2024-11-08 The Beginning of the Aftermath

Posted on by Dave Stucky

Since it’s the two-month anniversary of the September 8th event, I figured it would be worth updating everyone.

To start with, I would like to thank everyone who has prayed for me, and God has guided me through what, I believe, is the darkest part of this season. I won’t divulge names, but I am grateful for about 45 people who have given me support, advice, encouragement, prophecy, and direction.

Amazing news has arisen, but that doesn’t change most of what has happened. And, in some ways, makes my personal journey even more difficult in the short term.

I know many people have been concerned about me. It dawned on me that some people would think my despair would drive me to something self-destructive, so this should give a type of temporary conclusion about the tragedy of the prior blog post.

What I’ve Experienced

These experiences have come fast and heavy, and God has wasted no time in teaching them to me.

With that in mind, I think I’ll have to say each of them in no particular order.

I must warn you, my phenomenology is more Christian than ever before. Some presumptions I make presume Christian theology, and I make no concessions for my bias. In fact, after what I’ve been through and have come to understand lately, I’ll take the risk of offense in the possibility that you’re at least willing to entertain the accuracy of Christian metaphysics and the presence of God.

I’ve Been Humbled

In all aspects, this experience has been a clear demonstration of my utter insufficiency.

It doesn’t matter how smart, talented, hard-working, successful, organized, efficient, tactful, wealthy, effective, or well-connected we are. God made us incapable enough that we always need others.

I somehow thought I could be a reliable husband and provider by my strength alone, and I should have had a good talking-to from anyone a few decades older than me about how dumb that is.

I also thought that I was perfectly fine to not reach out for help when I was in need. Why trouble myself and annoy others, after all? Even when I was depressed and lonely, I made the false presumption that people generally don’t care, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

All of those ideas have been destroyed. In this season, it is now clearing out to bring in something new.

God’s Deep Love

I have now seen the persistent, tenacious, stubborn, relentless, uncompromising, durable, never-ending, overwhelming, unchanging, severe love of God.

This has deeply struck me, farther than anything I’ve ever been able to experience before. He doesn’t merely hold His nose and love us despite our sin. He literally has compassion on us in our sin, and loves us even more as we suffer in light of our sin.

His essence is so deeply composed of love and grace that He will seek us where we are, in our broken and ruined states, and will rebuild us into something more beautiful than could be imagined. The more miserable we get, the more He loves us, and He does. Not. Stop.

In fact, any discussion of hell and eternal damnation is reserved for those who truly wish to identify more with their sin than with any of His redemption and love, and that’s the winnowing: are we humble to accept our insufficiency enough that we’ll take the Win/Win solution He provides.

Most of my life had consisted of a rigor of living virtuously, but according to the philosopher’s way. It was a set of rules and precepts, without much regard to people whatsoever. It gave me zero spiritual benefits, and has only provided a limited benefit.

This specific hardship, which has included the phenomenological death of my wife and children, was a strategic strike by God that tore down the last aspects of Stoicism I had unknowingly built into my mind from an early age.

Feeling People

There is something about family that exists on a different wavelength than anyone else. Everyone else comes and goes, but the persistence of family members means we become invariably close to those people, and that closeness gives us a dark mirror for us to see ourselves.

I can now describe, with extreme precision, a precise mechanism that drove me to this prior escalation:

  1. I was trained from an early age to quietly absorb various forms of psychological abuse until I lashed out in rage.
  2. As soon as I acted, my behavior was used to criticize, shame, guilt, and various other additional forms of psychological abuse. My mother was unexpressive the entire time as she did it, and my memory still revisits that cold and empty stare that masked what was likely glee.
  3. The Stoic philosophy I adopted from an early age made me unresponsive to feelings, which meant they were repressed into the background of my experiences.
  4. My whole existence became “soulish“: not spiritual, not base. It wasn’t that self-destructive, but it wasn’t abiding in the love that Christ calls all people to live in.
  5. The dysfunctional patterns repeated themselves between Tori and me, escalating as we both provoked each other.
  6. When I repeated the pattern of my distant past, on September 8th, I saw utter brokenness and fear in Tori, which has devastated me and has haunted me nearly every day.

Here I was, repeating the sins my mother taught me, but unlike my mother’s tyrannical expression of elation or hostility, I saw Tori’s raw expression of fear and devastation. I had promised to love, cherish, and protect her, but instead I had become so angry that I violated my principles, and I felt how hurt and shocked she was.

