Divorce in the Family!

Eric and I have now been married for 45½ years. Occasionally, we have people asking us for the secret of our marriage longevity. Once, Eric had a dream that he was very angry with me and tried to leave me, but couldn’t fit all our kids in the car and decided to stay. And I am just a crazy idealist who believes God’s Word is real and true. It was real and true when I was 17½ and it is still true now that I’m 64. (The Beatles wondered whether a marriage could last that long.) 

One of my favorite love songs from way back when is My Cup Runneth Over With Love. It speaks of rolling over in bed and just looking at my husband, my love, and watching him sleep. And I sometimes actually do that. I also sometimes get distracted and stare at him while he’s talking to me, thinking about how handsome he is and how much I love him, so that I’m not hearing what he’s saying. (He forgives me for not listening when I tell him, “You are just SO good-looking!!”) Our marriage has been so deep that I really can’t imagine living my life without him. 

On the other hand, all is not “picture perfect.” I have a huge stack of family photo albums with which I can adorn these blog posts. 

I also have my mom’s birthstone Mother’s ring, that no one will ever wear again, now that she has gone home to be with Jesus. 

And, I have one-half of the Mizpah coin my parents had when my dad left for Vietnam. It read: “May the Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from another.”

These trinkets are all reminders … of something that was broken.

While we lived in Maryland, there was one event that stands out in my mind because it was so tragic and I was too naïve to see it coming. I got a call from my mom one day to inform me that she and Dad were getting divorced. 

This put me into shock – I simply could not believe it! I had grown up in an intact family and prided myself in that fact. Others had the misfortune to grow up in a broken home, but my parents loved each other and I believed they would till the day they died. Last week I showed you the addendum to my “Perfect Marriage” paper that my mom got an A+ on. Didn’t that sound promising? Or, when she said, “Nothing can be so good or so bad as a marriage, but like all things, God also left it up to man to do with as he would … ” did she mean that her own marriage could have been on the “so bad” side, and I didn’t see it?

Sure, there was that incident in Arizona, but that had been explained away by pointing to the total hysterectomy my mother had recently endured, so it was the hormone imbalance that had caused her to go crazy, drive away towards Tucson losing all memory of the incident, and threaten Dad with divorce when she got back. There wasn’t really a problem! And then, to show how much they loved each other, they had gone through a special ceremony, in which they had renewed their vows, and I was in that ceremony.

This phone call from California shattered a key part of my belief system. I had this view of the world that said our family and my childhood were happy. We were not rich, but somehow there was a way to do all that we wanted to do – even to travel across the country with a whole Girl Scout troop! I had a lovely mom and a handsome dad who sometimes kissed in our presence and used pet names for one another. They went to church and believed in what the Bible said, and on the matter of divorce, the Scriptures were clear: God hates it! 

And now, all that I believed about my family came crashing down with the cruel reality that my family was like other families. My parents would not be married to each other anymore. Mom had locked Dad out of the house, and eventually I heard the voice of another man on the phone explaining that he wasn’t going to try to be my father – he was just going to marry my mother. He said he wasn’t asking my permission (á la “The Sound of Music”), he was just letting me know. 

I didn’t yell at John, I just let him talk. But I did try very hard to talk Mom out of the divorce. I explained that this was strictly forbidden in the Bible. That there were vows that were being broken, both to each other and to God. That if she divorced Dad and married another, that would make her an adulteress. I made no headway because Mom had made up her mind. She said she believed Dad had been unfaithful and that she had to divorce him because he had run up the credit cards. It had to be done, she said, and John was some kind of hero, who had slept on the couch at her house with his handgun, to protect her from my father, in case he should try to come back and harass her.

I couldn’t stop crying. I was an adult, but this new development in my life gave me tremendous pain. Imagine having to live there in California and to still have a few years till graduation like my brother and sister did! Eric and I remembered then, that we had sent an anniversary gift to my parents. Anticipating their 20th, which was designated the one for china, we had bought a beautiful tray and sent it in the mail. When I asked about it, Mom admitted that it had arrived, but it hadn’t been packed well enough, and it had been shattered in the box. It seemed appropriate, even prophetic. But it’s hard not to wonder if someone on the receiving end had shattered it on purpose.

