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Abigail Lost No Time

Chapter 1.

 Then David moved down into the Desert of Maon. A certain man in Maon, who had property there at Carmel, was very wealthy. He had a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel. His name was Nabal and his wife's name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband, a Calebite, was surly and mean in his dealings.

OK. It started in bible study. I was a regular. We had started a new study: Great Women of the Bible. This week we were studying ABIGAIL. The study said that we should admire Abigail for being a "woman of God", a woman who "trusted in the Lord", who "served God"-- not man. I had done my homework--I was ready to share how the scripture could be "applied" to my life. Reading the story of Abigail and her "foolish" husband (Nabal is Hebrew for "fool", got me thinkin' and asking questions--which got me essentially thrown out of the group, and ultimately the church:

What if my husband is a Nabal (a fool)? If we are supposed to admire Abigail for listening to God, and not man, does that mean that God condones a woman going against her husband to follow what she believes is the right thing to do?"

Oops.

I think I said something wrong.

The group leader called me later.

We have new women in the group...that kind of conversation might make them fee uncomfortable.

Really? I would think it would make them feel at home! A good group is the group you can relate to! Isn't the purpose of bible "study" to read the word of God and apply the teaching to our lives?

I guess not.

That was the beginning of the end.

Chapter 2.

 Nabal answered David's servants, "Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days. Why should I take my bread and water, and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men coming from who knows where?"

 David's men turned around and went back. When they arrived, they reported every word. David said to his men, "Put on your swords!" So they put on their swords, and David put on his. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed with the supplies.

 How many times did I look at my husband and think:

What's wrong with you? How selfish (foolish) can another human really be? How much am I truly expected me to put up with? Don't you realize that NOBODY lives like this?

Then I realized.

How long can I blame my husband? How can I, a mother of four children, in good conscience, continue to play your games with you? What does that say about me? What does it say to my children? How long will people put up with my complaints? At what point do they stop saying: Gee, why's she with him? And stop taking my calls? At what point do people stop feeling sorry for me? 

Note: [I was involved in two worlds:  "the church" and "the world": my struggle was that I was well aware that while "the church" rewarded me for enduring, the "world" would think I was pathetic.]

One of the servants told Nabal's wife Abigail: "David sent messengers from the desert to give our master his greetings, but he hurled insults at them.  Yet these men were very good to us. They did not mistreat us, and the whole time we were out in the fields near them nothing was missing. Night and day they were a wall around us all the time we were herding our sheep near them.  Now think it over and see what you can do, because disaster is hanging over our master and his whole household. He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him.

After many years of talking with my closest friend (bless her for putting up with me!), my little sister (bless her for being there year after year), being in therapy (bless her for admitting to me that even though she didn't "believe in divorce", that in my case she didn't see an option), and doing a lot of crying late at night after everybody went to bed--I realized that by staying with an abusive man, that I was in fact an accomplice to his crimes-- I was complicit--guilt by association. Really--there was no way to distinguish between me and him.  I was part of the problem. I couldn't blame anybody if they couldn't see it, or if they stopped caring.  After fifteen years, it was getting old.

In the bible study, the women told me I was required to forgive him. That I should pray for him. Then I had another realization--I had no desire to be the woman that people say things like: She's a really sweet lady, but her husband is a jerk.  I don't know how (or why) she puts up with him. She is a saint. I told the bible study leader: I am not a saint. 

I also did not see God requiring me to stay married AT ALL COSTS. In a (Baptist) culture where you are inundated with "God hates divorce" rhetoric,  it was impossible to talk about a failing marriage.

Chapter 3

Abigail lost no time. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs  of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. Then she told her servants, "Go on ahead; I'll follow you."
But she did not tell her husband Nabal.

 As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them. David had just said, "It's been useless—all my watching over this fellow's property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!"

When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed down before David with her face to the ground. She fell at his feet and said: "My lord, let the blame be on me alone. Please let your servant speak to you; hear what your servant has to say. May my lord pay no attention to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name—his name is Fool, and folly goes with him. But as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my master sent.

One night he got really mad. I had never really been scared before. But I knew this was bad. The baby was crying. I thought maybe seeing the baby cry would bring him to his senses--but to no avail.

 I tried to get out of the house. He grabbed me and held me so tightly I couldn't breathe. My legs were flailing around...

All I could think about was--is this is where all of our Christian teaching every Wednesday night, every Sunday morning, all the books, the tapes, the seminars has gotten us?? I was profoundly ashamed.

For some reason he suddenly let me go--but he made me sit on the couch--he wanted "to talk to me".  Just then I saw a flash of light through the next room. I remember saying:  I don't think we're alone.  He jumped up and went into the kitchen...

And that was the end of the beginning.

Chapter 4.

David said to Abigail, "Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. Otherwise, as surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by daybreak.

