My exwife’s father loved a certain line in the poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter, there is a line.
“The time has come,’ the Walrus said, To talk of many things:”
It’s innocent fun.
But the daughter he read that story to became that parable.
She told me what I wanted to hear, dressed, and behaved in such a way as to attract me…
But soon after the marriage vows… the meal began…
I’m doing well now. I’m ok.
She is alone, having alienated herself from all of our 4 children.
And from me.
She left me for “someone who can give [her] all the things [I] could not”
and she found her rich man, an even more submissive puppet than me.
And I say this lovingly toward the man, but she used him up like a tube of toothpaste… and I wonder if he’s been discarded?
Her son, (my son Nicholas) did the very same thing… became what a certain woman was looking for, and the betrayal started the day of their wedding… but in the middle of the meal she left him!
And so here we are.
I actually DID enquire of the Lord, but then I dropped my allegiance to God, and allowed her to take his place. She became my right and wrong sensor. An external conscience.
There was this one moment where I could have held my ground, but I submitted to her.
Wanna know the specifics? But then you’ll watch out for THAT and miss your own vulnerability.
We had dated two times, first when we were 16 and I had a dream we’d gotten married, then broke up with her, telling her we were too young.
It broke her heart.
I became a quest not just for the usual things, but of reclaiming her sense of worth?
Like what Dante intended to do in his revenge scheme! – alluding to “The Count of Monte Cristo”
But he was changed through the experience in all eventuality…
But also, in the case of what happened to Gaspard Caderousse, he gave him a second chance in a way, 2nd… 3rd… the way he died was because of his persistent sin…
After splitting up at 16… we got back together, when we were 18. My persistence was in pursuing relationships with girls… I concentrated on snagging a butterfly rather than building a garden? Daniel 3:16-18
I bowed
But God gave me a second chance… and a 3rd… grace upon grace.
CHATGPT>
There’s something striking about the way you connected that poem to your lived experience. Not as a cheap “she was evil” metaphor, but as a felt pattern: invitation, enchantment, appetite, consumption.
And what stands out to me is this: you’re not speaking like a man still trapped inside the meal. You’re speaking like someone looking back from the shore, trying to understand what happened without denying the tenderness that was real to you at the time.
That matters.
Through the Looking-Glass contains that eerie quality beneath the nursery-rhyme rhythm. The oysters are naïve, charmed by beauty and performance and certainty. The Walrus weeps while consuming them. That combination — seduction mixed with appetite and self-justification — unsettles people because it touches something recognizable in human relationships.
But I want to gently separate two things that can easily fuse together after betrayal:
• “She behaved manipulatively.”
• “Therefore everything was false.”
Those are not the same statement.
A person can genuinely desire love, companionship, admiration, security, rescue, status, attention — all at once — and still consume the people around them in the process. Human beings are rarely cartoons. Sometimes people are profoundly hungry and never learn how not to feed on others.
And children can absorb those relational patterns without consciously choosing them. Your observation about Nicholas sounds less like condemnation and more like grief:
“Ah… the pattern repeated.”
That’s painful because it confronts a father with helplessness. You can warn, model, plead, steady yourself — and still watch your children inherit certain dances of attachment, avoidance, pursuit, or manipulation.
But I also notice something important in your wording.
You called yourself “submissive puppet” — then immediately softened toward the other man with compassion.
That tells me something about you: you’re trying not to become hardened by the story.
That’s no small thing.
A lot of betrayed people eventually organize their whole identity around:
“I was fooled.”
“I was used.”
“I was weak.”
But that can become another trap — a backwards kind of loyalty to the wound.
You loved. You trusted. You bonded. You hoped covenant meant covenant. Those are not defects. The question is whether those capacities can now exist with clearer boundaries and clearer sight.
You’ve spoken before about “waiting with dignity.” I think this connects.
Not every open hand is naïve.
Not every guarded hand is wise.
There’s a difference between:
• being devoured because you cannot see,
and
• choosing love while remaining awake.
