This week’s reading is about a woman who went through a divorce. I can think of few words in the English language that bring as much pain as the D word. About half the families in this country have been affected by divorce. Many of us grew up with multiple parents and thus complicated family configurations, thanks to divorce and remarriage. Some of us—and some of our children—have avoided marriage or put it off for years because we found it hard to believe that such a union could thrive over the long haul.
I think it’s safe to say that society as a whole is plagued by a certain cynicism when it comes to topics such as faithfulness and commitment. Thus the breakup of marriage unions sets the tone in which all of us live, regardless of our personal beliefs, behavior, or situations. Even if your own marriage is strong, all around you relationships crumble and you must deal with the fall-out of divorce among friends, colleagues, extended family, even community leaders. Divorce is everybody’s problem.
As Christians, we practice mercy. We portray to the world God’s endless forgiveness. This means that we must welcome and love people no matter what their situations. As much as we’d like divorce not to exist in our faith communities, it does, and it’s our responsibility to show hospitality to those wounded by broken relationships. People find healing only when there is a safe place in which to heal. A safe place comes to exist in the presence of understanding, empathy, and hope. We create a safe place when we help a person imagine life beyond divorce and when we open our lives to her healing process.
As Christians, we also practice truthfulness. We have the courage and freedom to see reality for what it is. This means that when a husband has betrayed his wife, or vice-versa, we call it betrayal, and we help the one betrayed call it that. A person does not find healing by denying how bad things are or by forcing herself to “just have more faith.” She admits that she has been harmed deeply, and she brings to God her hurt, anger, confusion, and all the rest.
Even when divorce does not involve infidelity, the damage is pervasive. We must find language for how we feel and for how life has changed. Also, we must identify how this change has disappointed our long-held dreams and goals. If we have children, we must help them navigate their distinctive set of changes, hurts, and disappointments.
I like that Rebecca, the woman in this week’s story (“A Healing after Divorces” available at right and here.), found help in something as simple as gratitude. It does seem that gratitude will not share space with bitterness. If a person can begin a practice of gratitude for small, daily things, that gratitude will soon extend to the larger picture of her life. When we walk with her through a healing process, one thing we can offer is a sense of celebration—for every small triumph or move forward. Maybe we help her repaint the bedroom—and then invite a few people over for dessert. Maybe she gets through her first day without crying—so we congratulate her and mark the calendar with a symbol representing this noteworthy event.
If people of faith do not confront divorce with honesty and hope, what do we really have to offer our neighbor? If we do not face divorce in our own lives, uncovering the pain and developing gratitude, this tragedy will remain with us even as we try to relate to God—like the proverbial elephant in the room that no one dares mention.
Exercises:
Draw your family tree. Be sure to include the divorces and remarriages as well as the births, deaths, and original marriages. Take a highlighter and mark every branch of the tree affected by divorce. Then write out a prayer for this entire family of yours—a prayer for continued healing and also a prayer of thanksgiving for the love that has survived through so many changes.
To learn more about Lyn Doucet, author of A Healing Walk with St. Ignatius, or explore additional healing resources, click on the tabs at the top of the page.
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Thanks for this wonderful reading about divorce. I have never been married but have been affected by others divorces and by seeing those I love hurting from the affects of divorce. One of the reasons I really like the Dr. Phil show (and sometimes I know it can seem exhibitionist people relaying their personal lives to the world, neverrtheless I have always liked psychology and therapy stuff) is that he insists that in order to heal people need to get real (like Christian truthfulness described in the reading). Just as our reading talks about the necessity of acknowledging the feelings of bitterness around betrayal, Dr. Phil insists to couples who he assists in trying to move past it, that the betrayed spouse will never be able to get over the affair and trust the offending spouse again until the offending spouse fully acknowledges the gravity of the betrayal and communicates that he “gets” how betrayed the offended spouse feels. In fact, while some of these marriages still do fail after the getting real(living in Christian truth), many couples do go on to work things out, and without that, they would not have been able to. This getting real, aka, Christian truth, is such a missing in our society today even in our church circles. Shallow apologies simply dont do the trick. Our Catholic faith’s principles of reconciliation and restorative justice, if applied, could turn the world around in significant ways. While people can and must try to get over betrayals in their lives even if their need for something so fundamental as the acknowledgment of the truth of the situation is absent, it is so much harder for them and it takes them so much longer, and there are so many walking wounded in our society as a result of the lack of resources to help people get real with one another. When we are offended deeply and it is not acknowledged we have to be christ and carry the suffering and pain and work to become resurrected from the suffering and death that it caused us, the irony of living christlike, that the offended person has to do all the work, alot of which ends up helping the offender, but it is the way we have to go. God will bring the restorative justice we long for (Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness(truth)).
Well said, Kristin. One of the key purposes of all those Old Testament prophets was to get entire societies to wake up to the truth of the situation. There was always promise of God making new even the worst situations, but the people’s dishonesty and unwillingness to face themselves and others got in the way of the Holy being able to truly transform them. It takes courage to be truthful, but in the end everything flows that direction, so we may as well get redirected now. All peace–Vinita
I know been through the bigD word its been 11 years..but my Faith has kept me strong ..it has been hard raising kids separately but to me its been for the better…the kids are almost adults and have good relationshipwith there dad…they each have positve outlooks towards men even if my marriage was bad…and now Iam engaged to a lovely man who is very strong in the Catholic faith…so the Big D is bad but in many ways it can be positive is a person goes forward from there mistakes..
Thanks for that testimony–it communicates both faith and hope.