us was palpable.  So the topic of my failing marriage was impossible to avoid on that cold and snowy trip back from Iowa City that night.

Dad was right, of course.  Out of the 24 of us Miller cousins, I'm only the second one to get a divorce.  I think most family members chalk up that first divorce as a mistake of youth, as she was only married for two years and things seem to be going just fine with her current husband.  While delivering the eulogy at my Grandma's funeral back in 2011, I shared the cumulative years of all the Miller cousins' marriages as a shining example of my Grandma's legacy.

Among the many beliefs I held during the demise of my marriage that I've now found to be completely false, one of them was that I'd be the black sheep of my family; a family full of doctors, pastors, missionaries and all-around wonderful people.  The debunking of false beliefs is going to be a common theme of this blog post as is the mind-blowing amount of unexpected grace and acceptance I've received.  That's been true of my cousins, too.  In fact, while talking through it all with one of my cousins last February, she assured me that we're all broken.  Sure, Millers look good on the outside (and generally are really good people) they are also simply much better at hiding their sin than other people.

The shame of living with a dying marriage, along with the reality of wanting it to die so I could move on, strangled the life out of every single relationship.  All the relationships of my life; my friends, my family, my son and, of course, God, were withering on the vine.  The shame was all-encompassing and utterly debilitating.

The shame was earned honestly, though.  In addition to the reality that "Millers don't get a divorce," my church upbringing taught me that real Christians never get divorced.  "Marriage is hard" is something I heard all too often.  While the statement, at face value, is accurate.  What's implied is "if you'd simply work a bit harder, the marriage would improve."  That's simply not true if both people aren't willing to work at it.  "Marriage is hard" means that if you'd just try harder and believe God more, the marriage would improve.  And if it doesn't improve, then the mark of true discipleship is to stay in the sick marriage, no matter how much it hurts.

Is that true?  Maybe, I'm not sure.  I continually hear Paul's admonition that husbands "love their wives as Christ loved the church."  The therapist, however helped me see that there were things happening in our relationship that precluded me from using that verse to beat myself over the head.  I had to let go of the shame that my particular interpretation of that Bible verse induced in me.

For my parents and, I believe, many other people in my church, divorced Christians were viewed as "second-rate Christians".  That attitude was tangible in my house.  And my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, which was a beautiful celebration, the renewal of vows ceremony being officiated by me, was held up as the pen-ultimate example of both God's blessing in their lives and their commitment to God.
That's a lot of weight to carry with you as you're living in a sick marriage.
To their credit, my parents have since apologize for and repented of that "second rate Christian" attitude they held toward divorced people.

If marriage is the most significant sign of your love for God, how could I pray to that God when everything inside of me wanted out of the marriage, at least the state into which the marriage had devolved.

I couldn't pray.
I couldn't read the Bible.
I couldn't sing in church.
It was all I could do to just listen to some Christian podcasts.
The shame was all-encompassing.
Stop me if you've heard this before... the shame was utterly debilitating.

It was all a lie, too.

Before learning it was a lie, however, I decided I didn't care if I lost, or significantly damaged, every significant relationship in my life.  I was so incredibly miserable I had to make a change.  So I found an apartment a block from Dawson's school and moved out of our house on Spruce and into that apartment on Friday, Dec 16th, 2016.

About a week after I moved out, Dawson and I were showing a house for a buyer-client couple.  This couple, who will reappear later in this series of blog posts, are pastors and some of the kindest, most faith-filled people I've ever known.  I was, of course, embarrassed to tell them that I was divorcing my wife.   I knew I'd be working with them for awhile and wouldn't be able to hide the fact that I was divorcing, so I confessed my situation to them.  What happened next was another one of those moments I'll never forget.

The wife responded with a bit of tears and a sudden sense of serendipity.  "I knew it," she gasped.  "I was having my prayer time this morning and God brought your face to my mind.  I knew something was going on with you."

Remember that, at this time, I was completely unable to pray.  I was separated from God by the wall of shame I'd allowed to build up around me.  In that empty house (which took me almost another year to sell), God, through the compassionate faith of that pastor, reached around my wall of shame to gather me in his embrace.
I almost hear an audible voice.
"You're not a fuck-up.  You're my son.  I love you.   You're my boy.  And nothing you ever do could change that fact."

That wall of shame started to crumble that day.

"Sin separates us from God."  A simple statement of Christian belief.
I believe it's the shame of the sinful act, however and not some legal status of the sinful act, that separates us from God.  We can't approach God because the voice of shame tells us that a shit-bag such as ourselves has no right to be in God's presence. 
Thanks be to God, Jesus dealt with our shame on the cross.  He hung naked as he died the type of death given to the terrorists of the day.  He took shame upon himself, bore our shame, so that we could be reconciled to the God from whom we were separated as a result of that shame.

Guilt says, "what I did was wrong."  Truthfully, I have plenty of guilt from the sin of divorce.  Shame says, "I am wrong."  I have no need for shame.

I've intentionally saved the final part of what my dad told me that night till the end of this post.  Immediately after making one of the most shaming statements I'd ever heard, my dad followed that up with quite possibly the most freeing, grace-filled and loving statements I've ever heard.  "But whatever you do, son, you'll always be my boy and I'll always love you."

Months later, hunched over with sobs in a therapists office, the therapist told me to listen to that voice.  To ignore the first part but take in the second statement uttered by my dad.  "That second part," she declared, "was the voice of your Heavenly Father."

And so it was.

Le divorce

This another rewrite, another edited version of the story I’ve felt compelled to share, another attempt to respectfully, yet honestly.

19 Parc d'Ardeny, Palaiseau, FR 91120Our apartment living roomMay of 2014

"I want a divorce."

