H. Norman Wright - Experiencing Divorce

Copyright 2017 by H. Norman Wright

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-5025-3

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 306.89

Subject Heading: DIVORCE \ GRIEF \ DIVORCED PEOPLE

Unless otherwise stated all Scripture is taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible ( hcsb ), copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville Tennessee. All rights reserved.

Also used: New International Version ( niv ), Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Also used: Good News Translation ( gnt ), copyright 1992 by American Bible Society.

Also used: New American Standard Bible ( nasb ), copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

Also used: Amplified Bible, Classic Edition ( ampc ), copyright 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation.

Also used: New Living Translation (NLT)

Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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Introduction

When Dreams Die

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

T he haunting words of this Langston Hughes poem perhaps capture some of the emotion of divorce, as it did for a woman named Jean. She had been living her threefold dream as a wife, mother, and missionary. Along with her husband and two daughters, she was serving God in full-time, active service on a foreign mission field. Then one day she discovered her husband had been involved in an affair. With that knowledge, everything changed. Thus began a season of pain and struggle that eventually resulted not only in Jeans returning home from the life and ministry she loved and had worked toward, but returning home also as a divorced woman.

Her dream had died.

I had this vision that I was going to be married for the rest of my life. Now that vision was gone. For a long time, I had a mental picture that I was standing at a grave, trying to bury my marriage. The hole was dug, but boards were across the grave so they couldnt continue the burial because I refused to throw in my flowers. I was holding a dead wedding bouquet, my symbol of my marriage. I hung on to that bouquet for a long time.

I knew I was beginning to heal when the day came in my vision that I wanted to pick up some fresh pink carnations for myself and throw the dead bouquet into the casket. Thats when I knew I was beginning to let go of my grief.

Yes, dreams can be destroyed. Dreams can die. And few culprits are more adept at burying them than divorce. We do need to grieve over these dreams weve lost. The hurt is real, and the loss is devastating. But even dreams that have been thrashed on the hard rocks of divorce do not need to be left for dead. Dreams can live again.

Divorce has often been describedaccurately, I believeas being similar to a tornado. It can rip through your home with the potential for destroying not only every aspect of your own life, but also disrupting the lives of everyone connected with you. It stirs up a whirlwind of fear, anxiety, depression, and confusion. After the onslaught has done its worst, youre sitting there holding the pieces in your hands, even while time continues moving forward, leaving you broken and alone in its wake. Divorce is among the most wrenching experiences anyone can go through.

Whenever you experience a crisis of this magnitude, you are at first thrown off guard. You may temporarily lose your ability to cope. You seek a pain release, some kind of anti-memory pill, only to find that nothing of the kind actually exists.

But despite how it feels, divorce is not the end. You can regain your footing as you begin to understand whats really happened. You can learn to live again as you start to recognize the potential that lies ahead of you, even within this newly reordered set of circumstances. You can bundle this experience in such a way that it doesnt cripple or devastate you for the remainder of your life.

The primary purpose of this book is to provide guidance to those who have been through a divorce in the past or who have recently experienced one. In no way do I wish to minimize the sacredness of marriage or treat divorce as a typical, even therapeutic solution to ones unhappy life as a couple. As long as the possibility exists for a marriage to be saved and rescued, many blessings can still await those partners who each humble themselves, submit to godly counsel, and seek to offer their relationship as a testimony to what God can still do with broken things.

But if divorce has already happened, or if theres no stopping the will of one partner to see this marriage dissolved, I wish to convey an important truth thats often hard to locate from inside the cauldron of this tragedy. The prospect of continuing to liveeven to thriveremains for you to accept and embrace as an option. For I know the plans have for you, declares the Lord , plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jer. 29:11 niv ).

In the aftermath of the storm, amid the ashes of a destroyed dream, God delivers hope that goes beyond your own resources and strength. Its not a shortcut. Not an easy path. But He does provide a way through. And in choosing to walk it, you can truly live again.

Chapter 1

Bracing for Impact

W hen does a divorce begin? Does it start when you visit an attorney for the first time? Not really. Thats just the end result of something that began occurring long before, the emotional effects of which youve already been feeling.

This emotional experience of divorce is what comes from realizing you are no longer number one in your spouses life; perhaps theyre no longer number one in your life either. The process that brought the two of you to this breaking point may have taken years, but your acceptance of its reality, once divorce has become an unavoidable conclusion, is important.

Thats because the initial response to a marriage falling apart is often a sense of unreality . This must be happening to someone else, you think. Some have recalled feeling frozen in time. Numb. Everything just stood still. Life suddenly stopped cold. Others have said it was more like a bad dream or a nightmare. They just wanted to wake up and discover it wasnt real. How could this happen? Divorce is something that happens to others... not to us... not to me.

But as unreality fades into harsh reality, the intensity of all the emotions finally hits. Their presence will come and go, but their arrivalsometimes predictable, sometimes quite unpredictablecan be painfully severe. For some, the devastation and intensity of emotions isnt much different from that of experiencing the death of a close friend or family member. As one man described it:

Divorce is as close as you can get to death without actually dying. Only those who have experienced it can truly understand its dark power to test emotions and intellect to the ultimate degree. The only social trauma greater than divorce is the physical death of a loved one.