Charity

I engaged in a discussion today about charity.  Not the kind of charity where you donate money to, but rather in a "Sunday School" sense; the kind of charity that expresses love.  I realized that I have the capacity to be incredibly charitable and have been on occasion but it was often with only mild acquaintances or with total strangers.  I consider myself to be a pretty good friend, when I am around anyway.  It becomes harder with distance, of course.  But I wondered about how to show true Christ-like charity to others.

The man leading the discussion is a person I respect both for his character and also for his experiences with life.  He related an example of charity that, at first, nearly blew my mind.  He talked about how he tries to show charity to his rather awful ex-wife.  Now, I know a little bit about divorce as you already know, but his wife was a real piece of work.  Ladies, this was the kind of woman that you would secretly hate because they give women in general a bad wrap.  Suffice it to say, she was not a good person.  But to hear my friend talk about charity and his attempts to show charity even to this woman who had repeatedly wronged him, well... it got me thinking. If he could show charity to a woman like that... could I?

My ex-wife is a generally good person.  Well, there you go.  I'm already being charitable. <cue laugh track.>  What I should say is that she tries to be a good person.  The fact of the matter is that she seems to be a conflicted person who is generally unhappy with her life and, like many of us, wants to avoid responsibility for her own happiness.  It seemed to always be my responsibility to make and keep her happy.  I never truly saw her dark side until the divorce started.  Now, by way of background, Camille has never had a particularly strong personality.  As a result, she tends to take on attributes, attitudes and behaviors of those she surrounds herself with.  It just so happened that, at the time of the divorce her best friends were, first, a woman who is married to an abusive addict and seems to be constantly angry and overwhelmed by her 5 children and, second, a woman whose husband decided that after 6 or 7 years of marriage and 3 kids that he is full blown homosexual and was leaving her to live with his boyfriend with whom he had been cheating for several years.  To further complicate matters, she was assigned a female attorney, to whom all the woman lawyer jokes would apply.  This woman had clearly been the victim of some kind of abuse or, more likely, sexual assault when she was younger and was now taking it out on every man she encountered in the family courts of Utah.

Camille, armed with this brood of compatriots, waged war on me when our divorce started.  She accused me of physical and emotional abuse of both her and our children (I don't even spank my children and hadn't for over 2 years).  She accused me of infidelity on several occasions (I had always been faithful in our marriage despite occasional spots of trouble with Camille).  She took my children and disappeared for nearly 2 months insisting that I not look for her because I would never find her.  She had me removed from my home by a sheriffs deputy as a result of ex-parte orders from the court based on fabricated accounts.  She perjured herself on court records in order to get what she wanted and to punish me for her unhappiness. I didn't end with the divorce, either.  Since then, she has turned my oldest son into a hypochondriac and had him diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and declared handicapped in order to get assistance from the state to stay home with him instead of working.  She has been repeatedly neglectful of our children when in her care, several times having the police called on her.  She has manipulated nearly everyone she has come in contact with into thinking that she is either a victim or a martyr.  She has made my life harder at every turn...  and this is who I am supposed to show charity to?!

Trouble is, I know that I need to.  I already know that the negative feelings that I experience when dealing with or thinking about her are poisonous and if I dwell on them that I will suffer, not her.  I have no idea how I am going to do it, but I have resolved to show charity to my ex.  I am not going to dwell on the negative feelings that have pervaded my thinking for so long.  I am going to try to give her the benefit of the doubt when she becomes infuriating.  Don't get me wrong, I am not going to fold to her every whim and desire like when we were married.  Just going to show a little charity and a little compassion.  Then, when I am not dealing with her, I will choose to think of other things and not dwell.  Hopefully, in this way I can also begin to show charity to myself at the same time.