I may be wrong about some of this, but I have heard that all the way up my family tree on my mom’s side are divorced women, separated from their husbands even before it was fashionable. Even my Abuela Cheva and Abuelo Berto (Dad’s parents) were legally separated, because though they didn’t feel like they could live together, they didn’t believe in divorce at their church. Possibly some of the grandmothers on my mom’s side weren’t actually divorcees, but just widows. I do know that my mom’s parents were divorced and both remarried. I had quite a few grandparents because of that – it was similar to a growing blastocyst, where cells that divide cause multiplication.

After this incident, my sister dropped out of high school to have a baby. She married the father and had a second child later, but this husband was only #1 of three. My brother also married and divorced three times. Eventually my dad also re-married. She was the choir director at the base chapel at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station.

Well, I had a choice. I was young, very young, but I could either fall in line with the example my parents gave me, or I could pursue that which they had been unable to find – a happy, healthy marriage till death parted them. I chose to follow what I had naïvely believed was true – that the vows could be fulfilled, that the partners could be faithful to one another, and that it was possible, with the help of the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, to do what God had ordained. The tradition of divorce would stop here, with my generation. It did not have to continue.

There were other times in my life that my parents had disappointed me, because ultimately, because they were human and fallible (imagine that!) they didn’t always practice what they preached. I remember having my mouth washed out with soap for calling my brother the “N word” when I was about eight (which, of course, was just laughable since we knew his lineage), but at age sixteen, I heard my dad use the same word as a racial slur. And I found an astrology book on my mom’s bookshelf, which I took off the shelf and threw away behind her back because I knew Christians shouldn’t be dabbling in the occult.

But this divorce thing was where I had to make a stand. Eric and I promised each other that the “D word” would not be permitted in our household. We would just not have a backdoor in our marriage. If there were disagreements, we would talk them through, and we’ve had some doozies! But never, ever would we talk of leaving, not even in a teasing manner.

The misinformation campaign of he-said/she-said between my parents began soon after the initial separation. My dad was kicked out and found himself homeless. He lost the house they’d bought for retirement to my mom, who still had custody of two kids in high school. He only had his car. So, he bought a small RV to live in. Mom told me he had run up the credit card and that he had a custom license plate that read PLAYPEN. She asked what could that mean except that he was messing around, and that was proof that he had been unfaithful. 

The poison she fed me grew into an attitude concerning Dad and Angela, his new wife. I talked regularly with my mom, but not with my dad. I thought I needed to take sides. One of them, Mom or Dad, was guilty and the other was innocent, so of course I felt that I had to be on the side of the innocent one. It is rarely that simple, but because I chose Mom, it felt like Dad had died. And anyone who has lost a parent knows how deep the grief runs.

Later I found out that my dad had as clear a case as my mom, concerning accusations of infidelity. I finally talked it all out with him several years ago, when I heard he’d had blood clots in his legs from sitting too long in the driver’s seat of his RV on long trips, and I’d heard that those blood clots could lead to a stroke and he might die. Would he die without us ever having made peace with each other and getting to the bottom of things? I was pretty anxious that that shouldn’t happen. But by the time I found out the truth of the matter, I had wasted many years of my life, depriving myself of a good relationship with my father. How I wish I had nurtured what we had, for everyone’s sakes!

In the end, there was so much fallout! Mom and Dad had a ripping apart of the fabric of their marriage, complete with character assassination of their ex-spouses. Dan and Rennie learned how to marry, divorce, repeat. Dan’s relationship with his dad during important high school years was battered. Even before Dad was out of the house, he had found a pot plant in Dan’s bedroom closet (which he sprayed with weed killer). But how could he be a guiding light in his son’s life if he didn’t live in the same house anymore?

Rennie must have felt rejected or betrayed by her dad. So much in a girl’s life depends on that example in her parents, and her feelings of beauty and value are linked to the feedback she gets from her dad. She was likely also hearing the poison about Dad and feeling the same disillusionment I did, but she also had to deal with the strange man sleeping in the living room.

Before Mom remarried, she also found “dates” for every day of the week – some man who could take her out to eat so she would not starve. I’m not sure what Dan and Rennie ate – maybe the contents of doggie bags?

Both of my siblings experimented with drugs before leaving school. Both of them hated Mom’s new husband and Dad’s new wife. 

Dad didn’t talk to any of us much because he thought we all hated him, but when we did converse, we didn’t like the fact that all he had to say was about was Angela’s family. Over the years, he could never remember any of our kids’ names. Much of that bitterness spilled into my life, even though I didn’t even live in California, and some of our kids probably picked up on it too. Meanwhile, when my mom was in her final days on the earth, Dan was threatening to have John locked up for elder abuse.

