Hello, it's Me. Finding Me through a Storm Called Divorce

Preface

Who finds things in a storm? Storms are often disastrous forces that causes many losses. Yet here I am discovering Me in the midst of one of the worse storms of my life. Divorce. After twenty-five years of marriage.

I did not discover myself without God. The whole tapestry of the book is my encounter with God through this storm to find Me. God is still the Master of all storms. Natural. Or spiritual. This journey has strengthened my trusting place with Him. And in the refining, I have seen how he has sculpted Me.

This sculpting, this strengthening, convey the message I have learned, that even in the midst of losing everything, I found the most significant component. Myself.

Introduction

Every now and then, the passage of life takes us to a crossroad.

An intersection along the route. A place of decision. A defining moment.

One can proceed for years in a one-directional course, maneuvering the curves and turns while still operating in cruise control. Dealing with the occasional bumps along the road, yet inattentive to everything outside day-to-day normality.

But it is not the curves and turns that stumbles and humbles us. It is the crossroads. Because until a choice is made, one cannot proceed forward. With living. With the betterment of life itself. Do I go left, or do I go right? Do I continue in this relationship or do I leave? Do I marry this person, or do I walk away? Do I move to another state or country or do I stay in this neighborhood? Do I accept this job, or do I wait? Do I have a child, or do I forgo the parenting thing? Do I switch careers, or do I continue working where I am?

The fear of making a wrong decision causes many to refuse to choose, ignorant that making no choice is, in fact, a selection. And many get stuck in their crossroads. Many lose faith at their crossroads. Many die at their crossroad. Because crossroads are often places of painful incidents. Crossroads are places we would seek to escape if we could - longing and wishing to make a U-turn instead. It can become a rather painful reality making the mind-altering realization that there is no escaping the truths of a crossroad.

At the cusp of my fiftieth birthday, a storm of mass proportion formed in my life. I was facing a separation and a divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. The perfect storm. It led me dead-on to a significant crossroad in my life.

This book is my memoir of this storm. It’s my pertinent narrative of my imperfectly-perfect, jumbled-yet-organized thoughts and activities of how I reacted to the whirling of this untimely storm. To the howling winds of uncertainty, the relentless rain of doubts, the surging floods of apprehension, the falling-to-pieces mudslides of deterioration, and the stench in the dissolving of my marriage vows till death do us part. Hello, it’s Me. Finding Me through a storm called divorce.

I was sharing the title of this book with someone and he asked me a reasonable question. He wished to learn, does finding Me means I had lost Me? My answer to him was yes and no. I realized it could not be dealt with as an open-ended question. This is one of those queries that calls for multiple layers of explanation. To me, the task of a find is reliant on two things.

The first find is locating something you previously had that is misplaced. It is suggesting that you are conscious you had whatever is lost and you no longer have it in your possession. That task is simpler to do, because you pinpoint what you are searching for. It’s somewhat easier to spot because once you have located that which you recognize you had lost, it’s an affirmation. This form of finding has limitations, because the pursuit is over the moment you find that which you see you had lost.

The second find is a discovery process. It’s the stumbling upon something you did not know exists even though it was always there. It’s the wisdom of learning we enter this earth completely packaged. In other words, it is knowing that we are created with everything we will need to have a prosperous life. Nothing added. All things discovered. In seasons. In stages. In phases. It takes abandoning one’s human, finite understanding and submitting to an infinite God because He is our Creator. We cannot find this without submission in prayer, obedience to the leading of His voice, and a willingness to go beyond what we already know.

Every storm has a purpose. When we go through a storm, it develops us - often on a personal level. Invariably on a spiritual level.

My divorce was my defining storm. I did not understand, going in, how strong I am. I did not know if, after the winds ceased and the rain stopped, my foundation in God would stand intact. And I did not understand that, at this crossroad, my seemingly un-human courageous determination to leave myself behind and follow him, to deny my way and chase his, to trust his voice and not my own worries, would take me on this incredible pursuit that led me to the uncovering of a Me I had not yet met.

And I am in love.

Hello, it’s Me. Finding Me through a storm called divorce.

Me who?

Hi. My name is Charmain Wallace.

This may sound elementary, but I was reading the Post-it note reminder on my bathroom mirror. There was another one placed strategically on the mirror by my front door; it was my get-ready-to-face-the-world booster when I was about to head out. No, I was not recovering from amnesia, nor did I have early-onset Alzheimer’s. I was a divorcée, and when the final decree had been issued, I had taken my name back. It had been my only sense of dignity and pride as I’d exited the courtroom.

So here I was staring at the mirror, and it felt like I was introducing Me to myself. Surreal. My own name has a ring so unfamiliar and strange that I felt my brain scrambling to understand what I was saying.

I am supposed to recognize Me. Right? After all, I have been Me for fifty years now. But the blank stare that I got in in the mirror let me perceive that after twenty-five years of marriage, I had lost more than my name. In the midst of fulfilling all my differing roles as wife, mother, teacher, preacher, writer, and operations manager, I lost Me.

POST- IT NOTE TO SELF:

Don’t lose yourself again. You are too valuable.

Though I hated to admit it, deep down, I sensed scared was creeping up on me. And I don’t do scared. Scared lets you jump at your own shadow and run from your success. I would rather fight than be scared. Staring at myself, I willed my mind to remember scriptures that would help me. I got nothing. Funny how you can quote a hundred scriptures when all is going well, but when scared comes, your brain becomes empty as a politician promise. I loathe scared.