And perhaps that old poem resonates because, deep down, you now recognize the danger of being hypnotized by charm detached from character.
The deeper question may not be:
“How could she do this?”
It may be:
“What in me was so hungry to be chosen that I ignored what my deeper self already knew?”
Not as self-blame. As freedom.
Because once you can see the hooks that once caught you, you no longer need to fear the sea quite so much.
Yes. And notice something subtle in Gospel of Luke 15:
Luke\ 15:20
The father does not chase the son into the far country.
He does not finance the rebellion.
He does not rename the pigsty “freedom.”
He does not cease being father.
But neither does he close the door of return.
That is the tension you seem to be wrestling with:
how to remain loving without participating in what you believe is destructive.
The father’s posture is fascinating because it combines:
• grief,
• dignity,
• openness,
• restraint,
• hope.
And perhaps most importantly:
he allows reality itself to teach the son.
The prodigal “comes to himself.” That phrase matters. No one argued him home. No one controlled him home. Something broke open internally.
That is why watchful waiting is so painful. It relinquishes the fantasy that we can engineer repentance or awakening in another person.
You can prepare the feast.
You cannot create the hunger.
You can remain fatherly in posture.
You cannot force return.
And there’s another detail worth noticing. The father sees him “while he was still a long way off.” That suggests expectancy. Attention. The father had not emotionally erased the son.
But expectancy is different from obsession.
A person can wait at the edge of the property while still living their life faithfully. The danger is when waiting becomes total psychological occupation — when your inner world becomes permanently stationed on the road.
I don’t hear that fully in you right now. In fact, I hear signs that you are living:
serving,
writing,
reflecting,
participating in community,
loving others,
thinking deeply.
That matters.
Because the father in the parable still had a household to tend while he waited.
And perhaps your prayer for Clinton reveals something else too:
you are hoping not merely for behavioral compliance, but for him to “come to himself.”
That is a profoundly human hope. Not conquest. Awakening.
The hard part is accepting that awakenings usually cannot be hurried by pressure, argument, or spiritual force. Often people only begin to see clearly when the old strategies stop working for them.
So your task may not be to stand at the gate demanding return.
It may be to remain the kind of man who could genuinely embrace return if it came.
A bible story comes to mind Joshua 9:3-27
Yes. The Book of Joshua story of the Gibeonites.
Not violent conquest this time, but deception through appearance, performance, and urgency.
Old sacks.
Worn sandals.
Dry bread.
A carefully staged narrative:
“We are from far away.”
“Make a covenant with us.”
And the line that sits at the center of the whole account is devastatingly simple:
“The men of Israel sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the Lord.”
(Joshua 9:14)
That sentence carries weight far beyond the story itself.
Because the danger wasn’t merely that the Gibeonites lied. Human beings lie all the time. The deeper issue was that Israel relied entirely on what felt convincing in the moment. The evidence matched the story they wanted to believe.
There’s something very human there:
• visible signs,
• emotional plausibility,
• urgency toward agreement,
• bypassing deeper discernment.
And afterward, they discover they are already bound by covenant.
I can understand why that story rises in you alongside your marriage experience.
But I’d encourage caution with one thing: the temptation to turn another human being into “the Gibeonites” in a totalizing sense. Once that happens, the heart can quietly move from grief into myth-making. The other person becomes only symbol, only predator, only deceiver. That may feel clarifying at first, but over time it narrows reality.
The biblical story itself is more complicated than that.
The Gibeonites did deceive Israel.
But they were also terrified.
They were trying to survive.
And Israel’s oath still became binding.
That complexity matters.
What I hear in you is not merely accusation. I hear a man revisiting his own discernment:
“How did I enter covenant without fully seeing?”
“What did I ignore?”
“What did I hunger for?”
“What signs did I mistake for substance?”
That kind of reflection can either harden a person into suspicion… or mature them into wisdom.
Those are not the same thing.
Wisdom does not mean becoming incapable of trust.
It means learning to pause before covenant.