Between the fact that I’ve been completely separated from her, mixed with the time to process everything that has happened, this experience has utterly broken me. While I’ve always had the freedom to violate the NCO, the only right path has been to focus on myself alone, and it has created a circumstance that only God could have orchestrated.

In a theological anthropology sense, my semi-regenerated spirit had a functioning intuition and highly functioning conscience, but the communion signals weren’t transmitting, and I have always felt alone. But, the trauma and subsequent encouragement by other Christians around me has now granted the ability for the first time in my life to actually “feel” people.

I had always understood Ezekiel 36:26 cognitively and lived in its hope, but this experience smashed it into reality. God Himself has precisely and strategically broken open my cauterized heart and given me a depth of sentiment I never realized I’d be able to experience. I’m convinced that it was His wisdom that created this situation, since I can’t imagine having ever come to this reparation through any other approach.

I’ve recently had several mundane-enough encounters that illustrate this new perspective:

  1. I went to a decently sized megachurch recently, and I could feel the love expressed by a few of the greeters. They were utterly compassionate, even in the midst of the kind of church you could get lost in. At one time, I’d be irritated at the size and practical constraints that come with large churches, but this time I saw their pure and simple love for what it really was.
  2. Part of my journey has included going to Celebrate Recovery. In the midst of a worship service with relatively low production values, I saw the same heartfelt devotion God had shown me many years ago at a missionary conference. These people were humbled enough that God was present with them, and it didn’t matter that they were there from prior sin. They were in full awareness and gratitude that they were washed in His blood.
  3. I went to was an Assemblies of God church, which is Pentecostal-like. The decibel and light abuse would have made me angry in the past, but I was given the emotional awareness to see the legitimate and pure joy that some believers had there. Who was I to judge someone if that’s how they wanted to praise God? They saw freedom in Christ that I may be less qualified to feel.
  4. My job is to insure some of the worst drivers in Iowa. Every day, I encounter clients with awful situations, where they must pay around $450 a month for a liability-only SR22 policy. Getting fries with that or adding avocado may be the harbinger of their legal inability to drive a car. I was callous with them before, but I now feel tremendous compassion for them, which even extends to when they brought it on themselves.

Now that the crashing waves of endless emotions have become intense surges, this has also given me context for what I’m experiencing:

  • Many people have a truly emotional and personal encounter with God that makes them a Christian. Then, they acquire theological understanding over time, which strengthens them as they grow in knowledge which they can then apply.
  • In myself, I had been living under a vast framework of right understanding and moral behavior, but without any emotional attachment to why it’s worth performing. This was a bit like building a house but stopping before you get the drywall, stucco, and roof on it. I am now acquiring emotional intelligence about what I simply knew before.

This doesn’t make me a freak or a pariah, but it certainly is different, and that’s okay.

One small detail in the midst of my recent learning has been that the heart has 40,000 neurons on it, which is an unusually high amount of computation necessary for a simple pump. This “small brain” actually connects to a secondary function of the heart, represented as a low-level electromagnetic field. I’ve experienced that EM field interaction with large-scale computers, as well as with spiritual warfare, but I can now sense those feelings in others. Apparently, everyone else has been doing this all along.

God Doesn’t Waste Anything

If the prior post wasn’t clear, my issues began in 2020, when I gave up trying to connect with other people.

To walk in Christ requires a vivacious relationship with God that provokes us to confront our sins. That requires willpower that often must come from the Church. In the absence of others, we simply won’t have the strength to push with everything we have, and the devil can now play a game of attrition as we submit to the tyranny of monotony.

I ceased believing the Church could ever be a support for me, and that separation opened the doorway for all this to happen. The way our marriage conflicts were escalating, this was a matter of “when”, not “if”.

Like I stated in the last post, God has surrounded me with many small miracles in the past two months:

  • I’ve been given a fully working car, with no issues.
  • I’m now able to keep my job, and if I carry on this pathway, the criminal action I made will have never legally happened. As it stands, the Department of Human Services has already looked favorably on this situation.
  • He has granted me the healthiest congregation possible to guide me, which matches the cultural proclivities I never realized I needed.
  • I keep running across new people, as well as people from my past, who keep giving me good counsel through all of this. My history of transparency in hardship has never been quite as favorable.
  • If I had been a technician or software developer or other non-social job, I wouldn’t have the incessant opportunity for moral training towards patience and kindness. My job effectively forces an ultimatum on me to be more Christ-like every single day.
  • The timing of this is freaky. If this had happened even a few months earlier, I’d have been devastated financially and would have probably lost my job. If this had happened a few months later, it would be in Texas, with different rules and an entirely different arrangement that may not play out as favorably for all of us.

