I am a child of divorce. I have been through my parents’ divorces in almost every stage of life. 4 times. Age 5, 18, 30 something x2
It was not fun at any age. Every broken relationship leaves a mark.
First Divorce as a small child.
My birth parents separated when I was three and divorced by the time I was five. My mom and I lived alone with rare visits with my dad until I was 10. He was stationed overseas and then went to college out west when he came back to the states. My mom worked hard and put herself through college as a single momma.
I remember her working nights and going to school during the day and sleeping when she could. I tried to be helpful by changing the laundry or putting a pizza in the oven. I would climb on top of the dryer to reach into the washer and pull the clothes out to put in the dryer. I am sure she didn’t sleep well because then I would wake her up to ask her what to put the dryer on or how hot the oven should be for the pizza. But we – I mean she – made it work. We were a team. I knew that she loved me deeply and that she was working hard and sacrificing for me. I knew that I was her priority.
Yet – I also remember crying for a father. I remember wanting two parents. I wanted a family. I wanted a relationship with my dad. And it’s not that he didn’t want a relationship with me. He did. He does. Fear of rejection is a powerful thing and it can keep us from the relationships we desire.
My dad remarried and my new stepmom was pregnant in the first year of marriage. So at the age of 10 suddenly I had a new family. I had honestly prayed for brothers and sisters and a dad and so I latched right on, and I was so excited and so thrilled.
Within a year of my dad remarrying, my mom also remarried. My stepdad had two daughters, one was older than me and younger than me. So, I went from being an only child to the oldest and the middle child within a couple of years.
God answered my prayers.
Then puberty hit and middle school and well that’s always a struggle but honestly during my middle school and high school years I had two families! And I soaked it up!
I spent my teenage years traveling back-and-forth during the summer and every other Christmas and grew up watching my brothers in California and loving every second of it. I was learning what it looked like to be married from my dad and my first stepmom as well as my mom and stepdad. Every other weekend my stepsisters would come stay with us and we were a family of 5 shopping for girl stuff and hanging out.
These families didn’t look like what I thought they should look like as far as a mom and dad being together, but I was extremely blessed that my parents worked really hard to support me building relationships with the other parent and stepparents. There were struggles along the way and I’ll tell you more about my relationship with my dad as we dig in but for now, I want to continue to the next divorce.
Divorce #2 as a college student
As I was entering college my dad and stepmom had been working hard to build a side business. They were both working hard at their full time jobs and raising two boys. I watched as my stepmom got her masters and my dad worked hard as an engineer doing a fabulous job. I don’t know exactly all the pieces that fell into it, but I remember going to visit my freshman year of college and they were fighting.
Right before I got on the plane to go to California to visit my dad and stepmom, my mom had sat me down and told me the changes that were happening in her marriage. They were at a crucial point in their relationship, and things were not going well.
She said, “I don’t know how long I can do this”.
They were struggling with some things financially and it put a huge burden and stress on them. I found out later there were other pieces that played into it, but as a freshman in college I was just trying to figure out what does marriage look like? What does love look like? What do relationships look like?
I hear from my mom that she’s not sure how much longer this is going to last and I knew they had struggled a little bit but I didn’t know the extent of it because she had protected me.
So, then I arrived in California and my dad and stepmom were fighting, and I was like, oh my gosh all these things that I have thought through my teenage years, my adolescent years are false. And why are both marriages falling apart? Why is this not working?
I remember my stepmom talking to me while I was still there, after they had had a fight. She had a masters in counseling and so I completely trusted her, and I believed what she told me. She said, “Sometimes people don’t get along and you have to talk through it and you have to work through it. And sometimes it looks like an argument, but you work through your struggles and that’s part of what marriage is about”. So, I left thinking OK I trust that. (By the way – she wasn’t wrong. Spoiler alert – Relationships require hard work on both sides)
A couple of months later I’m in my dorm room, she calls and tells me that she’s moving out, that the boys are being split up for custody and that it just wasn’t going to work. I was distraught. One of the marriages I was basing my foundation on has just fallen apart.
I felt hurt. I felt confused. I was angry.