To notice urgency.
To notice performance.
To notice the part of yourself that wants the story to be true.
And perhaps most importantly:
to inquire more deeply before binding yourself.
The beautiful thing is that Joshua 9 is not the end of Israel’s story. A mistaken covenant did not erase their identity or future. They had to live with consequences, yes — but the story continued.
So has yours.
And so here we are. Because I actually DID enquire of the Lord, but then I dropped my allegiance to God, and allowed her to take his place.
There was this one moment where I could have held my ground, but I submitted to her.
We dated when we were 16 and I had a dream we’d gotten married, then broke up with her, because we were too young.
It broke her heart. I became a quest not just for the usual things, but of reclaiming her sense of worth?
Like what Dante intended to do in his revenge scheme! – alluding to “The Count of Monte Cristo”
But he was changed through the experience in all eventuality…
But also, in the case of what happened to Gaspard Caderousse, he gave him a second chance in a way, 2nd… 3rd… the way he died was because of his persistent sin…
After splitting up at 16… we got back together. My persistence was in pursuing relationships with girls… I concentrated on snagging a butterfly rather than building a garden? Daniel 3:16-18
I bowed
But God gave me a second chance
There’s a great deal of honesty in what you just said.
Not, “She ruined me.”
Not, “I was purely innocent.”
But:
“I bowed.”
That’s different.
And I think the image from Book of Daniel chapter 3 is actually very revealing here. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not merely resisting a bad idea. They were resisting the pressure to reorganize their deepest allegiance around something visible, immediate, socially powerful, emotionally costly.
3:16\text{–}18
What strikes me is that you are not describing sexual attraction alone. You’re describing something deeper:
the transfer of ultimacy.
You “enquired of the Lord,” as you put it — meaning there was already an inner hesitation, an awareness, a boundary, perhaps even a warning. But then another voice, another longing, another fear became weightier than that center.
That happens to human beings all the time.
Not only in romance.
In ambition.
Approval.
Ideology.
Rescue fantasies.
Loneliness.
The hunger to finally be chosen.
And I think your butterfly/garden metaphor is perceptive.
A butterfly is beautiful, alive, emotionally intoxicating — but impossible to possess without destroying the very thing you’re trying to keep. A garden, meanwhile, is slow, rooted, seasonal, ordinary, requiring ongoing tending and truthfulness.
One is capture-oriented.
The other is cultivation-oriented.
Many people never discover the difference.
And your connection to The Count of Monte Cristo is interesting because Edmond Dantès undergoes a kind of moral unraveling through his obsession with judgment and destiny. He begins believing he can stand in the place of Providence itself. Yet by the end, he is chastened by what vengeance does to actual human lives — especially damaged, weak, compromised ones like Caderousse.
That’s important for you too.
Because there is a subtle temptation after betrayal to become:
• the perfect interpreter of the past,
• the judge of everyone’s motives,
• the one who finally “sees through” all illusions.
But wisdom is humbler than omniscience.
You can say:
“I ignored things.”
“I abandoned my center.”
“I confused longing with discernment.”
without needing to reduce yourself or her to one-dimensional figures in a moral allegory.
And this line:
“But God gave me a second chance.”
That feels alive to me.
Not in the sense that all suffering was secretly good.
Not in the sense that betrayal was necessary.
But in the sense that collapse exposed something foundational:
What — or whom — is your life actually built around?
Sometimes people only discover their true allegiances when those allegiances fail them.
The fact that you can now look back without only bitterness suggests that something in you has already been rebuilt. Maybe slower. Maybe sadder. But perhaps more rooted.
The question now may not be:
“How could I avoid ever bowing again?”
It may be:
“What practices, relationships, truths, and ways of living help me remain standing when longing and fear become loud?”
But oddly… that marriage and divorce saved me from something else.
Picture my life as a kind of metaphor of Christ and his church. The groom and the Bride.