I know He has me where He wants me, and that is the most comforting experience in the world, even while I wrestle with the feelings of isolation from the three of them. It may sound awful to non-Christians, but I’d rather be here, right now, suffering where I need to be, than in that complacent place a few months ago with them all present in my life.

I can only assume He has her where He wants her as well, keeping her safe in a far more loving way than I would ever be able to provide, and my spirit is with her as far as the Lord has sent it.

We Weren’t In A Good Place

There is a somewhat effective, yet potentially damaging axiom present in many parts of society, and that is the belief that ultimate meaning and purpose comes within the scope of marriage or children.

While it isn’t wrong to find tremendous meaning and purpose within a biological family (and is often a tremendous blessing), its extreme utilization can place an unfair burden of responsibility on the other partner or children, which is not good:

  • If “happy wife, happy life”, then at the extreme you can’t be happy unless your wife is happy.
  • When “live to please your husband” exists, then it may mean you won’t find a worthwhile life without pleasing him.
  • If “children are the greatest gift God can give you”, then the fact that they’re sometimes exhausting or annoying can become a taboo concept at the extreme.

Both of us were trying to get sole encouragement and support from each other, and that is not advisable given the uniquely differing neurology between men and women. I’m annoyed that I have to state something that’s become political, but there’s a vast difference in how we think based on whether half of that 23rd chromosome was granted from the father or mother.

I just discovered a few days ago that we had both normalized shame-oriented language. Neither of us, honestly, can be blamed either: we both have mothers who have been travel agents for guilt trips, and we hadn’t invited anyone else into our inner circle of friendship to hold either of us accountable.

Even though my sin was the catalyst to cause this trial, I can safely say in retrospect that the two of us were starting to become codependent in various ways, and it was God’s direct grace that forced us into separation for us to both work on ourselves.

I Have Released Control

Before I continue, I must state a set of philosophical axioms:

  1. Inside our essence, the key indicator of any moral aspect whatsoever is contained in our will, defined exclusively in our decisions.
  2. As soon as the decision departs from our will and enters our brain as a neurochemical signal, we have very little control over its consequences.
  3. There are logical consequences that express throughout the flow between thought and speech or action, but those are structured upon God’s grace of being utterly consistent.
  4. Since it’s so consistent, we presume in our materialist, modern view that there are logical consequences, and then God can override those with intervening “breaks” from nature.
  5. However, the quantum superstates themselves testify to God arranging the consequences of all things, no matter how small or seemingly predictable.
  6. In conclusion, all consequences are in God’s domain, proportional to what we would call “chaos” or “unpredictability”.

I have released the situation, in completeness cognitively, and almost completely emotionally. This was inspired by revisiting Otto Koning’s Pineapple Story, which Tori had shared with me a long time ago, and has arisen as a dialectical flow of thought:

  1. While I was a decent husband and father, I made a reckless and wrong action.
  2. That action was too much for Tori, so God has separated us.
  3. This absence has guided me into a “wilderness”, and He is giving me direction on where to go. I imagine it’s the same for her.
  4. If it’s His will, we will all be reunited, and I will praise Him for that. But, I will also praise Him if He continues to keep us separated.
  5. Eventually, irrespective of where He takes us, I (and hopefully Tori) will serve a better ministry than if we had stayed together in the position we were in.

In all of this, God will do a tremendous work. Ideally, both Tori and I will find redemption and healing together, and we will be reunited in ways that transcends what both our family curses have made available to us.

But, I must take it a day at a time.

I do not feel any sense of hopelessness in this experience anymore, mostly because I’ve heard stories at Celebrate Recovery. My PTSD can be healed, and any aspects of prior hurt or anger management can be resolved. If she wished to visit Celebrate Recovery on her time, I am absolutely certain she’d find answers for her past issues as well. The Holy Spirit works heavily and quietly.

Tori and Me

In the absence of information, I have had to contend with an exceedingly dark abyss of non-knowing.

And, in that abyss, I have found rest with utter certainty in 1 Corinthians 7:

  • My role is to love her, the same as Christ loves the Church.
  • My marriage with her is not only our agreement with each other, but the symbol of goodness that comes with showing God’s undying love toward His Bride.
  • My continued faithfulness is the only right thing, so she will be my wife until the day one of us passes, regardless of what the legal system declares.
  • I will stay faithful in my relationship to her, so I’m off the relationship market unless He sends her home before me.
  • No matter what, I will take her back, even if it takes time to get back to that place.