That statement rocked my world but it wasn't really a surprise.  Things had been bad for years.  In fact, there is family a picture (which I’ve since taken down) at our son’s first birthday party in February of 2010, which I believe to be beginning of the end.  We had happy moments after that point and some moments of hope, but that’s when things started their inevitable descent toward divorce. 

During that spring of 2010, things started to change and by the time some formal family pictures was taken in June of 2010, I knew things weren't right, though I had no idea just how bad things would get.  My mom told me years later that she sensed the change in 2010 also, prompting her to start praying fervently for us.

In July of 2013, we packed up our belongings (or sold a lot of them) and moved to France to spend a year as Mission Corps Volunteers.   I had high hopes that this year in Paris, helping with a church, living in the "City of Love" and being removed from the pressures of every-day life at home would be the exact remedy our struggling relationship needed.  The opposite is what actually happened, though.  Being removed from the relational support of family and friends (and, to be honest, the distractions as well) actually served to speed-up the disintegration process.  With both hindsight and the knowledge of how much better life is now, that speeding-up process was actually beneficial.

I’ve received some many opinions regarding the different levels of disclosure I’ve made on this blog but I still believe this paragraph below, which I wrote at the very first, to be true. 

This is probably the time to state that out of respect for my ex-wife, whom I believe to be a good-hearted person and for whom I wish only the best (boy, that sounds trite, but it's true), I'm not going to share the details or causes of why our marriage died. I do however, want to share the agony I experienced over the last few horrible years of a sick and dying marriage.  I'm going to share the shame, grace and personal growth that I've experienced thee past few years via a series of blog posts.

Though I didn't actually move out until December of 16, the fate of our marriage was all but sealed that night back in May of 14.  We spent the rest of that week not talking (which was to become a common occurrence as we tried to co-parent and live separate lives while legally still married and occupying the same residence) and I went into Dawson's room every night that week, praying over him and crying tears of shame and guilt that my son was going to have divorced parents.

By the end of the week, however two realizations dawned on me:1) A lot of people whom I know and respect, people who truly love God, have gone through divorces.  Even this guy...

John Wesley sucked as a huband

2) A divorce and a fresh start might not be all bad.From the time my ex asked for a divorce (and I mentally assented to it, so it really was a two-way decision) till the time I actually moved out, we had two good months.  Those good months didn't last though, because the destructive habits reared their ugly heads and strangled the remaining life out of our marriage. Those two good months I mentioned were September of 14 (right when we moved back to Europe), a couple of weeks in February of 16 and about a week in May of 15.

Why did it take so long until we finally called it quits?  While I can't speak for both of us, I'd say it was two major factors; shame and hope.  The hope was stubborn; "maybe things will turn around?"

The shame was debilitating; "God, family, friends, when they know, they're all going to hate me and disown me."  I'm going to do an entire post on shame later on.

About 75% of the 2.5 years from The Declaration till The Move Out were spent just existing, clinging to some vague hope that things would turn around.  There were a few seasons of mildly sustained effort, though, like the few weeks in the spring of 16 that we spent going through Breakthrough.    Going into that, I stated that I felt like it was a last attempt to save our marriage.  For a couple of weeks, the save appeared to have taken place.  A couple weeks later, however the emotional high wore off and I realized the patterns hadn't really changed.

I had the sense, in June of 15 when I could tell Breakthrough hadn't changed anything for us, that weren't going to make it, but we stayed in the marriage another 18 months.I'll admit, it was incredibly easy to escape into a fantasy of what the next relationship might be like.  The counselor whom I visited often on my own and sometimes together, warned me that real life could never compete with a fantasy.

That fantasy was fueled however, by the fact that I'd noticed Christians who had gone through a divorce and came out stronger with healthier second marriages.  So at one of our last sessions, in August of 16, I asked the counselor (a Christian who has herself gone through a divorce) why she and I were wasting our time when we could on and find someone else whom we'd get along with better.  The counselor responded with something I'll never forget, "You're not wasting time.  You're spending time.  If your marriage doesn't survive, you won't look back at these difficult years with regret and label them wasted time but rather with satisfaction and peace, labeling them years well-spent."  Was she ever right.  The several years of the downward cycle that lead up to The Declaration  were difficult.  The years spent between The Declaration and The Move Out were relational hell-on-earth.

While it's impossible to know all future contingencies, when I moved out last December, I did so with a broken heart but also a heart full of peace and relief.  She actually thanked me later for having the courage to do what we'd both been wanting.It did, however, take me five days to have the courage to call my dad on the phone.  As I was sitting on the floor of my apartment, finally having a phone conversation with my dad, I was surrounded by piles of things I still needed to put away and was bawling my eyes out. My dad hurt with me.  My dad, whom I was almost too ashamed to talk to, offered his own love and acceptance.  He even offered the acknowledgment that he didn't understand why this happened to us nor that he really knew what to say.  He simply offered his assurance of his love for me, along with his knowledge of God’ unwavering love for me as well.

It's hard to understate the significance of a statement like that.

That reassurance came from a man who views marriage as the ultimate expression of our love for and commitment to God.  That reassurance came from a man who loved Erin like a daughter.

They were years spent, not years wasted.

I finally have the courage and motivation to start writing about all of this.  I think I know what prompted this desire to write but I'm not actually comfortable sharing that yet.I've been needing to write for a long time, though.

I have a pastor friend who walked through the difficult, death-of-the-marriage years with me.  At a Bible study about two weeks after I moved out, I was explaining to him how much better I felt and how my fears of everyone abandoning me (God included) were simply not true.  He then told, me, " "You need to write this out so you can share with other people going through similar struggles."  I wasn't ready back them to start writing but about a year later, I'm ready to do so.  This is the first of several blog entries in which I'm publicly going to bear my soul, think through some past events and try to find some healing.