Prayer After Divorce Hers

God, I'm divorced. I still flinch when I say it. Like the word itself is an accusation.

Like it announces something about me before I get to speak. People at church don't know what to do with me now. The couples drift.

The invitations slow down. I became a category instead of a person. Single mom.

Divorcee. Those words flatten everything I actually am. I keep replaying it.

The conversations I should have had. The boundaries I should have held. The moment I knew it was over but stayed anyway because leaving felt like quitting.

And some nights I wonder if I stayed too long. And some nights I wonder if I gave up too soon. And both of those thoughts live in me at the same time.

The kids ask questions I can't answer. Why doesn't daddy live here anymore. When is everything going to be normal again.

I smile and say something steady, and then I cry in the shower because I don't know the answer either. I am tired, Lord. Not sleepy tired.

Tired in my bones. Tired of being strong. Tired of holding everything together with two hands while one of them is shaking.

I don't know who I am outside of wife. I was someone's wife for years and now I'm just me. And I don't know if me is enough.

Psalm 34 says you are close to the brokenhearted. That you save those who are crushed in spirit. Lord, I qualify.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted." Near. Not lecturing.

Not telling me what I should have done differently. Near. I need that nearness right now.

Because the world has opinions about divorced women, and I've absorbed most of them. The guilt. The shame.

The quiet assumption that I must have done something. But I survived something. I walked through fire and I'm standing here.

Singed. Changed. But standing.

That counts for something. Lord, protect my children from carrying the weight of this. Let them be kids.

Let them laugh without checking if it's okay. Let them love both their parents without feeling like they're betraying one. They didn't choose this.

I need you to cover what I can't. Teach me to stop apologizing for surviving. Teach me to walk into rooms without shrinking.

Teach me that this ending is not my definition. Teach me that a woman alone is not a woman abandoned. You see me.

Not the label. Not the courthouse papers. Me.

The woman who prays at 2 AM because the house is too quiet. The woman who is rebuilding something she didn't plan to build. Be close tonight, Lord.

Be close tomorrow morning when I have to get up and do it all again. Amen.