Quote of the week
Stupid Americans prefer comfort to truth, myth to facts. This amounts to denial at a national level.

Catastrophe sometimes brings sweet relief.

Divorce There is the idea in the substance abuse field, one to which I do not subscribe, that before things can get better, before an addict is willing to face his addiction, he has to "hit bottom." "Hitting bottom" is defined as catastrophe, something terrible, like a DWI arrest, a divorce, getting fired from a job, a life threatening event, perhaps even a death. Hitting bottom is the whack along side the head with a 2 x 4 but even that sometime is not enough to bring relief, to bring awareness, to bring the sobering encounter with reality.

In relationships sometimes me limp along knowing things aren't right hoping for the best and avoiding the final decision that changes need to be made. We move as Andrew Body writes in his little book, Daily Afflictions, "...from minor disaster to minor disaster, but it takes truly heroic stamina to see things through to total catastrophe." p. 41

Sometimes we are waiting for the catastrophe to occur because then the rationale for our release will be crystal clear  and our explanation for the change to others will be unequivocal. Everyone will understand why things couldn't go on the way they were.

As Andrew Boyd writes, "It's a catastrophe, but it's the one I need." and yet while it brings crisis, it is a crisis sweet with relief that things, as we knew them, are over, thank God. As people say, when they arrive at that point, "I just couldn't do it anymore!"

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