Lord, it’s me. I can’t seem to pray for myself like I used to. The words seem jumbled and my thoughts are not flowing. So I will write my prayers out and read them to you. I need your help. I am scared of this frightening, unfamiliar place. And I hate it! I hope I can still count on you for support. I hope you didn’t leave me out here, somewhere… I hope you are here, wherever this place is, with me. Amen. Your child.

As I recall this dialogue, I’m reminded of a phone call I had recently.

Caller: Hey.

Me: Yessss?

I was hesitant when answering, as the number had not come up in my contacts. I hadn’t been able to identify it, having mentally done a checklist of all the people who had my number. My new number. The number that I had to get by carrying out a James Bond-type undercover operation because my old number … well, let’s leave that alone.

My paranoia must have been evident in my voice, because she then said: Girl, it’s me.

Me: OK

Dead silence.

I’m thinking, Me who? Obviously, this is someone whose voice I should be familiar with. Or at least, the person thinks so. And I don’t want to ask just in case it’s someone I should know well enough to recognize the voice instantly. Embarrassing.

Caller: It’s Jody.

Me: Oh! (sigh of relief) Girl, I did not know it was you. I didn’t recognize this number.

Caller: Yes, I’m calling from work. Just checking to make sure you’re OK.

Now I am tripping over my feet with apologies. It’s my sister. My blood. My kids call her my twin. We have the same raspy tone of voice. I hear it often in my own daughter’s voice, especially when she laughs. How in the world did I miss that? Not one of my finest moments.

POST-IT NOTE TO SELF:

Everyone fails. At something. At some time. To err is human. You are human.

There are many reasons I should have known it was my sister on the other end of that call. Obvious reasons. Just the day before, I’d called her and given her my new number. We’d spoken for about an hour. She lives in Canada. The area code of the incoming call was for Canada. She was the only person in Canada I’d given my new number to. In my earlier life, I’d worked taking phone-call donations for the United Negro College Fund. I still agree with their signature statement: A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Studying my reflection in the mirror, I acknowledged that I should have been more intimate with myself. I should have cared about me, too. I should have known that it was not OK to accept some of the foolishness I’d allowed. I should have spoken up for myself. I should have taken the necessary time to heal from that last volatile incident at my front door; that nail in the coffin incident that…..ooh I got to leave this alone too; for now. I should have cried more openly. I should have said No and meant it. I should have asked for help sooner.

Like my phone call, when Me called and said, Hey, girl! It’s Me, I should have known my own self without hesitation.

POST-IT NOTE TO SELF:

If you don’t figure out who you are, people will define it for you.

Sometimes the most obvious characters hide in plain sight under the rubble of disassociated behaviors. I’m referring to things such as low self-esteem, which hides your greatest created self under the mask of false humility. Accepting someone else’s opinion about yourself as a fact can destroy the truth about you. After a while, you don’t know who you are because people’s opinions are ever-changing.

Who was I really? At the core of it all, who had God created Me to be? Now that I was divorced, did it mean that the essence of who I was no longer existed? Was I lost to God, too? Was He going to rewrite Me? Was this stranger looking back at me—the Me I had been all along? If I was having difficulties defining myself, what about others? Could they see Me? Was it too late to find Me? Would I love the real Me? Who was I?

Ah. Too many questions often ruin a beautiful moment.

Lord, it’s me. Attempting to figure out who I am. I should have known by now, but I can’t honestly say that I do. I have bits and pieces of who I think I should be, but I cannot see clearly who you created me to be. Help me to navigate my way through this maze of confusion. When I have more questions than answers, help me to trust you more. Amen. Your Child.

Smile, girl; just smile. I’ve been doing that a lot lately—just smiling. Beautiful. I call it my award-winning smile when my eyes light up brighter than the six bulbs beaming around my bathroom mirror. Behind my tears, pain, sleepless nights, and humiliating experiences, thank God I’ve still got my smile. Beautiful.

POST-IT NOTE TO SELF:

It’s never too late to fall in love with yourself.

Hi.

Allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Charmain Wallace.

Where is God in all of this?

I read a marriage blog where a young wife of fewer than five years wrote passionately to women about staying with their husbands despite any challenges, including physical and verbal abuse because marriage is ordained of God and He is able to heal and make all things whole.

I read the entire article. It was of great interest to me since at the time I was in the process of divorcing my husband of twenty-four years. I found myself doing that a lot. Reading marriage/divorce articles. Gaining insight from both a religious and secular aspect. Interesting. Sometimes I wanted to get angry at the writers who seemed to carelessly pen words of rebuke towards my situation. Or maybe I just experienced conviction when the mirror of words shone a light on me.

As I read the article, I went from a defensive stand to that of understanding. Being a writer myself, I started to analyze the mindset of the blogger. For one thing, I realized her perspective was limited. She was writing based on five years’ experience. Not to say marriage cannot be challenging at any stage, but five years are generally considered still part of the honeymoon phase. Real hardship often does not yet reveal itself at that point.

I also smiled at the writing because the blog reminded me of the way my writing started years ago. Heartfelt, but not vulnerable. Enough letter of the scriptures to convict, but not enough spirit of the scriptures to create change.

While I applauded the blogger, and understood her writing was real for the stage of life she was in, I felt it was too shallow for me. I have learned after years of ministering that throwing scripture