2024

It is 10 years today (24/7/24) since my first wife sent me away. I have been quiet most of the time since. Much rumination. Murmurations of thought. How was I to handle the pain?

“My Grace is sufficient for you, my strength made perfect in your weakness.” God in Christ Jesus.

“Pursuing divorce, not negotiable,” “respect my words” she said.

As a Christian, I was shell shocked.

Divorce and Covid brought on an unexpectedly premature end to paid employment for me. It had been helping others with the Christian gospel of Grace as best I could.

What was I to do?

Backstory: 3 Years after I became a Christian aged 11 I knew I would not be loving if I didn’t share my faith in Jesus Christ with others.

So began a clumsy, inexperienced, ignorant attempt to convey what had been so effectively shared with me, naively expecting similarly enthusiastic responses in others.

Almost immediately I was blindsided by my dad’s overtly hostile, cold, some others have said callous & what was to become cruel response. He showed not the vaguest insight or understanding of what was to me clearly & I imagined even at a young age unquestionably the most formidably significant news I would ever hear.

His response was baffling – to ban me from prayer and reading the Bible when only 14, to ‘kick me when I was down’, (his own words) describing his attitude and behaviour as my first wife rejected me 34 years into marriage & 4 children.

He had lifted the threat & misunderstanding to a whole other level early on when he alleged it was ‘just a phase’ I was going through. I knew otherwise, though how exactly I couldn’t yet tell beyond intuitively identify, he wouldn’t be persuaded.

At 14, from my dad, it was an existential level threat. A threat that would rob me of what I had already come to realise was my only eternal hope. I could discern only one possible response. To distrust his words, search for T-truth & until he reversed that response, be on alert with him. It led to CPTSD, (but more of that anon.) & set the course of my whole person pursuit from then on. Though I went to one of the 3 top selective schools in Sydney & got passably good grades keeping me in the top levels for most everything it was not what ignited & then captured my intellectual imagination & power. . .

What do you think is the single most significant sentence you have ever uttered?