finished

On this ash Wednesday, wherein I have been rightly repeatedly reminded that I am dust (and what exactly is dust?), I look forward to the end of the Lenten season.  Yesterday, fat Tuesday that it was, I was visited by an echo of the words Christ spoke on his final mortal moment on earth, "it is finished."

Yesterday, I was divorced.  I signed a binding agreement that lacks only a judge's signature, stating my marriage was officially sundered on Feb 12, 2013.  I thought about sacrilegiously writing on my facebook wall "it is finished."  I opted for a less messianic "done."

But the more I think about it, the more I know that this is a part of the redemptive work done by Christ on the cross.  That my freedom from a terrible marriage that religious devotion to tradition espoused by my family had kept me in, was bought by the law-fulfilling, love drenched blood of Jesus Christ.  That, indeed, my marriage, my divorce, it is finished.  Rent like the veil in the temple.  It is small, and myopic, and egocentric, but amazingly, and of course ironically (paradoxically) it draws my attention to the cross.

Remember, you are dust, oh man, and to dust you shall return.  Remember that you are nothing but a collection of molecules, common to all living things, atoms present even in those things that are not alive, taken from the ground.  Remember that if not for the breath of God, breathed into your nostrils upon your molding you would never have been.  Remember that if not for His sustaining hand each and every moment of your vapor of a life, you would cease to be.  Remember that without the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal, you would remain unchanged, drowning in a sea of consequence of your own sins' making.  Remember that because He Is, you can, too, be whom you were truly meant to be.

Three years ago I was imprisoned in a marriage for a myriad of reasons.  The majority of them were fear centered. I was afraid of living the rest of my life alone. I was afraid of financial ruin.  I was afraid having been a few years out of the work force I would lack the ability, fortitude, skill set needed to return.  I was afraid of the lies that I knew my ex would tell about me. I was afraid that if I divorced, my family would reject me because I had done the one thing that "we just don't do."  I was afraid that without a partner, I would find out how truly incapable I am of raising my four sons.  I was afraid to move.  I was afraid to believe that God could carry me through, because, after all, didn't I really deserve what I had gotten myself into.

But somewhere in that darkness of fear, I heard a song.  It sang to me of freedom.  It sang to me of light.  It sang to me of life.  of Love.  It told me to move.  It told me to run.  It told me to stop believing the lies that played into my human weakness with a tendency toward fear.  I didn't stop.  I didn't look back. I didn't ask whence this song came.  I knew.  Perfect love casts out all fear.  The peace I was feeling, the knowing I was experiencing,  the light I could see at the end of the tunnel.  I knew it was He...the light of the world...Love...the beginning AND the END...He was calling me out of bondage, into freedom.  He was calling me with His sweet, undying love to leave fear and hate behind to truly follow Him.

Remember that thou art dust...and when I remember that, I know I don't have to do anything.  I am only dust.  I am just water and bone.  I am only clay thrown by the Master potter.  He is the breath.  He is the life.  He must do.

I never had to say a word in my defense.  (or very few words)  I never felt like the outcome was dependent on me (or at least not the majority of the time)  I never, even amid my doubts, forgot that it was God who was going to get me to the end of this marriage, and out of it...whole...

I have reentered the work force.  I do a good job at something I thought I would never do in my life.

I have, with the help of amazing people, built a comfortable home for my children.

I am poor.  In debt.

My kids are a bit of an emotional mess.  But they are strong.  And smart.  And so sweet.  And loved by many.

It is finished.  Standing at the beginning and end of time, the one who strides forth out of Bozrah in the greatness of His strength told me, "it is I, mighty to save,"  and brought me through all of this.  I would never have made it on my own.  In the mundanity of my divorce I find a most profound illustration of mystical truth that in my distress, He too, was distressed.  That as I wept, He wept with me.  And when we could take no more, He finished it.  And when the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.  In your circumstances, and despite them.  That is where I stand; though I walk through time-in a world that is still yet not completely redeemed, in a skin that retains its own desires to sin and err-though I linger here, I belong to eternity.  He will finish each moment in my life.  Each lent will end, with a glorious, eternal Easter.  Every mistake, sin, misery, and death is answered with a thunderous, unquenchable, eternal echo of it is finished.

You are dust.  He is not.