For The Kids

“For I hate divorce!” says the LORD, the God of Israel.

MALACHI 2:16 NLT

DIVORCE DEVASTATES CHILDREN.

It’s time we admit it. I’m tired of hearing about how “the children will learn to cope,” or “in the end it will all be for the best,” or “given the circumstances, there was nothing else we could do.” The Bible allows divorce only for rare circumstances, including adultery and abandonment by a nonbelieving spouse. Other situations exist when a separation probably is in order. Certainly, children must be protected from physical violence and a drug-addicted parent. But except for these rare exceptions, one of our first duties is to hold our marriages together when children are involved. At the very least, we need to admit the great harm we cause to our children when we allow our marriages to fail. Denial is a poor foundation on which to build a new life.

Author Jen Abbas wrote:

As I entered adulthood . . ., I was stunned to discover that my parents’ divorces seemed to affect me more each year, not less. . . . When they divorced, they may have thought they made a clean break, but we are the splintered remains of their parting. Regardless of why our parents divorced, the fact remains that their divorce hurt us.^a

Jen made it very clear: you may be able to give your kids a dozen different reasons why you’re seeking a divorce, but in the end, the divorce will still hurt enormously. Your reasons will never erase their pain.

Jen explained why: “Divorce alters our identities. It clouds the lens through which we understand the world. It weakens the foundation of our emotional development.”^b In fact, Jen believes “divorce is often the defining event of our life, . . . the Achilles’ heel to our well-being.”^c

I think about all I want my children to be defined by, all I hope they will remember. How tragic that the one event they might use to describe their childhood, more than any other, would be for their parents to say, “We are going to break up this family.”

Researcher Judith Wallerstein points out that divorce is the only crisis where parents put their own wants before their children’s needs. “In the crisis of divorce, mothers and fathers put children on hold, attending to adult problems first.”^d And then they tend to exacerbate their children’s pain by faulting the children for not “getting over it” or insisting that the children even welcome the person who broke their family apart. One young man laments, “I hated my stepmom because she was the one who broke up my family. And yet I had to visit and eat turkey and mashed potatoes with her and always treat her as if she were an old friend of the family.”

Do you see the awkward, morally reprehensible situations we put our kids in when the marriage breaks down? Jen Abbas reflected on such situations: “Oddly enough, it was often our failure to accept such changes that marked us as truly troubled. But why shouldn’t we be troubled by the breakup of our homes?”^e

One young woman who was forced to give up weekends and vacations with her friends so that she could spend time with her noncustodial father expressed her frustration this way: “He did the crime, and I have to pay.”^f

Jen stressed that being older when the divorce occurs doesn’t help:

Imagine you are putting together a puzzle and have only a few pieces left when someone comes in and knocks over the table, scattering all the pieces to the floor. Does the fact that you were almost done lessen the frustration you feel over having to start over? The pain of those who experience parental divorce when they are adults is often downplayed. The truth is that divorce still has a major effect because, as you start to reassemble your work, you find that the picture you have been studying has changed.^g

Whereas those of us who grew up in healthy and intact families view home as a place where we were nurtured and returned to lick our wounds, for children of divorce, said Jen, “home is more likely to be the place where our most serious emotional wounds were inflicted.”^h

Because of what I’ve read about and discovered in talking to children from divorced homes, I would do just about anything to hold my marriage together—for the kids’ sakes, if nothing else. Unless I were married to a truly heinous spouse, whose mere presence terribly damaged my children’s spiritual, emotional, and physical health, I would consider it my duty as a parent to bear up under even a very difficult or lonely marriage. (And this is not to judge those of you who made the sometimes courageous decision to stand up to and protect your kids from a destructive spouse.)

Please understand, if you’re already divorced, it is not my intention to pick at old wounds. Jesus Christ offers complete forgiveness. Even so, for your own spiritual health, you need to be honest about what your actions have done to your children, seek their forgiveness, and cooperate with God to ease their way. Denying what you’ve put them through won’t make them hurt any less, but admitting your fault may make it easier for them to deal with it in the future.

My real purpose is to address those parents who even now are contemplating breaking up their family or who are putting their families at risk with behavior that threatens their marriages. You may be drifting into an inappropriate relationship, or maybe you’ve just stopped caring about your marriage and no longer nurture it. I want you to be brutally honest with yourself. In fact, I challenge you to read Jen Abbas’s book, Generation Ex, and ask yourself, “Am I really willing to do something that devastating to my children? Do I honestly believe my pain is so great it will require inflicting this much agony on my children?” Because what divorce really does is transfer the pain of a parent’s difficult marriage onto the shoulders of a child.

Jesus sacrificed himself; he bore our pain and our punishment. As our model, Jesus teaches us to bear our children’s pain, not inflict it. We are to carry the cross for our families, not build one that we attach to their shoulders. So many times, I’ve heard parents say, “I’d take a bullet for my child.” Well, if you’re in a difficult marriage on the brink of a divorce, here’s your chance. To continue with the divorce is essentially to say, “I might be willing to die for my children, but I’m not willing to live for them. I won’t put up with this situation on their behalf.”

That’s why this week’s application is to leave our children long enough to work on our marriages. I’m talking about getting out together and nurturing that all-important relationship. Once I realize how devastating divorce is, I’m going to make a second, third, and even hundredth effort to keep my marriage strong. The stakes are too high to get lackadaisical. You chose the person with whom you bore these kids; for their sakes, make it work.

If you’re a young mom who can’t bear to leave your child for an hour or two, or if you find yourself ignoring your spouse while you pour all your energies into this tiny bundle of joy, realize that your neglect of your spouse is putting that bundle of joy in grave danger of serious emotional wounds ten years down the road. For your child’s sake, if nothing else, spend time loving your husband. Don’t allow your emotional, spiritual, or sexual relationship to grow cold.

If you’re a man who’s getting into compromising situations, who has stopped pursuing his wife and is beginning to look elsewhere, go home one night and take a peek into your kids’ bedrooms. Consider how vulnerable their tiny bodies are, and multiply that by a hundred to ascertain their emotional vulnerability. You’ll then have a better idea of how dangerous your actions are to their overall well-being. If you wreck your marriage, you will inflict a devastating wound on these children.

Please, don’t let the marriage die. Don’t even let it grow lukewarm. Certainly, every marriage goes through difficult and lonely seasons; you can’t prevent that. But remove the word divorce from your vocabulary. Divorce, in most cases, isn’t a solution; it creates the family’s biggest problem and leads to a whole host of other hurts and trials.

At any rate, let’s finally admit it: divorce devastates our children. We have an obligation to do all we can to spare our children from an all-too-common hurt.

Heavenly Father, you’ve given us an amazing love for our children. We want to protect them from what could be one of their biggest hurts, so please renew our marriage, grow our relationship with each other, and keep us from ever pursuing a divorce. In Jesus’ name, amen.