At that point my mom didn’t get separated or divorced from my stepdad. She stayed in it because she really wanted to make it work. She tried hard, so much that later on it greatly affected her health and his as well. I think that she also wanted to protect me. She wanted to love me and she didn’t want all the things that everybody had worked so hard to teach me to completely fall apart. She too believed that relationships require hard work and she was willing to give it her all.
But that second divorce is crucial to my story and crucial to my faith walk and crucial to what I began to believe about relationships and to believe about who God is. I know that part of it is because I so deeply loved my stepmom (I still do and thankfully she is still a big part of my life). And I loved the life that my brothers had. I was grieving and that is NORMAL!!
In the grief I was so angry. I was angry with my dad and stepmom for giving up. I was angry at them for the way they split my brothers.
But ultimately, I was angry with God. Why would he let these two people be joined together to create these amazing boys if He knew they were going to get divorced? Didn’t He know that they all would be broken?
There are a few things that happened during the rest of my college years. I dated often but I never really let anybody love me nor did I really allow myself to love anybody because I didn’t really trust that it would come through and I didn’t want to be hurt or to hurt someone else the way I saw my parents hurt each other.
I had a counselor, one of my professors, he was fabulous. I had really really solid friends that I know were a complete provision from God because if it hadn’t been for those people in my life I might not have kept turning back to the Lord. But He had already surrounded me that first week and semester of my freshman year with solid people and also a couple of mentor couples. They showed me a marriage commitment.
Throughout the rest of my college years with the help of a counselor, teachers, friends and campus ministry groups and of course a good God that continued chasing after me, I began to work through the anger. I was definitely thinking, “I don’t really ever wanna be in a relationship with anybody that could hurt me that bad”.
My mom’s marriage continued to suffer. My dad married his third wife.
I remember one thing being said even before my dad remarried. “Sometimes true love covers up what’s right and what’s wrong”. I didn’t know at the time why that was wrong, but it didn’t sit right. I knew that something wasn’t right about that because I did know that God is love and He is also truth and so love isn’t going to cover up what is right and wrong. You can love somebody through what’s right and wrong, but it doesn’t make it OK to make bad choices and do the wrong thing in the name of LOVE.
OK anyway so my dad remarries. That’s a whole new relationship to try to define what marriage looks like. My first stepmom, my half-brother’s mother, also remarried. She had a son with her new husband, and they included me like I was one of theirs. So then on my California visits, I had two families out there. I wanted so badly to still be part of a whole family and I really wanted it to be easy for my half-brothers. So much so that my youngest “brother”, not even related to me by blood, thought I was his sister. I certainly loved him like a little brother (still do).
I remember wanting the best for my brothers. I never wanted them to question the love of a marriage relationship like I did. I wanted them to work through their anger with their own mom and dad. I prayed that they would trust a good God to be their satisfaction and not expect our parents or a future spouse to fill those holes. It is still my prayer over them.
I graduated from college. I had worked through a good bit of the grief and anger but I was still pretty sure that I did not want to get married. I went and worked as a chaplain on Mount Leconte in the Smoky Mountain National Park. I got to hike every weekend by myself.
It was the best and most beautiful time. There was a song by a band, Jars of Clay, that I really loved. It was called Love Song for a Savior. There is a line, “I want to fall in love with you”. I would play the tape on my walkman, yes, I’m that old. I would blast the head phones as I hiked up Alum Cave trail every weekend. I remember singing it out loud. Nobody could hear me because there was nobody else on the trail at the time. My prayer was, “Lord, I just want to fall in love with you. Could you please just be my satisfaction? Could you fill me up so that I’m not looking and so that I’m not disappointed or hurt?”
During that year I was really blessed to work in the ministry position where I got to love people, but mostly I got to be loved by God. He showed me more about Himself and about who He is, and He showed me that He could be that fulfillment for me and I didn’t need anybody to fill that gap.
During the winter before my second year on the mountain I ran into a guy, Mike, that I had known in college. We had mutual friends but didn’t really know each other at Belmont. We went to dinner and then he started coming every weekend for business. It was really great and sweet and we started dating. As much as you can date in a long-distance relationship. We talked on the phone during the week, and he drove 4 hours every weekend to hike 11 miles roundtrip and then drive back home. I also put him to work on the mountain. We were part of the crew guests, which meant that we washed dishes and made beds. He also helped me lead worship and even hiked out to sunrise for worship. I didn’t know how much he hated mice until after we were married but you can imagine that these primitive cabins had plenty of mice. It’s fair to say that it was a labor of love for sure.
