The Soul's Dream for Us: An Unsual Love Story

This insistence to discovery will be present, whether a given relationship seems "ordinary" - that is, a conventional marriage - or extraordinary - doesn't conform to the social dictates of daily, domestic, exclusive, or forever. Either way, our relationships are calling us to a world of larger truth and greater love.

We're directed to this high calling even when our relationships end. For example, I know a man, John, married seventeen years, who'd been sensing the oncoming end of his marriage for some time. Although he and his wife, Susan, had never been particularly unhappy, it seemed, as he said, that they had already given each other all that they had meant to give, and he felt that for his own growth, he needed to move on.

He wasn't sure if his need was of a spiritual nature, or if it meant having another intimate partner, but he was clear that the time for their parting had come. When he told Susan, she was initially heartbroken, but, as she, too, realized that in spite of their love for each other, they had gone as far as they could go together. She had supported John in discovering and establishing his career; he had helped her gain a sense of self-esteem. But both of them now seemed stuck in their lives and their relationship was just a holding pattern.

After one of these powerful truth-telling sessions, they went home and made love, and in the tear-streaked aftermath agreed that over the next several months they'd take the necessary steps to effect their separation.

They started to do this, but within seven weeks Susan discovered, to her amazement, that she was pregnant. Having been unable to conceive during all the years of their marriage, she was both delighted and thrown off balance by this discovery. After thinking about it at length and then talking it over, they both decided, in spite of their imminent divorce, to go ahead and have the baby and share in their child's financial support and parenting. In spite of this ironic timing, they both agreed that this remarkable turn of events in no way changed the fact that THEIR marriage was over.

Over the next several months, John and Susan helped each other set up new living arrangements. Meanwhile, throughout her pregnancy, John attended birthing classes with her and together they consulted a lawyer about their forthcoming divorce.

On the day they were to sign the final papers for their divorce, Susan went into labor. Bypassing the lawyer's office, John rushed to the hospital to assist her in the birth. Later that evening, they drank champagne in her hospital room, rejoiced in the arrival of their daughter, and signed the papers for their divorce.

As astonishing and untoward as this divorce appeared to be, it held a high purpose for all the people affected by it. Two years later Susan married a divorced man with 2 sons who moved happily into the role of having a little sister, while, John, who'd been a real estate executive, completely revamped his life by totally withdrawing from his professional responsibilities. He took a long time off, hiking and meditating in the mountains, taking instruction in a number of spiritual disciplines. Finally, he went on a series of spiritual pilgrimages. Over time, his focus shifted from his outer to his inner life.

As time went on, their daughter was revealed to be a remarkably unusual child, highly attracted to animals and birds, deeply intuitive. Although her mother and stepfather provided her with family and security, they were unable to support her spiritual emergence, but because he had been on a spiritual journey of his own, John was able to provide her with comfort and direction.

The personality would shudder self-righteously at the thought of John's leaving Susan at the brink of childbirth. But John's intution, Susan's trust in his intuition, and their shared courage, created, in the long run, both a nurturing home and extraordinary support for their daughter's developing spiritual consciousness.

We may not know what the soul is up to, and it's often a long way into the story before we can even get a sniff of what it has in mind for us. If we can surrender to the fact that the soul knows what it's doing in spite of travails, confusion, and what at times may even appear to be utter insanity (as in this man's untimely departure from his wife), we can learn something important from every relationship experience. But, like John and Susan, we must have faith, courage and integrity every step of the way.

Through their experience these people all expanded their capacity for love. Susan rose to a higher love for John even as they were parting so that, together, they could both rise to a higher level of love for their spiritually gifted child. Susan's new husband was expanded by his appreciation for the gifts that only John could give his stepdaughter - a set of values missing in his own life - and his sons both opened their hearts to love a remarkable little girl.

~ Daphne Rose Kingma, The Future of Love