 Then David accepted from her hand what she had brought him and said, "Go home in peace. I have heard your words and granted your request."

The police took him away and I realized I was in a burning building. I felt like I was on the 85th floor of the World Trade Center--trapped--I had a choice--albeit a tragic one--either go down in flames or jump.

I looked at my four babies and  realized that someody had to start wearing the pants in the family. As much as I resented being forced to wear them, there was no denying reality any more. It had to be done. It was time to stop feeling sorry for myself, time to stop trying to make something into something it could never be, time to get my head out of the sand...

 I filed for divorce.

I had to say good bye to my babies as the house was a pre-marital asset and I had no rights to it.

My parents wouldn't put me up--they were used to have their house to themselves.

I had no where to take 4 children.

I had no job.

Fortunately, some good samaritan's (my best friend) took me in and let me stay in their attic while I looked for a job.

Despite the fact that he had dropped out of the work force and spent most of his time in bed or on the internet, he insisted that I was mentally unstable and that he could provide a better home for the kids.

I told my attorney I wanted to sign the kids over to him. He said I was crazy. I said, no. There isn't any other way. 

Only I knew how foolish, how ruthless he was. I wasn't worried about my relationship with my kids--we were close, real close. They'd manage somehow. And ultimately, I knew that God would make it right--all in good time. 

The only thing I can compare it to is the scene in Sophie's Choice when the SS officer forces Sophie to prove that she is a "believer" and not a Jew by making the fatal, yet life-giving choice of which child to send to the train--to Christ, and which child to keep.

What seperates us from the animals?

Choice.

What happens we we refuse to make choices and let life go by? We become animals...

It is our choices, more accurately--the act of choosing--that defines us.

My action, my choosing, was what set me apart from the animal my husband had become...

God gave me a new beginning, a beginning that ultimately, I would be able to share with my babies...

Chapter 5.

 When Abigail went to Nabal, he was in the house holding a banquet like that of a king. He was in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until daybreak. Then in the morning, when Nabal was sober, his wife told him all these things, and his heart failed him and he became like a stone. About ten days later, the LORD struck Nabal and he died.

It has been almost exactly three solid years, since I set my babies down on the couch and told them that mommy had to go away. That they had to be brave and trust in God to bring us together again somehow...

My mother said it was the sickest thing she ever saw.

The way I see it--my first marriage was like the tragedy of the Titanic. No one got on the ship thinking it would go down--who would have stepped on deck in a beautiful dress if they thought they were going to die? No one. Likewise, I never imagined that my marriage to my children's father would have failed as horribly as it did...but it did.

Them's the facts.

But life goes on.

Thank God.

Today I am happily remarried to an amazing man, have a great job, a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood--and--my babies are coming home!!!!

They lived with their father for 3 long years and for those 3 years he made them utterably and undeniably miserable. 

Chapter 6.

The truth is like the sun, you can't hide it with the sun.

-Russian Proverb

After nine months of bitter litigation--the court--by the grace of God--has heard the cries of my children--they are miserable living with a man who calls himself their father yet has consistently punished us by disallowing us from seeing eachother, denies them private access to the phone when they have wanted to call me, and disparaged me ruthlessly despite the fact that I provide the health insurance and pay child support every month--on top of the years of devoted service in the home during our marriage.

Interestingly, elders of "the church" showed up on my ex's witness list. What were they going to testify to? 

Essentially, in the eyes of "the church", I am an anathema. In the beginning, the pastor had asked me if I was having an affair? How ridiculous!!!  How insulting!!!  They had seen me at church week after week, nursing baby after baby for nearly two years each! When was I going to have an affair with a babe at the breast? They said, with horrible sad faces on: "But, God hates divorce!"

Oh. I see. And I love divorce????????

They came to my door with their bibles in hand...frankly, I could have used a hot dish or two instead!

So now they were going to say--on the witness stand--what? That I was a bad mother because I had divorced my good-for-nothing, intentionally unemployed for five STRAIGHT years,manipulative, fraudulant, heartless (tears do nothing to him), selfish, lying husband?

Yes! Why? Because if they didn't they would effectively be conceding that SOMETIMES DIVORCE IS INEVITABLE.

What these religious blockheads don't get is that just because God hates divorce, doesn't mean it doesn't happen!

Don't you think God hates tsunamis? the swine flu? murder? rape? hunger? war? death?

But all those things still happen! 

But even more critical--if they concede that divorce is sometimes inevitable or even necessary--then they have opened the floodgates in the church! Ironically, these so-called "men of God" operate out of bad faith on a daily basis! Essentially, the message is-if we don't keep control--everyone will want a divorce! They think of divorce as a public health issue--and I was Typhoid Mary...

That's why the Baptist church can't tolerate my divorce.

(And that's why I will never step foot in a Baptist church again.)