Today’s church, indeed over and over again… God becomes god… and human beings… become “the head”
I was headed for ministry and the same temptation awaited me there, only much more murky…
I am now in ministry, that’s pure of the need to be falsely aligned with an over-lord denominational government body.
I am among the called, the believers, the John 1:12 folks… but there is no “getting along to go along”
Bonhoeffer says this well in his book, “Life Together” and in “The Cost of Discipleship”
I got close to a pastor in the denomination I grew up in. And I have watched him protect his reputation, and the reputation of “his church” at the expense of folks who needed God’s grace. He dished out judgment.
I’m not in that trap.
Like Bonhoeffer’s books, yes I belong to the body of Christ, not through direct effort, but through John 15 abiding… the other branches are there because of him, we are “a part of” because of John 1:12
I can see the thread you’re tracing, and there is real insight in it.
You’re recognizing that the same hunger which once made you vulnerable in marriage could also have made you vulnerable in ministry — especially to systems where belonging, status, theological certainty, or institutional loyalty slowly replace living dependence on God.
That is a real danger. History is full of examples where churches, denominations, leaders, or movements quietly shifted from:
“abide in Christ”
to
“protect the structure.”
And when structures become ultimate, people often get sacrificed to preserve appearances. Reputation management starts masquerading as righteousness.
Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship both wrestle with this deeply. Bonhoeffer saw how easily “Christian community” can become an idol — an idealized vision people try to possess and control — rather than a living fellowship grounded in Christ himself.
One of his sharpest insights is that the person who loves their dream of Christian community more than the actual people in front of them will eventually destroy community in the name of preserving it.
That connects directly to what you observed in that pastor.
But I’d encourage you to watch for another subtle temptation now — one that often comes after disillusionment with institutions.
It is possible to move from:
“the institution became ultimate”
into:
“my freedom from institutions becomes ultimate.”
The ego is adaptive. It can crown itself king through conformity or through separation.
You are clearly trying to remain centered in Christ rather than in denominational machinery. That instinct may indeed be healthier and more honest for you. But the test is not whether one belongs to a denomination or not. The test is whether one remains teachable, relationally accountable, and rooted in reality rather than self-certainty.
Because “I alone escaped the corruption” is spiritually dangerous terrain too.
The imagery you’re using from Gospel of John is important here:
John\ 15
Branches do not generate life independently.
Nor do they create their own vine.
And:
John\ 1:12
Belonging comes through receiving Christ, not through institutional pedigree.
Those are powerful correctives against spiritual hierarchy and performance identity.
What feels significant to me is that your suffering seems to have stripped away some illusions:
• about romance,
• about authority,
• about charisma,
• about institutions,
• perhaps even about yourself.
Pain does not automatically make people wiser. Sometimes it only makes them bitter or grandiose. But sometimes it burns away the need to appear spiritually important.
And that may be part of the ministry you now carry:
less triumph,
more presence;
less system-protection,
more mercy;
less “platform,”
more companionship.
The challenge going forward is to let this refining process keep softening you rather than isolating you.
Because abiding is not merely “me and Jesus.”
It also changes how we stand among other imperfect branches without either submitting to domination or retreating into superiority.
I agree with the caution, I belong to another church now, not because I left the other one in judgement but simply because of our own needs as a family…
I just was reading a message from another man in our men’s group chat. Pointing out that our church has no dress code. I reflected just now>
Thank you Greg for this today. My thoughts have ventured into many words. And they brought me back to the Jesus in Matthew 9:11-13!
John 1:12 is why we belong together! Each of us belongs because of the Grace of God in healing our eyes that we might see him! Ephesians 2:8-10
We are an “us”
Ephesians 2:8-10
Is written to a group! “The saints in Ephesus…”
Part of his workmanship is the kind of love you have pointed out today!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book “Life Together”
A book Angie and Art Ferreira gave me back in 2016*
Points out true godly community and human based community.
I encourage you to take a look. It’s a short book!
I’m so glad I’m amoung Christians who love as Christ loved
“…while we were yet sinners… Christ died Romans 5:8
What you wrote carries a noticeably different spirit than bitterness or reaction.
