Divan Intervention

Whispers From the Divine

A few posts back, I wrote about my unconventional Catholic indoctrination, “Jesus at the Table,” and inside that piece, I mentioned another encounter with Jesus — maybe not Jesus, but all the same, it was Jesus at the time — titled “Divan Intervention.” I thought it would be timely to share that essay in its entirety here today.

---

A young woman, barely past the age of teen, was contemplating a critical predicament alone, while her baby boy slept nearby, uninterrupted in his crib.

Her Catholic-esque upbringing, flavored with her grandmother’s roots in Santería, stood before her in judgment. The angry and punishing God she was raised to believe in was disintegrating in this moment of stillness and calm. The realization of her present life course came fully into view — its insanity laced with the voices of matriarchs saying things like, “You made your bed, now you lie in it.” Compounded with more ill encouragement from the familial archives — “You were born alone, and you die alone” — which she had taken literally forward into her life.

The overachieving “A” student, the always-trying-to-be-perfect child, sought advice and help from no one. And why would she?

It was 1978, and all marriages in her family, on both sides, were intact (regardless of how unloving they were) — except for her favorite aunt on her mother’s side. She had witnessed her aunt being the object and subject of gossip and ridicule, as spiteful and ill-tempered as the God that had been painted for her. The idea of leaving her marriage was not an option, for she couldn’t swallow the thought of becoming another object of failure and target for family ridicule.

She sat on the grossly floral-patterned, Early American–design divan — a 70s hand-me-down from the family home she’d left. It sat against a wood-paneled wall and provided somewhat of a safe haven for her amidst the chaos-on-pause. Her equally young, abusive, alcoholic husband was away at work, which allowed for what would become a turning point in her life’s future history. This moment would prove to be both life-altering and life-saving.

With crossed legs and a mind bent, thoughts and questions arose and spilled out, as she grasped to reconcile all she had been taught to believe about the rules, regulations, and religious consequences around marriage and divorce. Feeling isolated and boxed in between family values and the reality of living daily in fear for her life and the safety of her child, a whisper of sanity appeared in the mind’s-eye. The whisper was more along the lines of a voice in your head — the kind often referred to as a message from above.

She heard from the lips of Jesus, God, or whatever welcomed stream of divinity it was, that how and what she was living in was not love, and that no one was meant to live a life like that. That what she had been taught and was delivered as truth by her family was wrong. That kind of life is not what we, the divine ancestors, meant in the context of love and matrimony — not for her, not for anyone.

With that crystal-clear message delivered, she heard the permission she needed to leave the bed she had made. And so she did.

Author’s note: Imagine, for just a minute, the absolute collapse of everything you thought to be true and real for twenty years — all taught to you by your tribal people, the people closest to you — only to have it dissolve in one instant, one message from the ether, now lying in a heap of dust on your living room floor.

I am her, and this was my profound moment of Divan Intervention.