to my younger, newly divorced self: 15 lessons, 15 songs
“And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I'd have to miss the dance”
Garth Brooks, The Dance
To give context to you, reader, I share the basics of my divorce story..
In May of 2011, I was in the process of selling all of our family’s belongings in Southern California (except a few duffle bags of irreplaceable items) in order for the kids and I to join their Dad/my husband of 10 years in Alaska, where he had accepted and begun a new job. When he decided he felt he and I were too different and he didn’t want to be married any longer, he began dating a woman he met in Alaska. By August, we were working on terms for our divorce. Being that I didn’t know anyone in Alaska, I determined that the best idea would not be to start life as a divorced mom up there. I decided that, rather than moving near my own family and support system in the Midwest, the best plan for the kids was to move to Reno where their Dad’s sisters and parents live in order to have them grow up near family and create a more optimal place to have my now ex-husband come to spend time with the kids. He moved to Reno in 2013 and has lived with his girlfriend he met here (who I like very much) since 2014. I have been happily remarried since 2013.
***
Dear younger, newly divorced self,
You will make it through this. The kids will make it through this. God will walk with you through this; and some days, He will carry you. Let Him. This is now part of your story and it is part of the kids’ story.
I have so much to tell you. I know how hard you fought to never see this day come, but you are here and the sun will shine again. Even now you are being strengthened by a group of friends praying for you in writing this that you would have never met had this divorce not happened the way it did. I also look back and recall how wonderful your friends were when you moved to Reno instead of Alaska while all of this was going down. How generous your in-laws were to help get you and the kids set-up with your basic needs in your first apartment on your own.
Because I know you connect on such a deep level with music, I am going to tell you about a few lessons I’ve learned and pair a song with each. NOTE TO READER: In addition to YouTube, LEXI LOVES WORSHIP MIX (formerly known as “to my newly divorced, younger self” THE Spotify MIX) is available as well! The Spotify Mix includes a few additional songs that were meaningful during this time.
1) The waves of emotion are inevitable.
“Funny how a melody sounds like a memory.” Eric Church, Springsteen
The waves of emotion are inevitable. Expect them and know that you will not be able to predict when they come about. You may be cleaning a closet and find an old box of letters from better days or walking down the aisle of the grocery store and a song comes on that brings about memories that break your heart for what is lost. There will be times your kids have emotions they need to let out and you need to let them do so freely, even though it kills you inside.
There will always be reminders, but they will begin to hurt less. Even now, you see a sign at a friend’s home that indicates that they were married the same year you were and this year it is 20 years. It will sting as it is a reminder of how you still mourn the breaking up of your family. When these moments come, pray about it. That will never be wasted time. It’s ok to mourn. As you’ve heard it said so well-There is no expiration date on grief.
2) The haunting of infidelity fades.
The haunting of infidelity fades. The hurt will too. God’s mercies are new every single morning. When you are attempting to fall asleep and your mind keeps replaying the scenes of the betrayal as though you had been there, ask God to take those thoughts and begin to heal you. Remember that this happening to you does not have to define you in anyway.
Know that you are vulnerable as someone newly single after not having been since age 19. Don’t get swept up in the first person who shows you attention. It will feel like a drug to be appreciated again. You have been starving in this area for a long time and it is entirely too easy to react to the heartache of mourning the losses of your marriage and your family unit with the band-aid of a new relationship. As Taylor Swift puts it so eloquently,”Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes.” More on that later.
3) Beauty instead of ashes.
Check out the promises of Isaiah 61:1-3 :
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.”
Beauty for ashes is a promise to hold on to. I know it seems like someone who is so deeply passionate about helping troubled marriages and has never seen “divorce” as an option would not be walking through this, but yet you are. You have a new ministry now, a new perspective with which you will go forward. You have a new humility to walk in as you continue to encourage people in their marriages and love on those who find themselves in a separation or divorce as well. You are uniquely equipped. It isn’t the ministry you would have ever asked for, but it is the one you have been given and there will be beauty when you embrace it and all God wants to do in you and through you.
4) Forgiveness is a continuous action.
Forgiveness is a lengthy process, but a crucial one. It is said that choosing not to forgive someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. This is an action that needs to start early on and needs to be done often. When I say often, I mean over and over, day after day. Whenever one of the words or actions come to mind that was done to you, call it out. Resist the temptation to get trapped back in that situation you are recalling. Say out loud: “Lord, I forgive _____ for _____. Please take it away. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Please help this to become true.”
Forgiveness is a continuous action, but the thoughts will begin to surface less and less as time goes on. You know as well as anyone that you don’t deserve the continuous and limitless forgiveness of Jesus and yet it is freely given to you. This is your model to copy. It will not be easy, but it will be necessary.