All I want to do, more than anything else right now, is to formally apologize to her. I will be exceedingly grateful if the no contact order is lifted for me to have a proper conversation with her.

While I’m cogent enough right now to articulate all this, just about anything that reminds me of Tori and the kids can send me into a fierce longing and sadness:

  • Seeing families at church, especially with small children
  • The household, clothing, cooking, and crafts sections of stores
  • Beautiful African women, especially when they have kids
  • Seeing the little things she likes, like old TV shows or crafts videos, or things we watched together
  • Various things she shared with me in the past, like etiquette videos and Eastern Orthodox theology
  • Sentimental stuff I used to get her regularly, like poems and flowers
  • Most children’s entertainment

No news has happened, except for a very specific event that is either a quantum freak accident or God’s kindness, depending on how you interpret it:

  1. My apartment had to get cleared out, and many people at Des Moines Fellowship did a yeoman’s effort of moving an entire abandoned apartment into 19 plastic bins in our storage unit.
  2. In the mix of the structured chaos, I informed them I needed an accordion folder with me that had all the hardest-to-replace documents (e.g., passport, birth certificate, etc.).
  3. Near the end of the clearing-up, a couple stuffed some miscellaneous stuff in there, such as family photos and some “return to sender” mail. In the mix of this was one of Tori’s notebooks.
  4. I willed myself to dig through the accordion folder yesterday, and I found and flipped through that notebook.
  5. In there, it had all the wonderful meandering mad scientist scrawling and drawings that defined my beautiful wife. I remembered the absolute genius that thrives below the surface of the well-formed woman I’ve committed my life to.
  6. On one page, she wrote a prayer to God, which consisted of the following points:
    • Yesterday was traumatic (thereby dating this to 2024-09-09).
    • Keep this family together, and don’t let anyone separate us.
    • Clear up any issues with the DHS, and have the NCO entirely removed.

The original message was far more potent, with more sentiment. I know it was her writing as well, since she frequently misspells and has a calligraphy that looks like it’s bursting out to become a painting. It was powerful.

What that means, to me, depends on the scope:

  1. In the short term, it doesn’t mean anything, but fills me with hope. She wants a healthy marriage, just like I do. Even if we aren’t around each other, it’s my responsibility to work toward that end.
  2. In the mid term (i.e., weeks to months from now), I trust that we will have some reconnection. I have no idea on timing, but we may yet be blessed to spend Christmas together with my father.
  3. Long term, we should be able to work things out. I have no idea, but I’m grateful to say I don’t have to think about it until it becomes mid term.

I still have no idea where Tori is at, in any aspect. As far as I can observe, she hasn’t shared anything public and hasn’t contacted the Polk County clerk to lift the no contact order. However, I know God is watching over all three of them, and I trust that God will eventually reveal her role in all this.

The no contact order, in particular, is the sticking point:

  1. I was informed by Frontier Church that she was not speaking with any lawyers, which means I am fully incapable of communicating with her unless she changed her mind on that.
  2. Since she didn’t respond to any lawyers, the NCO couldn’t be modified.
  3. Without any information, the default configuration of the NCO moves to 5 years out from the sentencing date, which lands it at 2029-10-30.
  4. At any time, she can submit a motion to the Polk County Clerk of Court, either by calling or walking in, to have the NCO removed.
  5. If she doesn’t do anything, I intend to serve my probation peacefully, which would be no later than 2025-10-30 but could be as early as 2025-04-30 if I do well.
  6. But, if she does nothing, there will be an NCO still in effect, even after the cause of the NCO never officially happened.
  7. In the mix of this, I dread thinking about how Victor and Mia are taking this. I also hope deeply that she is doing well, wherever she is.

If she comes back, I will consider that a direct blessing from God. I trust He will bring healing, and I trust His timing will work it out to the greatest possible effect.

This doesn’t mean I get to sit around, though.

