I ran into an old family friend at the bookshop today. She asked me how my Christmas was; whether or not there is a "weird dynamic" now that my parents are getting divorced. I gratefully related how my auntie had given me a plane ticket to come see her for Christmas, effectively rescuing me out of a morass of family dynamics that I am completely befuddled as how to face. A hero, that auntie is.
She asked me whether or not I had seen the divorce coming, and I told her my parents have been unhappy their entire marriage... their entire lives. That I wished that they would have divorced twenty years ago. She was aghast, told me that she had had no idea. I told her that my childhood had seemed to go fine. It was when I was in junior high that I realized that the gloves had come off. They came off prior to my knowledge that there was even a fight.
If you've ever read "Wuthering Heights," you have an idea of the wretchedness of my parent's relationship. As a people-pleasing oldest child of all this, you can well imagine my need to be a peacemaker. Peace at all costs.
I am now 38 years old. I am 38, and just now absorbing the fact that I am not the peacemaker. (What did Harry Potter have? A "saving people" thing??) I did such a good job of it for so long...
Wretched things stay wretched. Broken things stay broken. They say that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and I'm sure He is. But nobody promised that peace would come in this lifetime... and it sure as hell won't be accomplished through me. He Himself chooses to let un-peace reign in those that are determined to have it.
I must (can?) rest now. Broken things stay broken.
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