Some More Reflections on Life, Struggle, Hope, and Sadness

Last month I wrote a post entitled, “A Reflection: Disappointment…and Why I Don’t Like May or June.” It was somewhat of a personal post about some of the hardships and disappointments I’ve faced over the past few years. I received a number of encouraging responses to that post. Now, I haven’t written much on my blog this past month, so I want to take this opportunity to write another personal post to give a bit of an update about (as the title of the post suggests) life, struggle, hope and sadness.

A little over a week ago, I was finishing packing up my house in Florence, Alabama and getting ready to make the drive to Little Rock. I moved to Florence back in 2007, married for one year and starting over teaching at a small Evangelical high school after things fell apart at my previous job in Little Rock. My then wife and I had planned to stay in Florence only 3-4 years, yet due to a number of factors, a bitter divorce and custody battle being the primary ones, things extended to 15 years, the last 7 of which involved me being a full-time single parent to my son, working as a part-time adjunct instructor at the local university, while my former spouse (henceforth referred to simply as “the entity”) broke the divorce/custody agreement with impunity and completely shirked all her parental responsibilities. Nevertheless, because of the agreement, I was legally held hostage to the area.

Finally, this spring I was able to attain full custody of my son, and that meant I was finally free to move to find full employment. Since my family is in Little Rock, I decided to move back to the area to look for a job. Now, in my former post, I expressed disappointment over not getting a job at my former school. Since then, I have been hired to teach 9^th grade English at a public charter school in Little Rock—I start in August. I’ve also purchased a home and am in the midst of doing some necessary remodeling—I should be completely moved in over the next two weeks. I’ve also applied for my son to get into a couple of schools—he’s on a waiting list for each one, so I’m still holding my breath.

All that is good news and quite the relief. My son and I are getting a fresh start. And yes, given everything I’ve been through, I’m okay with being a Freshman English teacher.

Another bit of good news is that I’ve signed a publishing contract for my Blue-Collar Bible Scholar: A Reader’s Guide to the New Testament. I’ll write more about it as we get closer to publication dates. Tentatively, it looks like “Volume 1: The Synoptic Gospels and Acts,” will come out in January 2023, “Paul’s Letters” will be somewhere around April, and then “John’s Writings and the General Letters” will be at some point in the summer. Then (hopefully) we’ll be ready to shoot out my Blue-Collar Bible Scholar: A Reader’s Guide to the Old Testament.

So there is hope and a fresh start. Still…

As I was packing up my house in Florence last week, particularly when it was just about empty and I was giving the house the final walkthrough, the house jumped up and bit me a few times. As I walked through the rooms it took a bit of effort trying to think about those special times, particularly when my son was a baby, then a toddler, when he did certain things in the house: his first steps, rocking him to sleep, etc. By contrast, bitter memories of the events of my failed marriage and the ugly divorce saga snapped up and bit me. All those things happened quite awhile ago and never backed up on me, even though I continued to live in the house.

But last week, those memories assaulted me, and I burst out into tears more than a few times, remembering, quite frankly, the abuse I took—not physical, but certainly psychological. I don’t want to “over-clinicalize” it, so I’ll just say I was the brunt of a whole lot of nastiness, vitriol, and manipulation. It wasn’t until probably just over a month ago that I was finally able to tell a couple close friends that yes, I feel like I’ve been victimized…and “the entity” still does it every chance she gets. Because of my son (no, I will not say “our” son), a certain amount of contact is still necessary, and it still feels like a knife in my heart, especially those few weeks out of the year when she gets to take him. Those are the hardest times of all. He doesn’t want to go, he cries every time, and yet, since divorce/custody court is more a legal system than a justice system, “the entity” who ignores every damn stipulation and violates every damn agreement still is legally allowed to take a child—a child who sees her as nothing more than “the woman who takes me away from daddy”—a couple of times a year. I broke my back getting to the point where I can keep him safe and happy 49 weeks out of the year, but for those other three weeks, I’m terrified, I can’t sleep, and I feel like I’m failing him. Yet there’s nothing I can do.

In any case, as I reflected on that experience last week, I realized that I have become an incredibly sad person. Everyone goes through their share of tough times in their life. Everyone gets hurt, or let down, or betrayed at one point or another. I realize that. But I need to admit I’ve taken quite a beating these last 16 years. There’s no other way to say it: I felt betrayed by a few specific people at my former school in Little Rock over 15 years ago; I was betrayed by YECist headmaster at the school in Florence; I was betrayed by “the entity.” And for the past 7 years, I’ve been holding on for dear life, trying to give my son (who is on the spectrum) a stable childhood where he can grow and develop.

And I’m exhausted, beaten down, and worn out. All of that has turned me into, at heart, a very sad person. I find myself fully expecting that, at some point, virtually everyone will betray me. It is a feeling that says, “No matter what they say, people really don’t care about you and will eventually either hurt or betray you.” Yes, logically, I know that’s not true, but it’s hard not to feel that way. I suspect everyone who has gone through similar things will agree.

So, there it is. In the immediate future, I’ll be busy fixing up my new house and getting ready for the fall. And once school starts, I’ll be back in full-time teaching 9^th grade English mode. Hopefully, as these new routines in life settle in, I’ll start to feel better about life. I suspect there won’t be as many blog posts as in the past, but I’ll try to keep up. Right now, I’d like to say I’m finally through my personal “valley of death,” but I’m afraid the pain of those scars will always be there.

The sadness most certainly will be.