Blog 573 – 03.16.2017
The Great Divorce

One of my favorite authors wrote a book by the title, “The Great Divorce” and no it was not about divorce in the most common usage of the word but came from a quote of William Blake about “the great divorce between God and man.” I have a little anecdotal evidence about divorce having married four times and being divorced three times and oh yeah I actually paid for the divorce of my third wife from her first husband so I could marry her. Before people can criticize me for my marital history I usually smile and admit that I am a “slow learner.” Everybody laughs including me and they and I are distracted from judging – a thing we never do well for two reasons: First we never have all the facts and Second judging is really not our job.

My first little wife was seventeen when I married her. I was nineteen. We falsified an insurance policy in her name to show her eighteen and drove to another state and were secretly married six days before I left for the war in Vietnam. We never lived together and it was over before I came home. I tried to get her to come with me to my last duty station but she would not and we were divorced that summer. My second wife I met in Bible College. We had a big church wedding with all the trimmings, planned it for six months. Had church counseling, everybody’s blessing, the works. Barely three years in she had had enough, me too really. We really just wanted different things in life I think. That marriage too ended childless by divorce.

My third marriage was to a woman five years my senior with sons, twelve and five. Because the pastor at the church we attended taught against divorce he refused to marry us and I also lost my best friend over that marriage. Three months after we were married in that church after a Wednesday night service by another clergyman other than our pastor my third wife presented me with a beautiful baby girl. We both tried very hard mostly for the boys and our daughter’s sake to stay together but after seven years I had a falling out with the church folks and wanted to attend church somewhere a little more open and she refused to leave and then said I was crazy and threatened to have me institutionalized. I remember thinking I could not stay in such an insane situation any longer. The language in several of my divorce decrees I remember being something like, “It is no longer safe nor sane for this couple to cohabit.” I also remember crying out on my knees to God, “Please help me keep my little family together.” That was the last prayer I prayed for many years and I tried my best to be an atheist for a number of years because I was so angry at God for not answering my prayer. It took over a year to get my third divorce. For many years I was angry with my third wife that I was only allowed to see my daughter on two weekends a month and a couple of weeks in the summer and alternating holidays.

My fourth and last marriage produced a son. My wife and I separated just before his eighteenth birthday almost nine years ago but are still legally married. Why you might say. The short answer is that I never intend to remarry. If she did I’d agree to divorce right away because as crazy as it might sound I want her to be happy. I wanted that for all the women I married and everyone. I guess what I am trying to say in revealing so much of my personal business is that I do not believe in divorce. To me it is an imaginary wall intended to divided two people. I still love those women I wed, yes even the first one who died seventeen years ago.

Man tried to divorce God but it did not work God just kept on loving, biding His time, knowing that love always wins out in the end. One of the most beautiful hymns ever written says, “Oh, love that will not let me go, I rest my soul in thee.” In the movie The Long Hot Summer with a young Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (who later married and whose marriage lasted longer than all of mine so far) say to one another in the movie:

“All right then, you keep on running. Buy yourself a bus ticket and disappear. 

Change your name, dye your hair, get lost – and maybe, just maybe, you’re gonna be safe from me.”

The intent of those words is the same as that of a Motown song from my youth. “I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna get you. Look out, girl/boy, ’cause I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna make you love me. Yes, I will.” And He/She/We will it is a forgone conclusion for Love knows a secret and is going to love you so many ways and through as many lives as it takes till you get the message and read it loud and clear. I hear the Hound of Heaven singing in a voice that sounds a lot like Louis Rawls, “You’ll never find, as long as you live, someone to love you tender like I do.” Every other marriage may end in death or divorce but not this One.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White