Divorce - Manna From Heaven?

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Divorce and its breakup of the family are devastating to say the least. For a faithful Catholic, the experience can rattle faith and force a questioning of self-worth and God's Love. Divorce leaves a hungering for something real, for nourishment beyond the physical. 

Sunday's first reading reminded me of that hunger. In this reading from the book of Deuteronomy, we see Moses leading his people away from slavery but into the desert to wander, isolated, lacking a clear path, and hungering for 40 years. It must have seemed as though the suffering of the Jewish people would never end.

There have been many times over the five years that I've been job searching while raising my five boys alone, that I too have wondered if the exhaustion, the feelings of being overwhelmed and abandoned, the suffering would ever end, if I would ever see an end to the wandering, the isolation, the hungering I so often experience. It is at these times I am drawn to the experiences of those who have gone before me and keep hopefully looking out for God to provide nourishment, like manna from Heaven, in ways I could not have imagined.

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