When Les and I were divorced, we didn’t have the “free ticket out of Dodge” experience. We had both been through gut wrenching endings of our marriages. It wasn’t a pretty time, or experience for either of us, no one rejoices over a broken marriage or broken family. Our stories and brokenness were almost the same, years before we met each other, and 400 miles a part…..We had both sought family as we both desired our homes to be a God centered place with family who would be together forever, not have the pain of not one, but two divorces each….and the disillusionment that goes with shattered dreams, broken hearts, and horrifying realities financially of what happens when your life falls apart. God had a plan to restore our lives even in the ashes of marriages destroyed…..Even eight years ago, Les nor I would have imagined that God could fix our broken worlds.
In Les’s history was an unwanted divorce as his first wife left him and his children were young and it was hard. Later, a marriage to a young woman who had a son that Les reared as a step dad and only dad from the time he was one until he was six. Seeking solutions, Les and his second wife married entirely too fast, the hard part of healing had not been allowed to be done…they were both in a rush to find sanctuary in a new life with a new partner. Unfortunately it takes time to heal and to learn to identify the brokenness, and God has to grow you through your scars. The second wife was young, and perhaps too young to handle all the life that her unexpected pregnancy as a teen to a boy and later adulthood and parenthood at 18 had brought her. When she and Les met when she worked in a business at 19, she not only became his wife, but immediate step mother and mother of 3 children at 19. One who was only years younger than herself Can.you.imagine how hard on a 20 year old to be stepmom to a two young children AND your year old son, while working full time? After five years she left, too many differences, too much on a young girl’s plate that she wasn’t prepared for, she didn’t want to do church, or God…for the life of the single partying girls looked so much more appealing, she wanted to be young and single, and without reservation, or very much warning, she chose to leave Les and the children. Because her child was not his biological child, from the day his ex wife left him, he was never allowed to see that child again. Five years of loving a baby and then without warning to never see him again. This is something that hurts his heart still. Attempts were made when we did marry some years later in 2002-2003 to reconnect at least for communication, but the mom involved preferred not. She had every legal right to do so…for Les was not her son’s biological father. However as a mom and teacher, my heart breaks for the child who was literally torn from the only dad he knew without warning or choice. His mom, who is not the bad guy of this story, simply felt that she would one day get on with her life, and didn’t want him torn three ways when and if a new step dad entered their lives. However this didn’t stop the anger and upset that the child experienced when he was the one who sacrificed part of his support system…the only dad he knew. And it didn’t stop the once again lesson for our stepchildren who learned that nothing is permanent and people do stop loving you and leave you. A difficult experience for any child to see parents choose to leave them.
Divorce is simply hard. God is a God of love, and in His attempts to keep us safe in that love, He has told us that we are to forgive, to live in peace, to end strife in our homes. When His commands are broken, the results in all the players lives are devestating. The pain can literally shape a family for generations! Our children are scarred from the pain of divorce. They have had to face harder lives and more complex family structures because their parents could not work together to stay married. It doesn’t matter if one parent or the other acted out more publically in the divorce, the truth is each person is 100% responsible for their half of a marriage ending….for forgiveness and grace through God is available even for those who mess up, and yet we choose often to go our seperate ways.
We both led single lives and painful recoveries from divorce. I simply wasn’t ever going to risk another marriage when my marriage to the children’s father ended after a very difficult marriage and continual distance in our actual time together in one home. For the last five years of our marriage, we had lived most of the time seperately, and things had not been well since before Madison’s birth. No one could have prepared me that God had a plan for another life for me. I certainly wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me that God would send a man from Oklahoma through friends on the internet and he would become my husband. Our seventh anniversary will be June 14, 2009. God had another plan for both of our lives. Our experiences, hurts, and scars you see have become a new thing in Christ. Christ has restored our family, restored our wholeness and given us a Divine gift of restoration as he promised to the sons of Abraham if we would be obedient to his calls. We are in no way “there” but God has drawn us into a love affair with Him, He has restored our dreams of a life long love with each other, and he is healing our families. Would I have chosen the path that my life has taken in divorce, single parenting, and now remarriage? Absolutely not, but I would have had no other way than to allow God to use the pain, suffering, and shame that I brought on myself than to let the Potter squash what I had so clumsily made of my life, and see His hand upon our lives as grows our family into something beautiful. It is our deepest prayer that in coming here, others will find acceptance, assistance, and a shared path of walking out this step and blended family life, and through God’s grace, grow closer to Him.
God is good! He is ever present in our daily lives!
Sweetie