Do not lose sight that marriage is a union of 2 sinners. Your hands were not clean and you made mistakes too. Your ex will have times where he needs to decide whether to forgive you for the things you do and say that upset him as time goes on too. You are not the enacter of justice. You can rest knowing his choices will bring about their own consequences and you are not to blame yourself when he has to walk in them.
5) Being a single parent is not easy.
There will be moments that seem scary. Being a single parent is not easy. It can feel so full of uncertainty and you constantly wonder: “Is what I am doing good enough?” “Am I enough?” “Will I ever figure this out?” “Did I make the right choice today?” This will be an opportunity to grow A LOT. You will never feel God walk so closely beside you than in these early days after your divorce. Expect days that feel completely over your head, ones where you feel like you are treading water to try to stay above the waves; and sometimes too, there will be ones where you feel like you are floating along ok.
6) Do not talk to the kids negatively of their other parent.
You are going to have moments where you feel self-righteous. Without the actions of and decisions made last Summer, you would not be surveying the wreckage of your family as you are now. I think you know you have to check yourself on this thought process and in no area more than what to tell kids when they ask what happened and why. For now, less is more.
The worst thing you can do is shoot yourself in the foot and talk negatively of their other parent. You are not hurting your ex, but you are insulting half of who your child is. As they grow, there will be time for more age appropriate specifics to be shared when they are ready and much of what irks you about your ex is something they will see with their own eyes when they get old enough. The blame game is toxic for all involved.
7) Take the time to heal and process now.
It’s ok if no one, friends or family, understands what you are going through. They will want you to feel better as soon as possible and some may, out of feeling sad and uncomfortable for you, try to hand you the band-aid idea of getting out there and finding someone new. Until you have taken the time to sort through your own baggage, until you have done the therapy, the prayer time (to speak and to listen) and the processing needed, you are likely to make similar mistakes again and wind up in another break-up. You will see your need for the Lord more clearly than ever. Heal as a single, not in the midst of a new, serious relationship. Some healing will still go on for a long time yes; but don’t rush into it, as tempting as it is.
8) You will deal with shame and guilt.
No matter how this present reality came about, you will deal with shame and guilt. Words like “ex-husband”, “divorce”, and the like will always feel awkward and just taste bad to speak out loud. You will learn not to quickly judge those going through a separation or divorce now that you have experienced it. You never know what happened behind their closed doors. I am not going to lie to you-this is always going to feel like a failure of a sort, but failures can be formative. Get in the habit of laying all your failures at the foot of the cross. A mistake cannot be past tense until you call it out.
Realize that you don’t have to share your story with everyone and often times, less is more. However, to the degree you decide to be open about some aspects will open the door for people to seek you out for comfort. They will know that you understand their hurts and the ways God has worked on you will then have opportunity to spill over to help them. When you help other people and when you take the time to notice what God has done and thank Him for it, it is a balm to the parts of your heart that went through pain to get to that point. Thoughts of shame and guilt may try to resurface, but you can learn to mindfully allow them to pass by instead of grabbing on to dwell on them. It is never a bad idea to reset with saying,”Lord, forgive me for picking back up what I had already laid at your feet.”
9) Get therapy for you and for the kids sooner than later.
Again, self, this is now part of your story and it is part of the kids’ story. Having said that, you need a good therapist and so do they. Get on that one right away. Coping with emotions of their own while dealing with Mom and Dad’s hurt that spills over is too much for them. A safe place to process will help them now and pay dividends as they grow. Cultivating the habit of embracing therapy will come in handy individually and in future relationships.
Your heart will break intermittently for your kids when things happen that hurt them resulting directly or indirectly from the divorce. This is out of your control. You will need to find peace in Jesus more than ever and He will be there lighting the way. As you already know, this is not a pray and hope magic happens. Rather it is a conscious spending time in prayer and in the living Word of God. Don’t expect the supernatural peace of Jesus that surpasses all understanding to be sprinkled on you like pixie dust. To be led. you must follow. To learn, you must listen. To see the light, you have to ask that He open your eyes and show you how to be present.
10) Co-parenting will always be a making the best of a broken situation.
Sharing custody of the kids will never be easy. Co-parenting will always be a making the best of a broken situation.
Never feel bad for looking out for your kids, but know that the new boundaries always feel off as a parent. You cannot control what happens at the other house. This will lead to an active prayer life and a letting go of much that is now not that important. Learning how little control you have as a parent a little quicker than other parents do is actually a blessing.
I’ve got to be real with you. Losing your ex-husband as a husband was one thing, but it will be an absolutely heart-wrenching experience when circumstances occur that lead to the end of you knowing one another as friends. Know that him no longer wanting to know you as a person is about him and his making boundaries that are best for his new relationships and not about you. Don’t take it personally.
