I see her look away and execute a quick about-face, making a sharp turn into the next aisle.
I am having this reaction all over Tiny Town, and I stop going anywhere I don’t absolutely have to go. Familiar faces quickly glance away, stilted “Hi, Monica”‘s from people I know really don’t want to see me at all, much less say hi. The Churchies I know from three different churches look down their pious noses in disgust and vindication. They should be grateful. I’ve given them prayer chain (gossip) material to last for months.
Most of Tiny Town turns their back. There are very few who will speak to me. I am a contagious leper, watch out, she’s been infected with Divorce! Unclean!! I have a scarlet letter emblazoned on my chest. I am anathema, I am wicked, I have given myself over to Satan, whatever. I am a Worship Leader Gone Wild, and the town is sitting at the edge of their seats with a bucket of popcorn, collectively waiting for the inevitable lightning strike to come and prove their point that women who dare make a public exit from their spouse will be punished by the Creator Himself, with a biblical burst of fire licking up even the moisture from the ground.
Heck, I’m even waiting for the lightning strike. I’m a Bad Girl now, and with one decision, I have destroyed my precious reputation, jumping up and down on it until it is only tattered remains of what it once was.
I am the town Pariah, and they are having a fabulous time coming up with stories. She MUST have had an affair… who’s the guy? I’m sure they were frustrated that they couldn’t find one, that they never saw me quietly sidle up to a hot someone in a dark bar corner on the shady side of Tiny Town.
And oddly, they are doing me a huge favor.
All of the expectation, all of me trying to please others, all of the obligation and pressure was bundled tidily into this Good Church Wife, and these smug and righteous villagers came with their torches and pitchforks and tossed her screaming into a vat of lava and she evaporated into a puff of volcanic smoke.
She gone.
And, sorry, I just don’t care about being the Good Girl anymore. That died in the lava. I don’t even have parts left to scrape together a future Darth Vader, Frankensteining together a new, improved church-version, Ministry Monica 2.0, accessories not included.
No Vader, no ministry career, the slate is wiped clean.
nothing left…
I am alone.
I take a bath.
I soak in the tub, holding my own body tight.
All is lost, except for one extremely important thing.
Actually, a whom.
Because what I still have… is me.
Monica.
Hey, there, girl, come here often? You doing okay?
And there in the too warm water, clutching my own naked body for dear life. . . I make a commitment.
Never again will I allow any touch to this body I am not comfortable with. I will only allow touch I want. No pastor, no church, no belief system will take control of my body, or my life. Ever. Again. NO MORE.
Little two-ounce baby phoenix-in-the-ashes Monica sits up and smiles. I don’t even know if I will ever want anyone to touch me again, what if my reluctance to be touched… well, what if it’s just me? What if I’m just bad at physical connection? I had some abuse in my past, maybe I’m just incapable. I am leaving not knowing if I will ever feel okay with anyone touching me. But I’m perfectly okay with me touching me, and I stay in that damn tub until my body resembles a wrinkled 97 year old leather skinned granny who spent their entire life in the sun, the water having been reheated over and over again, it’s too cold, it’s too cold, it’s too full. I watch my old life float away on the shimmering waves. I wish I had bubble bath. Whatever happened to bubble baths, anyway? They were kind of awesome.
I’m learning to love Monica again. I can feel the self-care after years of neglecting my inner gut feelings. In the very beginning of my involvement with the church, I was taught that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and not to be listened to. Ironically, following my heart, my gut is the one thing that would have kept my life from veering so off-script. Your gut knows. It always knows. My life is in ruins, and yet in my gut I have a warm feeling, a ball of kindling just starting to glow…and it drives me through the fear I feel, through the great unknown of what the hell do I do now…I am all that remains.
The guilt-monkey is ever at my ear. I don’t have the heart to take anything but myself away from DX-dear ex, formerly DH. I will leave everything behind, I am taking only my clothing, things that are clearly mine that DX would never use, and a few personal things. I have an amazing friend who will allow me to rent her cottage for a month while I figure out the future.
My career is gone in a poof of magical smoke. No way will I be hired at a church while I’m going through a divorce. I tepidly look at posted worship-leader/director positions, but in my heart, it’s over. I can’t go back to someone else having authority over my life. There is a significant shift in direction here, this time I kick the driver out of the car altogether and leave him sitting dazed on the side of the road wondering what the hell just happened. I climb in the seat, wrap my hands around the smooth leather wheel, and peel away, tires skkkkreeetching and gravel flying, speeding away like an 18 year old with a new five-speed manual Camaro in a completely new direction. No more allowing the next pastor who comes along call the shots in my life. No more pastor at all. I’m done.
My full time job is gone. I had been working part time as a hairdresser, a big step back from the position I held at the church, but I am grateful that I have something, and I’m really good at it. This is what I will have to do. I have no idea how I will come up with enough money to make this new life fly, but I have to make this work.
Every day I am afraid, every night I cuddle up in my little basement-nest of pillows and blankets and wonder about the future. And I hug and hold my body, which I discover to be a vastly underrated way to care for yourself, and I laugh, and cry… and I am alone, and in spite of the chaos, there is a spark inside me that is fanning into a flame, and it feels delightful. The freedom is intoxicating.
I would rather swim through an ocean of broken glass than go back into the doors of Pastor Almost’s church, and DX, in a great act of mercy, goes in and empties my office for me. And once again a parade of sound equipment, instruments, sheet music, and other musical miscellany marches on home, lone trumpeter echoing TAPS over the corpse that was my career for over 20 years.
I have a few close friends who stay by my side. BF is shocked that Pastor Almost has taken this approach. In the recording of the following service, there is an audible GASP as Pastor Almost announces that we are getting a divorce and have been fired. And the rumor mill grinds on…
I have friends, even close friends I have had this entire time, who never speak to me again after this happens. I have friends I lose because they are mad that I didn’t let them in on my Dirty Little Secret sooner. I can hear Pastor Jock, Sportie Spice and Joe Sham shouting a smug I-Told-You-So from here. Pastor Almost is mad that I didn’t tell him sooner, though I’m not sure how that would have worked out any differently. I lose Facebook friends. My phone stops ringing. The world hates me.
Here’s the thing.
In order to accomplish this monster task of getting my life back, I had to be ready to piss off the world and lose my reputation. I knew there would be talk, and that people would come up with whatever theories they felt like having. I knew I would likely lose my job, and career. I knew this little town would take a bleak view of this, at least the churchgoers. I had to be prepared to lose it all, to look this Goliath monster in the eye, and do it anyway, ready to die. It’s one of the two scariest things I’ve ever done, the other will come up in a bit…
And one of my music pals who had been through divorce already, who helped me through this ordeal, suddenly shifts flirty with me.
VERY flirty…
Worship Leader Gone Wild 