Divorce Nightmare

There was a knock at the door, and when he opened it, the sheriff handed him some papers. Since Dan was a landlord, he thought maybe some tenants were suing him. Later the sheriff returned. They were divorce papers, and now there was a retraining order placed against him.

“I need you to get only the things you need to stay someplace else tonight.” The sheriff said.

"But I need my computer. Everything about my business is on here,” Dan protested.

“Sorry, I have my orders.”

The divorce had come out of nowhere. And now, evicted out of his own house, Dan drove all day and into the night in a daze. He was so disoriented he didn’t know what do and couldn’t think clearly. At 3 a.m. he knocked at the house of his former minister.

“Sorry, but I’m not your pastor any more.”

What Dan didn’t know at the time was that his wife had gone to the bank and cleaned him out of $6,000 –money that was needed to pay bills such as the home mortgage.

Dan wound up at his brother’s house, trying to run a business without returning to his house and making frantic calls to the bank to try to bill bills so he wouldn’t lose his home.

Of course, he did lose his house, plus $40,000 in lawyer’s fees. All told, the divorce cost him something on the order of $375,000. His kids don’t talk to him any more. What his ex-wife told them, he has no idea, but it worked.

All through the divorce, which dragged through all of a year and a half, he was trying to reconcile due to his religious beliefs. I haven’t even begun to document here how devious, self-centered, and merciless his wife was, yet Dan’s religious convictions compelled him to keep turning the other cheek.

When faced with monumental betrayal, the appropriate response is war. You have to figuratively cut someone’s throat and dump them in the ditch. Rather than turn the other cheek, you should cave in their head with a Louisville Slugger –metaphorically, of course. It just makes no sense to continually play the chump and the doormat when someone is out to get you. No, it’s not very Christian, but that’s a good thing. That’s why I think Christianity is not a realistic or very sensible philosophy to live by. Yes, I see the point that you can’t be obsessed with vengeance, and you don’t always have to respond tit for tat, but at some point when you face enemies you have to treat them as such.

Last night was the first time I met Dan.... and his fiancée.