In Joyful celebration

Coming to the end of the one-year anniversary of the Declaration of Nullity from my first husband, which has been an amazing year of self-discovery, and I feel as if I'm still just beginning.

For a long time I described myself as a mule - a strange hybrid animal, steady and heardworking, but nevertheless a mule - a cross between a donkey and a horse, a sterile hybrid, unable to reproduce and given to rather eccentric temperament - and completely inelegant!

Then I decided, maybe I'm not a mule, but the best I can hope for is some broken-down scrub of a plow horse... still inelegant, a bit rough around the edges, lacking breeding and social graces...

In short, I was re-entering "polite society" after a very unpleasant and unwilling detour, and I felt unworthy of the companionship of the extraordinary people I was meeting and, surprisingly, making friends with. I felt backwards and ignorant and clumsy and wholly out of place with these educated, cultured, intelligent men and women.

Since the granting of the Declaration of Nullity, however, the way I see myself has been changing at lightening speed. For years, I had felt I deserved the derision, the scorn, the ridicule, the dismissals - after all, I'm hardly a Domestic Goddess! - and then I'd put on all this weight - and I was not just fat, I was clumsy and graceless and just downright awful.

During this year - to make a very complex story very short - I have discovered that I am neither mule nor broken-down plow horse, but a far more graceful breed. More to the point, I am not some androgynous thing of a beast, but - not merely physiologically, but emotionally, spiritually, ontologically - a woman. A woman, with all the grace and beauty and dignity and strength of character, and purity of vision and heart, and capacity for love and self-donation...

I am more wholly myself, my real self! - and more capable of love and devotion than I was at the age of 18, when I married DH.

The immediate difference is that I no longer feel embarrassed about being a woman - about inconveniencing someone who is holding a door for me, or asking the boys at school to remove their hats in my presence, or being embarrassed when a man slips with a bit of profanity in my presence...

I'm still working on the domestic stuff. I still doubt myself in this sphere, but it is getting easier as I've been working to declutter the house, and to rid myself of items that have unhappy or unpleasant associations (like the love seat with R's cigarette burns) - and of course, the very discipline of homekeeping is getting easier as I have less to fight against...

The past eleven months have been absolutely full of wonderful discovery. I've come to feel that - while I'm not THE "pearl of great price," I certainly am more valuable than I ever knew myself to be, before - certainly "priced far above rubies."

I am eagerly looking forward to more discovery and growth. I look forward to all that the future holds.

Thanks, All, for your prayers for me. I know they are helping.

The damage done to a woman's soul when she is bound to a homosexual man is severe. I'm going to be doing a lot more writing about this topic on future - there aren't enough resources for this need, and most of the ones I've seen are decidedly secular, and one or two are downright liberal and almost anti-Christian in their orientation (No! I do NOT want my ex- to have a happy and fulfilling gay "marriage!" I want him to be CONVERTED!!!)

Blessings to you all -