As Avalon Leaves Me – The Sin in my Service

Greetings Dear Readers,

Throughout the last year and a bit I have attempted to be open about the changes God is working in me. If you have followed my writing in this venue you know that Avalon has left me and on Wednesday morning I will go into a courtroom where a judge will say that we are no longer married. She will have what she wants and I will face my future without the woman I love.

Over the next three days I hope to say some things here that will help me face Wednesday morning with as much Christ-centeredness as possible. The first thing I wish to say is that most of the learning I have done over the last year has been just how far areas of my life were from what Christ wished me to be as one of his followers. This summer my church has taken us on a journey through the Sermon on the Mount.

In this Jesus addresses the culture and practices of his nation in light of what they should be, in light of what we should be in a fallen world. I love the pastoral staff at our church very much and in them I see no pretense or hypocrisy. I value every moment that I get to spend with them.

Early in the year our senior pastor challenged us to memorize the Sermon on the Mount. I decided to take up this challenge. I already knew two large portions of it and I can memorize things easily. I have a memorization system that works well and I thought to easily commit the three chapters to memory and impress my pastor. In this I missed two large and important details.

As I began the schedule of committing the passages to memory, for the first time in my life I found it hard to memorize. I relegated the difficulty to age, the current stresses in my life, and anything else that would keep me from seeing the sin in my service.

First, I must recognize that it would dishonor my pastor to do anything with the intent of impressing him. He is not a man who wishes anyone to impress him. He rather wishes us all to live honestly and purely walking in the footsteps of Christ. My motive was wrong and I am sure hindered my memory. I ask my pastor’s forgiveness.

Second, I must acknowledge that was memorizing this passage for my own purposes, not to follow it more closely. The very heart of these verses is to learn how to do things for the right motives. I think there could be no more prideful way to go about violating the Sermon on the Mount than to memorize it for earthly recognition. I ask Christ’s forgiveness.

I not only ask forgiveness but I recognize that this points out a pattern in my life that I have been unearthing for the last year. I know my son Maxim has tried to help me see it but his approach often clashes with my sensibilities and I do not hear him. Again that would be my pride. As Avalon leaves me I begin to realize how difficult it must be to live with a man who knows the Word of God but sometimes uses it to his own purposes.

It is not that I would ever lie about what it says, but that I would require others to apply and use that which I neglect. My heart is to be Christ’s and his alone right up until I get too uncomfortable. Indulging in a million little comforts has cost me that which comforted my heart as a husband. Avalon is wrong to abandon her vows, but I must own my failure in being the spiritual leader I should be in a family. I do not know what I can regain. I feel deposed by my children but I know that I can face the coming time of trouble with a heart determined to live out what I believe.

I miss my Grandfather today. He was the first person to show me that there was more than this world to consider. He loved Christ and followed him to his dying moment. He used to say that “you do what you believe. Everything else is religious talk.” Forty years after his death I think I am just getting the core of what he said.

Wishing you joy in the journey

Aramis Thorn