It is good and healthy for the 2 of you to unite instead in parenting the kids well. Being able to communicate about decisions and punishments as you both strive for consistency between your 2 homes is very important. It may seem like you are only seen through the lens of child support and the occasional feelings of resentment that ebbs and flows there after; but again, best to roll with it. Keep things in perspective and remember to trust God, not your feelings. Feelings are not trustworthy.
11) Your need for approval must die.
You will need to get acquainted with being misunderstood. Your need for approval must die. You will need to get that there are going to be some confusing times ahead.
Your ex’s family is now his support system only. They will be loyal to him. They will listen to his perspective. You have your own support system. It will help you to get this transition early on. It will be weird and uncomfortable.
There will be disagreements you have with your ex as time goes on and you will wonder why anyone would believe things said about you after having known you for so long. Your instinct will be to try to defend yourself. You need to lay that reflex down.
The relationships that survive will be with the people that come to you directly and ask you for your perspective, rather than assuming the worst. You will be mourning the end of some relationships here too. It will be apparent that when people decide you are a certain way, they will just accept that which supports their own hypothesis. You cannot do anything about this. As Rachel Hollis puts it, “Someone else's opinion of you is none of your business.”
Oh yeah, it will also feel weird when you and your ex both are in new relationships. You are “one” with someone for over a decade and then it is supposed to be ok to see them with someone else. Strange to say the least. Don’t follow him on social media. It will get easier.
12) Scars remind us of where we have been, but not who we are.
“You can still see the mark on his hand where there once was a ring
He watched decades of history dissolve when she wanted to leave
And the hole that it left there inside of his chest
Is a canyon a thousand miles deep
We all know how that feels.
Praise God we don't have to hide scars
They just strengthen our wounds, and soften our hearts.
They remind us of where we have been, but not who we are
So praise God, praise God we don't have to hide scars”
You are in a mourning process, but the person is still alive. Weird. Traumatic. Some days your heart won’t know what to do with that.
God will use these wounds. There isn’t a day where you won’t think of them in some way, but after a while you will begin to look back and see how far you have come and how each of these hurts will be used. How God will redeem them. How the you that comes out of this mess will have a beauty not despite, but because of the scars. Divorce is not fair for anyone, but God can use it all. Again, this divorce does not define you.
13) What happened becomes less, the kids BEST will be front & center.
It may be hard to currently imagine, but what happened between you and your ex will become lesser and the importance of good and respectful communication that puts the kids first will become greater as time goes on and the 2 of you move on.
There may be times where you have to personally draw some lines in the sand. If there is a communication breakdown, interact by email or text at all times so there is documentation, should you need to get a judge or lawyer involved. If you do have to consult a lawyer, and you are still trying to be kind and fair, understand that your kindnesses will be lost on your ex. Walk in a way where you set boundaries, but are able to look back and say you stand by your decisions, even when misunderstood.
Stand up for yourself when you need to. Choose wisely when considering what to make a big deal of. Know that your history cannot be rewritten by anyone when gaslighting occurs. You lived it. You were there. Push for peace in any way you can and never lose sight of how faithful God is to guide you in the many uncomfortable and what the crap just happened moments.
14) You and your ex will give reasons almost daily to be irritated with one another.
You will have times you feel so worn down by all of this. Why did it all come to this? In the times where you don’t see eye to eye with your ex, it will feel heavy and burdensome. Will there ever be a peaceful co-existence? There will be times you lose it and there will be times he does. Remember that no matter what the situation is, you do not have to be bullied or put up with any behavior that feels abusive. A conversation can be ended by such response as,”I will be totally open to talking when you have calmed down.” Do not tolerate name-calling or participate in it. Under react.
Model the behavior you wish to see, even if it never changes. Again choose to walk forward being able to look back at each phase and stand by your words and actions. Apologize when you cannot.
You will give reasons almost daily to be irritated with one another. You will parent differently. You were never meant to be the same, but rather to act as a team. This can still happen, but it takes work. It is different than you’d imagined, yes, but it is a give and take nonetheless, whether both parents are under one roof or under 2. You must make choices that work well for both of you, taking the other’s needs into account and stick up for yourself when this isn’t happening.
15) you will be in a healthy relationship one day and it will be worth the wait.
Little do you know, self, that this wedding song-the one that currently makes you want to curl up in a ball and bawl-was actually a description of someone who was only 18 when you got married and had your first dance to this song. Someone God crafted brilliantly just for you. He will blow you away. I know you would have never wanted for any of this to happen to you or to your kids especially, but you will be in a healthy, loving relationship one day and it will be worth the wait.
Hang in there. I know this is a lot. I tried not to get too specific because the journey is best walked without knowing the details before it’s time. Take good care of yourself. Keep asking the question:”What do I need right now?” Mama can’t help anyone if she doesn’t fasten her oxygen mask first. You’re a good Mom. Keep going. Brighter days ahead.
With love,
You…a few steps further down the road