Divorce, Death & Expulsion (Personal Update)

I have been sort of missing in action the past year, and thought it would be worth explaining as I start to get back into the swing of things.

When I started back up blogging and podcasting in 2023 I was in the midst of a perhaps naively optimistic battle for my then-marriage. I was earnest and sincere, but it ended catastrophically, and quickly. The whole thing was over in less than two years. I have joined the prestigious ranks of other Abandoned Wives, being divorced many months ago now. There is something poetic about having been married in the fall and divorced in springtime.

This presented me with some dilemmas. First, I had to grieve the loss (it took me to some dark places). Then, there was the clear and obvious fact that I’d prayed just about as much and as hard as is possible for a human to pray, and all to no avail. While writing about prayer and deliverance and spiritual warfare, I was absolutely practicing what I “preached.” There were weeks when I prayed for many hours a day–we’re talking 12 to 14 hours–in repentance, in petitions, in concern for my now ex-husband. I would hold prayer vigils overnight, refusing to go to sleep until I’d prayed till the sun rose. I knew if my marriage did end, I’d have done everything I could.

The important and difficult lessons I learned are twofold:

First, always good to be reminded that God is not a totalitarian dictator. You can’t pray someone into health and wholeness, and certainly can’t pray them into renewing their commitment, if that isn’t what they want. If someone changes their mind one day, that’s it.

Two, as humans we have limitations. Nobody is getting out of this life untarnished. I found myself in a situation where I wasn’t sure whether to deny my ex-husband a divorce in order to maintain a pure moral standing before God, knowing this would leave me vulnerable to continued abuse — or accept that I was just as tarnished by this world’s fallenness as anyone else and would have to endure the stain if I wanted to be safe and sane. If I hadn’t been afraid of him I think I might have chosen my presumptive moral standing. This leaves me wondering if my willingness to endure might have exposed a moral shortcoming: a sort of self-righteousness or perhaps misunderstanding of God’s will. That may be too harsh — I very much loved my ex. But, I was being emotionally destroyed, and my faith provided a backwards motivation to let it continue. (Faith in God should not compel you to do that which displeases Him. A woman being destroyed unnecessarily does not please God.)

I faced public censure from my wee house church when I made the decision to grant my ex the divorce. This shocked me, I hadn’t expected it. Some (but not all) of my church believed it was my duty before God to stay separated from my ex for my safety, but also not to divorce him or consider moving on with my life. I’d made the decision in agony: the person who wanted my marriage to succeed the most was me. I perceived their censure as a second betrayal, and it hurt me deeply. I lost my marriage and my sense of community at the same time. I’m human, and it wore me out.

That was the first set of circumstances that made it impossible for me to continue with my writing and podcasting for a a time.

The second was my sister’s sudden and unexpected death in July 2024. She’d been sober for a couple of years and we all thought she was in the clear. Apparently she thought she was a skilled enough addict to take one last hit without consequence. While at work one day I got the text that she’d been found on her floor, and that was that. I was still grieving the loss of my marriage, and I took it quite hard.

Woven into all this tragedy was the need to regroup and assess my life and trajectory. I signed up for Peterson Academy at the urging of some friends, to give me access to productivity and learning in a time when I felt supremely unproductive and a little bit stupid. I always wished I could have gone to university, and thought acquiring a university-level education was the next best thing. By engaging in the digital academia provided by Peterson Academy, building friendships and community on their social platform, for a time I found myself feeling a little more steady. This took rather a turn for the worse when they expelled me without warning on January 8th 2025, apparently for asking questions about their price increase with a little too much persistence. (I say “apparently,” because I was never offered an explanation.)

This latest shaking is really nothing compared to what I already weathered, and I am now ready to speak and write again. I hope to return to my wee podcast as well. Full disclosure: my perspective may be slightly altered. I’ve come face to face with my humanity, something I was already aware of and thought I embraced, but I’m not sure I really did. I seem about a million times more human to me now than I did before I suffered this loss and failure. In a sense I’ve been humbled, and in another sense I’ve found my fight. I am sure of the Lord and confident that perfection is unattainable, but that it is still admirable to do our best. I am reassessing my views on spiritual warfare prayer, and am unlikely to articulate the change for quite some time, as I’m not precisely sure what I think yet (aside from pragmatically realizing that I’ve clearly been wrong about something). I’m feeling more free to be creative, and explore my interest in philosophy and art and current events. I suspect I am improved by the experiences of the past year, and such is the scandal of redemption.

As I write this with bittersweet optimism, I would like to make it clear that my love for the Lord has not been shaken. If there is anything good in this world worth living for, it either is Him or it came from Him. I see it no other way. God’s beauty as revealed in small flashes of moral light is evidence that in the end it will have been worth it. My hope is that anyone I communicate with will come to see God and beauty as sources of strength and resilience.

Kind of an aside: I’m finally, finally in the preparation stages to self-publish my book. What matters isn’t how successful it will be, but that I’m faithful to complete this project and free to start the next. I plan to publish a book of poetry after that. (I’ve been posting poems on Instagram, under dustymaytaylor, and find it suits poetry better than a blog format does).

I hope this explanation makes sense. God bless!