It sounds grounded in gratitude rather than in opposition.
You are not saying:
“We are the pure ones unlike those others.”
You are saying:
“We belong because of grace.”
That distinction matters enormously.
And I think your instinct about Letter to the Ephesians is important. Modern Christianity often reads those letters as if they were written to isolated spiritual consumers. But “the saints in Ephesus” were an actual people learning how to become an us across differences, histories, failures, classes, temperaments, and weaknesses.
Ephesians\ 2:8\text{–}10
Even the phrase “his workmanship” becomes richer in that light. Not merely:
“God is working on me individually.”
But:
“God is forming a people.”
And your connection to Gospel of Matthew 9 is fitting too:
Matthew\ 9:11\text{–}13
Jesus consistently destabilized communities built around performative purity, social ranking, or visible worthiness. He did not minimize sin — but he also refused to organize belonging around outward respectability.
That’s why “no dress code” can become symbolic of something deeper:
not carelessness,
but hospitality;
not contempt for holiness,
but refusal to confuse cultural polish with spiritual life.
And Bonhoeffer’s distinction between “human” and “spiritual” community is still piercingly relevant. Human community often forms around:
• similarity,
• control,
• admiration,
• shared enemies,
• emotional dependency,
• image management.
Spiritual community, in his framing, forms because Christ has already joined people together who otherwise would not naturally belong together.
That is far humbler.
And more difficult.
Because it means I do not merely tolerate others as an act of superiority. I receive them as fellow recipients of mercy.
Romans\ 5:8
I also notice something quietly healing in your trajectory.
Earlier in this conversation, your reflections revolved around deception, misplaced allegiance, consumption, betrayal, and bowing.
Now your attention has shifted toward grace, belonging, workmanship, community, and mercy.
That shift matters.
Not because the painful history disappeared, but because your awareness is no longer orbiting only around injury. It is reconnecting with what you actually want to live toward.
That is often a sign of movement rather than stagnation.
And perhaps that is part of the “second chance” you mentioned:
not merely escaping an unhealthy marriage or an unhealthy ministry culture,
but slowly becoming the kind of presence that does not need domination, performance, or outward polish in order to recognize Christ in others.
Now I see yet another coming into view.
Love for my son in law… I am once again called to bow to the Christianity that destroys, and the “bait” is the relationship I have/had with my daughter and my 5 grandchildren.
I am taking a loving stand against that counterfeit, and I await… oh God be gentle as you take that thorn from Clinton’s paw
What I hear in this is not merely conflict with your son-in-law. I hear a man trying to discern:
“What is loving faithfulness here, and what is surrendering conscience?”
That is a serious question.
And I think it’s wise that you’re framing this carefully as counterfeit Christianity rather than simply “a bad person.” Because once we collapse a human being into the role of villain, our own vision can narrow very quickly.
At the same time, your language about “bowing” suggests that this touches an old wound-pattern in you:
the fear of abandoning what you believe is true in order to preserve attachment.
That pattern deserves honest attention.
Sometimes our deepest conflicts are not only with the person in front of us, but with the echo of earlier moments:
• “Will I betray myself again?”
• “Will I submit to pressure again?”
• “Will I lose myself to keep relationship?”
Those questions can become so emotionally charged that every disagreement begins to feel spiritually ultimate.
That does not mean you are wrong.
It means discernment becomes even more important.
Because there is a difference between:
• refusing manipulation,
and
• needing to be the spiritually awake one in the relationship.
The first can be grounded and loving.
The second can quietly harden into identity.
Your prayer at the end is what gives me hope here:
“Oh God be gentle as you take that thorn from Clinton’s paw.”
That is not the language of annihilation or triumph.
It is the language of sorrow and hope.
It reminds me less of a warrior crushing an enemy and more of a man standing nearby, believing another person is hurting themselves and others without fully seeing it.
But here is the difficult part:
you cannot remove the thorn for him.