I Have Work To Do

I have a working theory on the relationship between faith and stress:

  1. We have a limited supply of trust that the unknown things will work out (i.e., “faith“).
  2. That supply gets replenished in different ways: encouragement from others, reading Scripture, prayer, and so on. Each person has different approaches to it.
  3. When stressors come, they deplete faith until we have no more left.
  4. At the point of faithlessness (which is not difficult to arrive at), the stressors travel through our emotions and interpret within our soul as stress.
  5. Unless we’re directly lashing out (which is culturally inappropriate and often wrong), there’s a type of “plumbing” our stress travels through in our minds.
  6. We can deaden the pain of the stress through various substances. This is only remotely good if it materially improves our situation, but can more often become an addiction, especially in the scope of prior trauma.
  7. If we direct giant chunks of that stress into something meaningful (e.g., working out, art, writing, performance arts), we can become absurdly effective.
  8. However, there is still latent stress in the plumbing.
  9. If we don’t get rid of that latent stress through some form of meditation or release, it will sink into our subconscious as some form of dysregulation (e.g., anxiety, depression, bitterness).

My personal issue is that I must build out my faith, which has been practically nonexistent in my addiction to certainty and risk management. The meditation I’m doing has been purging most of the anger issues, but I have to believe in others more to prevent most of the anxiety or anger from even arising.

In the absence of my family, I was recently inspired by a Navy SEAL saying: the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.

I’m responsible for training myself morally in ways I have never explored, and that will prepare me for what may come.

My challenge, for a while, has been in finding true motivation:

  1. I can’t do it for Tori. I don’t know where she is or what scope we will reconnect. Any efforts I make will improve the chances of reuniting with her, but the nature of meaning would invariably build my sacrifices to place too much expectation on her to respond to them.
  2. I can’t do it for my children, mostly because it’s the same problem as with Tori. For them, it’s worse because they’ll pick up on my expectations and run with it too far. Victor might become some rock star super doctor lawyer but hate himself, and Mia may cure irritable bowel syndrome in a misguided pursuit towards falling in love.
  3. I really can’t do it for myself, as much as the “success porn” of our era may imply. I’ve been down that road, and there’s nothing quite like a self-made man inviting everyone who helped him get somewhere to a party. He’ll get to have a cake by himself and be sad.
  4. The only reason I can even motivate myself to do it is as a living sacrifice to Christ, who paid WAY more than fair market value for me, wants what’s best for my soul, and has good works planned for me to do.

Interestingly, my motivation for Christ will definitely affect me, Tori, and the kids positively. It effectively becomes either Him first, or things will become even more broken.

The template I’ve found for my future development is in Colossians 3:12. I’ve put away much of the beginning of Colossians 3 as a philosopher pursuing the good life, but I haven’t added the following qualities to my life:

  1. Compassion
  2. Kindness
  3. Humility
  4. Gentleness
  5. Patience

So, that is my aspiration, and I’ve already begun many actions already. I now simply must keep the discipline going. God will keep me away from her as long as it’s necessary for the decisions to become habits, as well as any timing necessary to guide Tori to where she needs to be as well.

What I’m Doing Now

The most beautiful woman I’ve known and the two amazing children we share aren’t in my life right now, but I have high hopes they will be soon enough. She’d have to directly reach out to the Polk County Clerk of Court, either by calling or walking in, to have the NCO removed.

In that absence, I am prioritizing my habits toward moral growth in five domains, inspired by Colossians 3:12:

  • Compassion
  • Gentleness
  • Humility
  • Kindness
  • Patience

Tiny changes:

  • To create a safe place for dialectical thought, I’m changing the word “but” in many of my expressions to “and”. (GH)
  • I’m aiming in my speech to never take more than 1 minute at a time to convey an idea. Other people have thoughts to say too, after all. (HP)
  • Anxiety and thankfulness use the same part of the brain, so you can’t do both at the same time, which validates the effectiveness of Philippians 4:6-7. Whenever I feel anxious, I swap it out with thankfulness. (GH)
  • I’m making general interaction with people a priority, which includes more small talk. (GKP)
  • I will continue to wait until Tori responds, without complaining. (HP)

My daily routine:

  • I have vowed to meditate every day for 20 minutes. I don’t always get to 20 minutes, but I have been consistent every day. (GP)
  • I get paid to insure the worst drivers in Iowa. When I see suffering in that domain, I will empathize with it, even when the person is angry. (CGK)

My weekly routine:

  • I’m taking therapy from two different sources, as well as pastoral counseling. (CHP)
  • Every week, I go to a 12-step group called Celebrate Recovery. (HP)
  • I’m going to a Bible study twice a week. (GH)
  • Assuming my bodily fluids are generally where they need to be, I go to the gym three times a week. (HP)

Hobbies and projects:

  • I’m just starting into it, but I’m working toward giving more…underclass-oriented ministries functioning websites. (KP)
  • When I can, I will continue working through content that can go on my essays. (KP)