Good news for divorced people?

After Sally left him for another man, everything changed for Trevor. Of course it did; but ‘everything’ proved to be a lot more things than he had realised. Whereas previously he had been a respected member of the church community and a source of godly counsel to many, all of a sudden he was treated with a kind of friendly bewilderment. He felt the polite distancing. He was in trauma and grief, and yet his feelings had a curious illegitimacy. He felt the loss like a death; but he also felt shame. The minister told him that he couldn’t be a bible study group leader anymore – a decision that Trevor accepted mainly because he sure didn’t feel like being a bible study group leader at the time.

He felt that he had to make a new start with church, and so he went to a few churches to check them out. But it wasn’t easy. As a man in his early forties, people soon wanted to know what his family situation was. And he could tell from the way the questions were framed and the slightly raised eyebrows that people wanted to know: if you are divorced, who was to blame? He knew he hadn’t been perfect as a husband and that the marriage had had difficulties to which he had contributed long before Sally had chosen to leave. In the extensive counselling sessions he had had after the divorce, he had learnt to forgive Sally and the overwhelming anger and bitterness he felt towards her had dissipated. But now people were asking him to blame her all over again...

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