EPISTLE III: To The One Sitting At The Well
To the one whose story has more hard chapters than you know how to summarize —
whose life, if spoken plainly, feels like it might shift the room — I am with you and I am writing to you from my very own latest hard chapter.
To the one who has loved, and lost, and tried again. And then again.
To the one who now sits in spaces of faith with a quiet question lingering beneath the surface: What does this make me now?
I remember one Sunday, long ago, when I was in my late twenties and had prayerfully decided to make some personal changes.
I was new to the faith still, but was a youth leader for the high school girls alongside the youth pastor. That Sunday, I came to church exposed: a tattoo I had covered up with a fresh design was healing on my shoulder and it had drawn the attention of the high school kids, the glares of some parents, and the tight smiles of other passerby. I thought that I would escape that Sunday unscathed as I exited the lobby, only to be confronted by a man I barely knew who used to teach the 3rd-5th graders in Sunday school. “Hey, stop, young lady, I see what you’re doing…” he hollered with a furrowed brow as he rushed towards me.
Before I could explain, a lecture ensued. It was harsh. It was partially true but it was mostly biased. It was his bone to pick with me as if he was the guardian of all young people who might be stumbled into fantasizing about tattoos because I had come to church with mine visible that day. And his conviction was not my conviction.
When he was satisfied that I looked ashamed of myself, he took a deep breath and I could finally respond. Unapologetically, I explained that this tattoo was a cover up and that it was specifically exposed because I was healing, not because I was showing off.
And then I gave him no further backstory, yet I left upset feeling misjudged, misunderstood and mostly targeted as easy prey for someone in love with casting stones.
Some healing processes, like tattoos, require some strategic exposure and gentleness and cleansing — and divorce in my lived experience can feel similar while recovering.
I felt like that with my first divorce, just two years after that tattoo incident. I felt like I had tattooed the Scarlet Letter “A” in plain sight when my first abusive marriage ended in divorce.
Fast forward, 14 years later — there is exponential heaviness in my soul because I am now twice divorced (and twice a survivor of intimate partner abuse.)
Because it is one thing to walk through loss once. It is another thing entirely to carry the weight of repetition — to wonder and be confronted with the reality that perhaps the pattern says something deeper about yourself.
Not just grief, but questions. Not just endings, but self-examination.
Did I miss something?
Did I choose wrong?
Am I still trustworthy?
How am I received in Church now?
And let’s be real about this last question because in church spaces — where grace is preached but not always practiced out loud— there can be a silence around stories likes yours and mine.
Our divorce stories are common, but rarely named.
Seen, but not always acknowledged.
So you learn to measure your words. To edit your testimony. To always wonder how much of your story is “allowed” to be visible.
But there is a significant moment in Scripture where Jesus meets someone whose story was not simple.
The woman at the well.
I confess that her story now resonates with me in a way that provokes hot and angry tears of shame because she is not someone spoken of with admiration at women’s conferences like Esther or Deborah. Nobody, not a single person I know, wants the anointing of the woman at the well. Not even me.
Lately, I have cautiously and slowly been opening up about my divorce with self-deprecating humor: “Well, I’ve had two husbands, but at least not five…and at least I don’t have to draw water from a well,” I say with a grimace and then laugh at myself in embarrassment.
Until now.
Because now my eyes are not on her, but on Jesus in that passage. He names her history without shaming her. He tells the truth — but not to expose, only to reveal what He already knows.
And what is striking about Jesus is not that He already knows — but that He stays.
He does not withdraw. He does not disqualify. He does not abandon. He does not lecture her about marriage. He does not lecture her about divorce. He doesn’t delve into the specifics around each husband. He does not defend her husbands. He does not justify how she reacts or how her community has been treating her.
He does not reduce her to the sum of her relationships.
(read that again, beloved)
Instead, Jesus entrusts her. Track with me because this blew my mind as someone who has never been successfully married as a Christian.
The one whose story could have disqualified her in the eyes of others becomes the one who carries the message of Jesus back to her city. Grace entered her narrative as a person, Jesus, and shame had no more hold on her. She ran freely back to the community because being known by Jesus mattered more than being known for her reputation.
This is what Jesus does with complicated lives.
He does not pretend the past didn’t happen. But He also does not let it have the final word.
Still — you may wonder what this means for you now. (I know I do as I am still recovering.)
How to stand in a room?
How to present in church spaces?
How to serve with humility, not in humiliation?
How to speak without feeling like your story is too much or not enough?
How to return to ministry — and IF to return to the ministry? When? Where? How?
And this is where honesty matters.
Your story is not something to hide. But it is also not something you owe to everyone.
You are allowed to live without over-explaining. Without pretending. Without performing either shame or perfection. Without self-deprecating introductions to your updated testimony.
There may be places where healing is still unfolding — like the story of my freshly covered-up tattoo — these are tender times and visibility feels like a minefield to navigate. But please don’t overlook that there are patterns to understand. I admit that I am in active therapy, not to waste money on complaining about how horrible my husbands were, but to self-examine, do the inner work and recognize that wisdom is still being formed in me.
Recovering from divorce comes with an invitation to heal at a root level and consider our identity, integrity, attachment styles, and unresolved trauma so that Jesus can speak to those parts of our soul too.
That is discipleship.
You are not the sum of your past relationships. You are not reduced to what did not last.
You are a person still being formed, still being restored and still being called.
And your testimony — now — may carry a depth that only comes through having lived what you have lived.
You are not too complicated for God to entrust.
You are known and loved. Fully. And still, He stays.
Still invited to draw on living water,
Imelda — DUST+GLORY
