Tag: staying

"Why did you stay so long?" was the question my mother asked me when I finally got a restraining order and filed for divorce to end my abusive marriage of 20 years to my first husband.

She asked me that question after I had fled the state of Oklahoma in July 2009 with my two young children and found refuge in the home where I had grown up 10 hours away in Mississippi.

I thought to myself, "Really? I can’t believe she is asking me that, because she knows what our church teachings were about divorce." Basically, that it is wrong. At weddings I heard the scripture many times that said, "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder."