January 16, 2010

Greetings My Friend,

When my children were small, older people would counsel me, “Don’t say my child will never.” It seems the one thing you are determined your child will not do, is the one thing they will do. As I have gone on in my life, it seems that statement is true in general. The one thing you were never going to do, wind up being what you are doing.
I have run across people who tell me they are going to stay married….never divorce. At that point I want to tell them that when I married the first time, that was my thought, we’d be married forever, till death do us part. I did not marry with the idea that one day I would be divorced. When I went through Divorce Recovery, I was one of the youngest, least married in my class. I had been married 24 years at the time of my divorce. One lady had been married 40 years and was divorced.
When Junior and I talked about getting married, he asked me if I wanted to make a life commitment with him. That felt good to hear. I had been in counseling and he started to attend with me. He wanted to know what I was dealing with and wanted to help me through my struggles. After we were married, we continued with counseling for another two years. I believe it helped us a whole lot. We also took re-married classes to better understand the struggles re-married couples dealt with.
We learned that it was important to never use the “d” word. (Divorce) “D” was not an option. That felt good too. I found that if we committed to this then I felt safe. When I felt safe, I was free to grow, to make mistakes and not be kicked to the curb so to speak. We soon had a saying that helped us stay committed, “No D word in our marriage other than Death and it had to be natural causes.” To be honest, it felt good and safe to know we were that committed.
When there is a relationship, there comes a point where the two people will not see eye to eye on something….it is going to happen. We then started repeating our wedding vows, you know, “In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, till death do us part.” It was silly and broke the tension. It also had a way of reminding us of our commitment to see this to the end.
As I read about people in the Bible times, early times in this country, I find that when a couple dated it was to see if they’d be good in marriage. Marriage was at the back of dating. I think that this is a good idea. If we dated as if we may marry that person, not just to have fun and then move on, we may have more stable marriages. I also ponder if we should be teaching our young people that dating is to find that person you will one day be married to.
I think we do a disservice when we marry with the idea of “if it don’t work out,….we move on.” Divorce hurts children, even grown children. Divorce hurts friendships. Many divorced people will tell you that friends may not have wanted to take sides, or friends did take sides. It is hard everywhere you turn. I also believe many children (most) have some sort of struggles when their parents’ divorce. Many feel they are in the middle,
I find myself wanting to teach young people about the serious commitment that marriage should be. I want to teach them how to look for the “right” mate. As I looked back, I found that there were many warning signs where that marriage should not have happened. Like when I fainted at the altar and then threw up. Even before that….we had fights that were violent. The red flags were all over the place and still I wasn’t able to realize what the outcome would be.
With divorce at or around 50% of first marriages, second marriages tend to have a 70% failure rate and the odds get worse after that, I find it scary. I also am concerned about the way we have “free” love. A baby may be conceived in a non-serious relationship. The mother may have the child and that child may not grow up with one of the parents, more likely without a Dad or a full time Dad. Children need Both parents. Women teach the child many things and a Dad also has valuable things to teach that child.
I believe that parents need to start stressing that the child should seek to be married, to be married when they have children and to stay married. They also need to stress waiting till marriage for sex. At this point I often hear parents say “well….I wasn’t exactly innocent and I can’t expect my kids too….” To be honest most of us made stupid blunders along the way to being an adult. Isn’t that our job, to try to redirect our children if possible, so they don’t fall into the same mistakes?
Will children make mistakes; get involved too soon etc., more than likely. Still many children listen and will do as they are told. Other children often learn from their mistakes. I know a young lady who learned a valuable lesson after she gave birth, the value of waiting. She learned that being a single parent is hard and not wonderful. She then waited till she married a young man before engaging in sex again. When I was a youth advisor, I had some kids tell me the reason they never did drugs were because of the commercials on TV., the ones where they showed the egg in the frying pan and said, “Your brain on drugs.” Again, if we make being celibate important, we may be giving our children a valuable lesson.
Wouldn’t it be great to see the divorce trend stop and marriages to be healthy again?
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet