Restored After the Divorce I Did Not Want

When my wife left I was not functioning. I am not being dramatic — I stopped eating properly, stopped sleeping, stopped going to church, stopped calling friends. I sat in a house that suddenly felt like a stage set and I did not know who I was anymore. About four months in, at the lowest point, I opened a Bible that had been sitting on my shelf for years mostly unread. I opened it randomly — I know how that sounds — and read a passage about being carried through deep water. I sat with that for a while. Then I got up, showered, and called a friend I had been avoiding. That was the turn. Not dramatic, no vision, no audible voice. Just a quiet sense that I was not alone in the room, that something was present with me in that awful stillness, and that it was not indifferent to my pain. The recovery was slow and real and took years. But that night was the hinge. I am remarried now to a woman who loves God and loves me well. I would not have found her if the first marriage had not ended the way it did.