The “D” Word

As a young teenager, my brother walked in on my parents arguing with each other. The anger led my brother to tell my parents, “If you are so angry, why don’t you just get a divorce.” The countenances on my parents’ faces dropped. The conversation switched from anger for each other towards educating their son. That is when divorce became the “D” word in my home. My parents had their disagreements, but they always agreed that divorce would never be the option. That is something I have talked to with my fiancé. We look at our marriage as a covenant with our Father in Heaven, not a contract. We know going into our marriage that we want it to last eternally and how that is going to happen is that we both need to be moving towards our Father in Heaven.
I haven’t had personal experience of handling divorce, but I have seen many of my friends and other family members that have struggled through this trial. I have asked one of those friends how she got through her parent’s divorce and she said, “It is an ongoing process of choosing which parent to honor.” It was hard for me to hear that. It also really showed me the effect that divorce has on the children in the home.
Another older friend that I have has sadly been part of a divorce. She has three children and her ex-husband lives about 30 minutes from her. The children spend every other weekend and every other holiday with their father and his new wife and kids. The rest of the time they are with her. There has been plenty of times when my friend complains, very openly in front of her children, about something the father of her children has done. Most of the time it has something to do with the kids homework, or the fact that he isn’t supplying them clothing for their time at his house.
I can see this being very confusing for her children. In fact I have seen it really affect another friend that I have that has parents who have been divorced and remarried. So much to the point that she in middle school wouldn’t want her dad’s last name on her volleyball jersey because she wanted nothing to do with her father. She later had to live with her father and his step wife and she was very angry whenever talking about her family situation.
There are ways that we can stay away from getting divorced. The first advice I have heard about this subject is to go into a relationship planning on it lasting an eternity. There are plenty of people out there that go into their marriage thinking if this doesn’t work out we can get a divorce. This isn’t a great way to walk into any relationship, especially a marriage. In a fireside I went to with Noelle Pikus Pace, she talked about her career as an Olympian skeleton racer. She talks about how she has to watch where she wants to go. If she looks away even just slightly she derails off her course and can get in a huge crash. This can cause a lot of damage to herself.
She relates this to making decisions in life, but I want to relate it to actual marriage. If we have a sight on an eternal marriage, and not deviate in any way we will get there safely, but if we do deviate that can lead to massive issues.
Marriage is a huge commitment, and really isn’t easy. But the best advice is to have both people in the relationship moving continually towards Christ.