I keep revising this but the blog seems to have changed or eliminated its "edit" function, so I'll post the revisions as I go.
Prologue:
When Daddy went into the dementia ward January 5, 2009, David said, “It’s the first time we’ve ever been able to see him alone; he always had a woman in between.”
Our childhood, ripped away from us like a lion tears the throat out of a zebra, grins at us from old black and white photos I wonder which one of our parents snapped of us when they were still together. Innocent children with no fears for tomorrow, we didn’t worry when we fell down. We just got up, grinned up at the camera, and kept going. When suddenly we hit bottom, we didn’t even know we had hit bottom.
The many years that passed since Daddy moved out failed to close the wounds. Time did not heal them. Our hearts, wounded by the past, lay open for attack by a present poised to crush us again like giant ocean waves rising higher than a house.
The warning is clear: “No Swimmers Past This Point.”
Mom’s decision to divorce our Dad overwhelmed both my brother and me. Life as we knew it would end. Our childhood was over. All of us might try, but we could never bring back the sense of security, of belonging, of family. None of the four of us knew at the time there could be no turning back, that it would change everything forever. For us, the children, the ones who had neither choice nor voice in the matter, it would be difficult to learn that life could be anything but something that had been done to us.
Those of us who have survived our parents’ divorce did so at considerable cost to us. We paid the price for our parents’ redemption, yet despite the price we paid, did not see anyone set free. Half my life I spent attempting to heal this gaping wound.
I could only run away from pain for so long. It kept calling my name, threatening to let despair grab me and pull me down into its stranglehold forever.
When Daddy left, so did my childnood, except for going to Grandpa’s farm and riding horses along the Oregon trail . Along with Dad, divorce stole most of my childhood memories. Because for whatever reasons Dad decided to stray and Mom decided to divorce him, our life split into two parts: before and after the divorce. Before the divorce, things seemed pretty good; afterwards all the bad stuff happened.
The divorce also stole us all from ourselves. It broke Dad and cut short who he could have become and what he could have accomplished, and had a similar effect on Mom, on David and on me. If this were the whole story, it would be very depressing. But there is another side.
After he died, I discovered what I believe Dad meant to impart to us, even though choices he made along with events beyond his control contributed to the apparent destruction of such a legacy. He couldn’t tell us because he was drowning too.
“The Lord gave. The Lord has taken away,” Job said. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” The words of Job after he lost everything. Notice what he did before he said that. The verse before that says he tore his robe and shaved his head and fell to the ground and worshiped. The tearing of his robe and shaving of his head depict the strong emotion of grief, yet he maintained his trust in God.
“I know that my Redeemer lives,” he said.
I am still grieving my parents’ divorce. I have decided I may do so until I die. My heart was broken, sometimes still seems broken. But words from the Bible ring true in this too.
“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
“Because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
“He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted…” Red letters from the book of Luke, Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah.
There is really no restoring of lives destroyed by divorce, only the re-creation of different ones. Left to our own devices, we create lives that are even more complicated, more confusing and, as in my case, more erratic than the previous ones. I needed something or someone to step in and stop this crazy train from flying off the track.
Mom and Dad’s divorce changed the course of our lives. At first we were the first born daughter and the first born son in an intact family; afterwards, we became what was known at the time as products of a broken home.
The divorce defined both of our lives forever, and even though we shared a lot of it, I know David and I went through our own private hells. As children, we did not have the resources to support one another. Instead we struggled for our own survival.
I know that after the divorce and before I came to know and have a personal relationship with God, I was angry, sad, confused, and lost. Sometimes I still feel lost but I am not because I have received the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, and that makes all the difference.
I am a new creation. What was inside me before has been changed. What you see of me is changing and will continue to do so until I die, but I will never be the same.
I have been born again and baptized and live for Jesus Christ every day trying to get to know Him better and learning how to tell others about Him, but I have not become someone who feels no pain.
At Celebrate Recovery, a Christian 12-step recovery program, I say I am a “grateful believer in Jesus Christ who is recovering from codependency and anger.” Someone – a power greater than myself – has given me a sense of gratitude, the desire to face the future with hope and the courage to step up out of the rubble of disappointment.
Satan, a created spiritual entity whose plan for every human life is to steal, kill and destroy, continues to try to wreck the life and testimony of every believer, and I can testify that this also is real. I believe that I would not have survived the difficulties of life and the oppression of Satan without the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of me and God’s personal involvement in my life. However, when I think about how, had things not turned out the way they did, I might never have known God at all, that gives me pause. Today I believe there is nothing more important than knowing God personally through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Before that, you just go along with what “comes naturally,” I guess. Then, after God comes into your life, the battle really begins.
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