Chuck and Lynda, I wrote a full response to the comments you wrote under A Decision and decided to make it a blog entry. I copied what I had written into Notepad. I saved it. I closed Notepad. And now I can’t find it at all.  I’m hoping that Heaven Admin can help me find it.

Paula, what I wrote to Lynda and Chuck, before your comment appeared, addresses  much of your comment and question as well.  I’ll respond more specifically to you now, and later to Lynda and Chuck.

Here is your comment and, by the way, I admire you for your openness:

Beverly cannot walk out just like that; what gave her the courage and the strength to do so? I’ve been in a similar situation for 35 years now, but there were always so many factors to take into account - and now it is too late, I feel.

You say more, but I’ll come to that later, dear one.

The story definitely has gaps, and that’s deliberate. A story can tell too much and lose the readers’ interest. We already know that it was intolerable for Beverly to make either the decision to stay or to leave.

The incident with the mosquito on Hal’s forehead was symbolic of Beverly’s somehow being able to assert herself a little.

It seems to me that it takes enormous courage to stay in an unhappy marriage, and the same to leave. Beverly and Lily and Helene were all three faced with impossible decisions.

Helene wanted to be true to her church.  Her original decision had been to not use contraceptives. At the time, it may have been no decision at all. Of course, she would follow the dictates of her church. After her 8th pregnancy in twelve years, she simply couldn’t abide with that decision any longer.  To abide by the church rules certainly would have been her preference.

Pregnant with an unwanted 8th baby, Helene and her husband must have felt that they had no choice. Or their choice was to continue to be angry at bringing more children into the world and not loving the innocent babies. Did they decide not to want the baby? That wasn’t a decision.  Since when are our emotions decision-based?

Lily wanted to follow the mores of the world. How could she leave her husband and child? She had a nervous breakdown of sorts because of the struggle within her to choose what she must have seen as her happiness or to choose what would cause great pain to others.  It wasn’t Lily’s heart desire to hurt anyone. She wasn’t being frivolous.

Incidentally, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert carries the same theme as Lily’s. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy the same. Great literature has dealt with this dilemma.  As I remember, happiness does not result in either of these classics. But, also, would happiness have resulted if the wives had stayed?

In literature and in life, many wives and husbands have stayed in seriously unhappy marriages and made them work to whatever degree they could. Sometimes, a couple weather through great storms and create a loving marriage.

Each person has a different nervous system and different strengths and weaknesses.  If Beverly had been a different person, perhaps she could have stayed and survived. As  Beverly saw it, she had the choice of staying in the marriage and literally going insane and causing worse havoc to her daughter and her husband and certainly to herself, or choosing the agony of leaving and all it entailed.  She chose the latter, and it was harder than she had even thought.

And then you wrote, Paula:

God says in Heaven #3401, How to Make a Relationship Thrive:

“Sometimes you deal with relationships with your left hand, or you are offhand about them. Your heart is put on the side. Speech is required, and yet you dare not speak for fear of upsetting the apple cart, even when the status quo does not make you happy. When this is the case, is it that you don’t want to interrupt unhappiness, beloveds?”

Sorry God, but I don’t think this is the case, it’s more about a fear of what will be, how to cope afterwards. In any case, there is no easy solution, and maybe not even a ‘right’ one.

Paula, I bolded your last sentence because it is so true. That was certainly Beverly’s case. And, yet, so many years removed, I have to ask: Would Beverly have become a Godwriter in that loveless marriage? Despite her suffering as a child of divorce, would Callie have become the wonderful good and wise person that she is today? This is not to say that both Beverly and Callie didn’t have plenty of heartache as it was.

I don’t think God is denying that the fear exists. I don’t think He is saying that every relationship will thrive.  I do know there wasn’t open communication between Beverly and Hal.

God bless you, cara Paula.

With love,

Gloria