There is a wound in our family that is far deeper, more emotional, and more destructive than people want to believe. This wound didn’t heal with time – it festered. Children are not as “resilient” as people say they are. They may learn to survive with an unacceptable status quo, but they often suffer in silence.

So, I wound up with all the family photo albums, because my mother couldn’t bear to see pictures of our young family with my dad in them (twenty years of her life), and my dad didn’t want to see pictures of my mother either. And mom’s ring? Maybe it could be recycled into a Mother’s ring for me or for someone else, but who would treasure the ring as it is, since those birthstones represent me and two siblings who can’t stand me? I think I could round up the other half of the Mizpah coin too, if I wanted it. I think Dad has it. But all of these make me sad.

We’ve all heard it said over and over again that the nuclear family is under attack now more than ever before. It’s true, and the origin is spiritual, that is of the devil, because God is the author of marriage. After several years of “free love” in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there was an initial frontal attack during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, when the federal government redefined “family” to something like “several people living together who love each other.” More recently, it was actually a stated goal of Black Lives Matter to destroy that nuclear family (husband, wife, and children). That is, it was a stated goal until they took it down from their website because it didn’t look nice and it scared people away. 

Society has emasculated men and glorified the effeminate, while downplaying the effects of pornography and adultery. Fathers are denied the right to have any say in whether their own children can be aborted. Divorce is … commonplace.

Though I taught my children that there would never be a reason to fear that their parents would divorce, and they all entered their marriages feeling the same way, two of them have been rejected by their spouses. And though the two fought tooth and nail to prevent it, it is far too easy in our modern culture to file for a no-fault divorce and harass or intimidate the other party into signing the papers. This tragedy comes from an anti-Biblical idea in our society that if your spouse “stops loving” you, he or she can just quit. There’s no thought given to working it out or keeping the vows because there is no longer an understanding of marrying to serve. It is all about marrying to “make me happy.”

Divorce causes poverty, bitterness, grief, and pain. It will never make you happy. The parties may think the grass is greener on the other side, but I’m here to tell you it is not. Far from being green grass, divorce affects everyone in its path like a wide tornado mowing down a town. Can you rebuild after a tornado? Yes, but it’s a long and difficult process, not an easy answer.

There is great reward in doing it God’s way – talking things out, even raising voices if need be, and working through those areas of disagreement, respecting the other’s feelings, and seeing those vows through to the end. Think of the kids – yes, even those adult kids, like me. 

Consider your vows. When was the last time you looked at them? Did they go something like this?

"I, _____, take thee, _____, 

to be my wedded wife/husband, 

to have and to hold from this day forward, 

for better, for worse, 

for richer, for poorer, 

in sickness and in health, 

to love and to cherish, 

till death do us part, 

according to God's holy ordinance; 

and thereto I pledge thee my faith."

And did you, before all those witnesses and God Himself, pledge this to each other?

The final phrase in most wedding ceremonies: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” says it all. Who knows? Maybe that’s too old-fashioned for today’s weddings, but Jesus would have approved.

Where does that leave you if you already have the wreckage of a broken marriage behind you, a marriage shattered like the tray I mailed to my mom and dad? Is there hope? Always. Our God is a God of reconciliation, and there is no brokenness too broken, and no Humpty Dumpty too shattered, for Him to heal.

Eric and I were the only witnesses to a very small wedding when our older two children were babes in arms. The couple had been divorced, but had been convicted about it and decided to remarry. Afterwards, their marriage continued unhindered until the wife died a few years ago, so much so that they even forgot they had been divorced at all, and they counted the number of years of their marriage from its beginning. That was glorious! 

You can always start doing it God’s way, right where you are now, even if you are on Number 2 or Number 3. Will you be faithful now? 

Dear Jesus, who invented and clarified marriage, You who are our Bridegroom and You who have ordained marriage on earth to represent that time after death when we will be with You forever, to You we pray for our brokenhearted children and those everywhere, who have been through divorce and all its ugliness. To You we appeal for their healing and their deliverance from bitterness and grief, through Your love and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

We also lift up the other marriages, both in our family and in the Body of Christ, and ask that You would be the cement who binds these marriages together, never to be put asunder. This marriage business is too important for us to take it lightly. Help us to always always persevere, to remember our vows, and to keep them.

For it is in Your Name we pray, Amen.