At first, I thought it was fun and then as we can I got a little bit more serious. I thought, “oh well I don’t know about this. This is a little too tight. I don’t think I am ready to trust somebody.”
He felt my fears or pulling away, and got smart, so he decided to not come for a weekend. When he did that, I was like – wait a minute I think I miss him – no I want him to be with me. It was probably one of the first times that I realized I didn’t NEED him to be with me, but I WANTED him to be with me. I wanted him to hike the mountain with me.
I wanted him to help me lead worship.
I wanted him in the kitchen washing dishes with the crew.
I wanted to be around him.
That was a sweet moment.
So fast forward a little bit – one more key thing before I get to the next divorce time in my life.
I left to go to South America almost a year after Mike and I started dating. Before I left to go to South America, I went to do some training and while I was there, I went to visit family.
My family was asking me about Mike. And I told my cousin that we were very serious. And she said, “Well you know, if it doesn’t work out then you can just get divorced.”
And I was like, wait, what? No! I don’t want to go into this relationship or the possibility of marriage with the idea that I can just get out of it. That’s not what a covenant marriage relationship looks like.
I went to South America, and I’ll tell you more about how the Lord put me in the homes of three amazing mentor families and how that shaped my view of marriage. Mike and I continued to date long distance and he came to Chile and proposed.
After my time in South America, I came home and I married Mike in 1999.
Divorce #3 – Young married adult
We were married for only a few years before my dad and his third wife began to struggle. They divorced not long after our youngest daughter was born. I had tried to build a relationship with my second stepmom. For my dads sake. For the boys. For my own sake and for my daughters. She loved my girls and made them beautiful things. Somehow she was always distant and when they divorced that relationship was severed almost completely. It was painful. It was a loss. It was hard to watch my dad go through it.
Divorce #4 – Young married parent
The stuff that had been building for 10 years in my mom and stepdads marriage got worse, much worse. The guilt from past actions took my stepdad down a dark road. They tried to make it work but it came to a point of depression for both of them. It began to affect their physical health. Current hidden actions came to light and there was no turning back for my mom. She needed to move forward. It was so hard for her. No one wanted the divorce.
It was hard to walk with her. I was also hurt and angry. I lost the relationship with my stepdad, whom I loved deeply. My stepsister severed our relationship because it was too painful to deal with my mom and I. I was heartbroken again. I grieved again.
So now here I was in my 30s, a young adult married with three small kids and both of my parents divorced again. I’ve been a child of divorce multiple times and here’s what I’ve learned: IT’S NOT EASY AT ANY POINT IN YOUR LIFE!
I remember thinking, “oh my gosh I’m so heartbroken that this friend got divorced. Their kids are little.” But then, I think back, and divorce sucked when I was little. And divorce sucked when I was in college, and then divorce sucked when I was a complete adult and married myself.
The reason that divorce sucks is that it’s not part of the plan.
Divorce is a broken relationship and so anytime there is a broken relationship it’s painful. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a child when it happens or if you’re an adolescent or if you are an adult.
Anytime and everytime divorce hurts.
And so here’s why I am writing all this down. I want to share and say so many things to my family, to my brothers, to my nieces and nephews, to my cousins, to my young friends, to friends of my children. I could think of so many – Anthony, Braxton, Sterling, Capri, Colton, Sydney Brooke, Trinity, Anna, Caitlyn, Jacob, Kristy, Sarah, Emily and on and on. There are so many friends who have walked through divorce in some fashion. Their parents got divorced, maybe they’re old enough now that they’re walking through their own divorce.
Child of divorce – There is so much I want to say to you.
You are not alone.
I have started with some questions that I asked at different stages of life through the different divorces. I have talked to enough people including siblings to know that I am not the only one asking these questions. There are also lots of great books that I will list later that deal with some of these questions and thought processes.
All of these questions are questions that I have processed and I’m sure if you’re reading this and you are a child of divorce, at some point if you haven’t asked all of them you’ve at least asked a few of them.