Before you read further, you should know that I absolutely adore my parents. My parents, now separately, live God-centered, loving, growing lives. I’m proud of how they’re making it through. I’m honored to be their daughter.
Their divorce, though, shattered me.
My parents were together for over 30 years before their marriage dissolved. They were college sweethearts, the best of friends. I didn’t see it coming.
If you think divorce might be an option for your family, I beg you to re-consider. It might be the better choice for you, but it is rarely the better choice for your kids.
I just devoured a book called, Children of Divorce by Andrew Root. If you are a child of divorce (at any age), have children of divorce, or are in relationship with children of divorce, you should read it.
Through reading, wise counsel and a lot of heart work, I feel like I might be coming out on the other side of the divorce-fog. But, I do wonder if my grief at the holidays will ever end. Families weren’t made to live this divided life. I wasn’t created to navigate my own path and live life looking for a landing zone.
In our parents’ divorce we had ourselves become strays, people without a place, people without belonging.
I became more and more aware that the road that lay ahead had now radically forked, causing me (making it my job) to find a way to travel both paths, while simultaneously finding my own road.
(quotes from Andrew Root’s Children of Divorce)
Because I know God redeems stories and binds the broken, I’m well aware that He’s used divorce for much good in my life. I have grown in my depth of feeling, my passion for mending broken systems, and my sense of urgency for bringing children into a place of belonging.
I pray I get to be a wife and mother. And together, we will build a home of unshakeable belonging–one that rose out of the harsh reality of pain and loss but has a firm grasp on a God that created us for wholeness.
Until I build that house, I have a feeling there are a few other children He wants me to provide a place of belonging for…
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And freedom to prisoners.
Isaiah 61:1
