Helplessness

I can't find the right words to help my friend. He is painfully stuck on the horns of a decision concerning divorce. We have talked for 100+ hours trying to figure out what the best decision is for him. To him it seems that every decision has the same result: Pain!

From the other side of divorce I continue to share my experience, comforting him that the pain marks the transition to a happier life for all involved. He parrots the same lines as right wing America: "Divorce is evil, it will destroy the lives of my children, my wife will commit suicide..." The outlook to him is so bleak that it seems like the next worse step would be thermonuclear war and a post apocalyptic winter!

I could fill in all the things he has done and that she has done, but it still wouldn't make it my decision or YOUR (pl) decision as to what is write for him or them. The main point is he can't live with her anymore, it is not good for him, not good for her. They are not soulmates, they were married for pregnancy and because he felt like it what the 'right thing to do'.

I told him that the foundation for any of my good decisions rests in a quiet secret that, I only then realized, I hadn't shared often. I had been sharing how my mindset changed as I worked through separation, divorce, single parenting, and holding down a 12 hour shift job in the Marine Corps. I had shared how there WAS a light at the end of the tunnel and I just pushed through the pain and negative feelings that surrounded me day after day. I tell him that his life will be better one day. The secret is that the source of my steady progression through the tunnel, and my steady growth in every area of life comes from my quiet submission to God's plan for my life. Sometimes glimpsed as kneeling in tears at an altar, but mostly kneeling in my heart before His majesty, and in this small quiet group of moments he gives me the next step in His plan for me.

I don't usually share anything about my relationship with God in words, whether written or spoken. I am currently learning to share my relationship with God through my actions, through the way I live my life, through the way I love, words are so limiting, temporary and frail in comparison. Words can be argued, picked apart, can be wrongly interpreted, but when your walk does your talk it is not as easily ignored.

Back to my story and my dilemma: My friend rebutted my secret with the fact that he has waited for God to talk, for God to show him the next step; and has received no response at any of the multitude of times he has requested it over the course of his life. Perhaps he didn't get a response because he was going about it in 'my' way, using my technique for communicating with God. I have heard that some people feel like they can talk to God better in certain places: on their knees by their bed, in the kitchen, at church, at the altar. Perhaps he is trying to communicate the wrong way for him, or I wonder if I am supposed to communicate for him to God and back. I always thought the each person should communicate to God for themselves.

The idea of needing someone to communicate to and from God for you would support the massive amount of clergy we have in this country. I wonder if I have some natural inclination to be a kind of unofficial go-between for people around me and God? going bck the last 20 years in my adult life, I realize it has always been easy for me to hear God's voice for my own life as well as for others. I have noticed that I have a knack for giving people the next step to take their relationship with God to the next level. This is an interesting digression.

Let me put all fears to rest though, I enjoy doing "all things in moderation" too much to give it up to be official clergy, being a layman is very satisfying for me, I am content.

Perhaps if I pray with my friend for a few minutes God will talk to him. His mind is so full of conflicting emotions and thoughts right now. He claims that it helps me to have me listen, and I know it does, and am grateful for the people that truly, actively listen to me. I want to be more help to him, but maybe being a good listening will be just enough to get him through, and grow our friendship at the same time.