Forgiveness part 2

I am really troubled by the knowledge that I must forgive (and I really want to) but still deal with a desire to avenge this injustice or at least remain angry and bitter. I feel all of those things and more. My gentle nature says I cannot hold on to all this volatility without it really doing long-term damage to myself and my kids. I cannot control what my wife says or does but I can decide to move in a positive direction. God knows, I am trying to move forward. It is so difficult to move forward when you feel like a man without a country. As a man, I define myself by the things I have done; my children, my wife, my home, my possessions, my job, my family and friends. With one murderously deceitful stroke of a pen on a Domestic Violence petition many of the things I hold most dear were stolen from me. What makes the injustice even more gut-wrenching is knowing that for four days after my wife made the decision to take out this onerous miscarriage of justice on me, she lived with me (remember, she claims she was in fear of me) and things were fairly normal. All the while she was already planning how quickly she could pack up my things and have me out of the house. That is sick and cruel. If she were truly in fear of me she would have been hiding out at her Dad's summer home a half-hour away from the house. Does this sound like genuine fear? The night before the injunction was served on me, she and I were sitting on our front porch, watching our girls play in the yard, and asked me if I was sure I wanted to go through with a divorce. I said I did. She said I had no idea how hard my life was going to be. I asked her what she meant by those words and she just said, "oh..nothing...it will just be hard living without your children." I told her it sounded more threatening than that but she said that it was only about custody. Yeah....right. The next day the anvil fell on my head and I never saw it coming. I suspect she felt like it was a fair thing to do because, after all, she did ask me one last time if I was serious about wanting a divorce.

It is because of these things that I feel the deceit is so impossible to forgive or even understand. What kind of depraved mind would do something so mean-spirited? How could there ever be any degree of trust again after such a low blow? We have to raise these children together for the next thirteen years whether we want to work together or not. How could somebody do something like this? When I focus on the concept of forgiveness, I do feel better and even somewhat kindly towards her but when I get beyond the concept and contemplate the actual details of how this occurred then I realize how impossible it is to forgive at this time. I vacillate between pity for her and loathing. Ask me how I feel five minutes from now and my answer will likely be different. I am so tired of thinking about this and yet it has completely overtaken my life. I have had to drive to the courthouse so many times I swear I could do it blindfolded. I have to constantly fill out some new form and jump through some sort of hoop in order to satisfy the so-called justice system. The thing is, one day very soon, the system will tire of this melodrama and move on. Then my wife (Ex-wife) will be isolated and will suffer from this decision. She loves the attention she is receiving right now. I swear to look at her you'd think she had been scared to death. She wears her crown of thorns with great pride. When the drama subsides and all the details addressed her moment of crisis and drama will be over. Then she will have nothing but the stillness of isolation to comfort her. That is when I fear she will be overtaken by her inner-demons (and they are very, very real) and start tormenting our children. I stayed all those years to shield them from her erratic and frightening behavior. Now that I am gone, who will protect them? She is a master of manipulation and it scares the daylights out of me to think what she might do next. I am going to wear out my knees praying for God to intercede and save our kids. Why can't she just admit she has a problem and get some help?! Counseling can help only so much. There is something much deeper than that that drives her behavior and it has always scared me.