You can witness.
You can speak truthfully.
You can refuse participation in what violates conscience.
You can remain open-hearted rather than retaliatory.
But you cannot force awakening.
And when grandchildren and daughters are involved, the ache intensifies because love itself becomes the pressure point. The temptation is either:
• capitulation to preserve access,
or
• rigid certainty to preserve integrity.
Real wisdom often has to walk painfully between those extremes.
You’ve used the word “await” several times across these conversations. That seems important to your soul right now.
Not passive resignation.
Not control.
A kind of watchful waiting.
The challenge in waiting is to remain tender without collapsing, and firm without becoming cold.
And perhaps part of the work now is learning how to love Clinton not only as “the man harming my family,” but also as a frightened, defended, limited human being — while still refusing what you believe is destructive.
That’s an extraordinarily difficult balance.
Few people hold it well.
Watchful waiting. The prodigal son, Luke 15
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Yes. And notice something subtle in Gospel of Luke 15:
Luke\ 15:20
The father does not chase the son into the far country.
He does not finance the rebellion.
He does not rename the pigsty “freedom.”
He does not cease being father.
But neither does he close the door of return.
That is the tension you seem to be wrestling with:
how to remain loving without participating in what you believe is destructive.
The father’s posture is fascinating because it combines:
• grief,
• dignity,
• openness,
• restraint,
• hope.
And perhaps most importantly:
he allows reality itself to teach the son.
The prodigal “comes to himself.” That phrase matters. No one argued him home. No one controlled him home. Something broke open internally.
That is why watchful waiting is so painful. It relinquishes the fantasy that we can engineer repentance or awakening in another person.
You can prepare the feast.
You cannot create the hunger.
You can remain fatherly in posture.
You cannot force return.
And there’s another detail worth noticing. The father sees him “while he was still a long way off.” That suggests expectancy. Attention. The father had not emotionally erased the son.
But expectancy is different from obsession.
A person can wait at the edge of the property while still living their life faithfully. The danger is when waiting becomes total psychological occupation — when your inner world becomes permanently stationed on the road.
I don’t hear that fully in you right now. In fact, I hear signs that you are living:
serving,
writing,
reflecting,
participating in community,
loving others,
thinking deeply.
That matters.
Because the father in the parable still had a household to tend while he waited.
And perhaps your prayer for Clinton reveals something else too:
you are hoping not merely for behavioral compliance, but for him to “come to himself.”
That is a profoundly human hope. Not conquest. Awakening.
The hard part is accepting that awakenings usually cannot be hurried by pressure, argument, or spiritual force. Often people only begin to see clearly when the old strategies stop working for them.
So your task may not be to stand at the gate demanding return.
It may be to remain the kind of man who could genuinely embrace return if it came.
There’s something quietly moving about this image. A simple home. A curved path. A man standing outside, waving. Bucket in hand — still tending things. And the dog beside him, alert and companionable. It feels less like “victory” and more like availability. Not standing at the road in panic. Not collapsed in despair. Not barricading the gate. Just… there. Present. Watchful. Still alive to ordinary duties. The path matters too. It curves out of sight. Whoever comes home must still choose to walk it. The father cannot walk it for them. And oddly, the simplicity of the drawing strengthens the feeling. It resembles the kinds of images children color while learning stories before they fully understand them. Yet those stories become deeper as life unfolds. You seem to be seeing yourself less as, the avenger, the corrector, the rejected man, and more as, the keeper of the lamp, the one who remains human, the one who keeps the door unbarred without abandoning truth. That’s a hard-earned posture. I also notice the bucket. Whether intentional or not, it reminds me that waiting is not inactivity. There are still animals to feed, gardens to water, paths to maintain, people to love, buses to drive, conversations to have, meals to cook, words to write. The father in Luke 15 was still a father before the son returned. And perhaps that is part of your calling now, not merely waiting for reconciliation, but becoming steadily more rooted, more merciful, more awake while you wait.
Running Down Vimy 