My First Singles’ Gathering

Okay, maybe that’s not the usual terminology applied to the situation. The county likes to call it a “mandatory parenting class for divorcing couples.” Either way, means pretty much the same thing!

And it makes an attention-getting title to a blog.

Kevin and I attended together … and helped keep each other awake as the interesting, but set in the middle of the afternoon, class played out.

I found myself looking around at the group of us waiting for the doors to open in the basement of the county courthouse and I couldn’t help but see the amount of pain in that hallway. The afternoon proved my point. There was the woman who reeked of alcohol and made it clear she felt the whole thing was a waste of time. Or the woman who’d just come out of a domestic violence situation and couldn’t speak without breaking into tears. Each of us had our own painful story.

Divorce is hard. Even when you do it to the best of your abilities. (And with so many people holding you up in prayer!) That class was probably the last thing Kevin and I will ever do as a married couple. By the time you read this tomorrow, I may already be officially divorced. And for those of you thinking this was fast–it was! I found out I was going to be single on Feb. 8th, Kev moved out on March 1st, the divorce was filed on April Fool’s Day(ha!), and then finalizes on the 22.

I wonder what I will feel tomorrow? Will it be freedom and gratefulness to be out of living in limbo, an excitement to face a hard thing head-on? Or will I feel suddenly weighted as my financial situation will be become bleaker, the emotional abandonment starkly real? Or will it just feel like any other day because our hearts are already split apart?