In the Company of Brokenness

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I have been here before, but the terrain is uncomfortable and unfamiliar. I have been the new girl. I have never been this new girl. I move on autopilot as if swept along by an invisible tide of humanity. In truth, only one or two stragglers are moving with me. One of them looks at me with a question in her eyes, “Do you know where you are heading?” 

We pause because she has guessed rightly. I do not know where I am headed. I am stunned that I am here. She points me in the direction of the visitor's center. I have practiced my next line for over a week: in the car running errands, in the mirror after brushing my teeth, and on and on it has gone. I have practiced as if the line will be the first spoken at the opening of a new Broadway show. In truth, my only goal is to complete it without collapsing into tears.

I loathe the moment those awkward words will slip from my lips. I anticipate the pained smile about to wash over the face of the kind one who is about to see me for who I am. When I ask, she will know that I am asking to join the company of brokenness. The greeter looks up and knows before I speak. I see it on her face just as she sees it on mine. She nods with wordless empathy as the words 'Divorce Care' seal her educated guess.

I am lucky. I get a two-for-one reaction. She hands me off to a runner who all but leads me by the hand to my destination. “I am so sorry.” What more can she say when she knows anything more would be insufficient still.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I try to glide through the door knowing all eyes will turn to me – the new one who is starting six weeks out of sync. Disjointed thoughts chase me as I move forward. Shouldn't they issue passports upon entry, I wonder. I feel like a foreigner in a country whose language I do not speak. I am in a God-forsaken place.

Another face greets me with muttered words of solace. I smile and coo while trying to pretend I hear every word she says. I try even harder to pretend I care. The cacophony echoing in the room is enough to deafen me. They are in the company of friends. The camaraderie of pain has sealed them into a tight and cohesive group in six short weeks. I am the new girl who is starting late.

My pain will have to find a home among any cracks and crevices that remain as yet unsealed in the evolving group dynamics. I cannot catch up with my own life. How can I catch up with theirs and make it blend with mine? I am tired of being the new girl. Now I am the new girl in the land of brokenness staring into vacant space as stories begin to wash over me.

My mind wanders in and out of the room first replaying a scene in my own life and then flitting back into the present just in time to absorb a passing detail of the lives around me. It is not a dream. I am in the company of brokenness.

We are mostly me. Women who have launched or are launching children. I am stunned that we outnumber them – the young ones who are young and savvy and fit and lovely. If I saw them on the street, I would wish I were still young like them. I would wish I was them. I would have no clue that they were broken too.

Laughter startles me when it ripples across the room both often and with abandon. I try but fail to mask the startled jerks that overcome me every time the ripples rain down around me. At times I smile, but the smile does not hide my shock. I am ready for this, this season, to be over. Even in my shock I know it has only just begun.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative 

I look across at the face of the funny one who has mostly sparked the laughter. In my other life, I am her – the comic relief among my friends. I know her face and voice but not her story. Only after the class is over do I know why I know her. She reminds me of our common friends and our times spent together in the company of those friends.

She and others wish me well and invite me back. I wander out as the same trance that carried me in moves me back home. The words pour out of the quiet of my soul in search of my good God and his good plan. “Show me. Show me the next step and next. Lead me to that place where I can say, 'Jesus is too sweet for me not to trust him.' Do not tarry for I am faint of heart.”

If you or someone you know is facing divorce, click on this link: Divorce Care

Psalm 51: 17 (Amplified Bible)

My sacrifice [the sacrifice acceptable] to God is a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart [broken down with sorrow for sin and humbly and thoroughly penitent], such, O God, You will not despise.

Psalm 40:11 (Amplified Bible) Withhold not Your tender mercy from me, O Lord; let Your loving-kindness and Your truth continually preserve me!