We used to look at still pictures on pages made of paper

I've read two posts and several articles lately (see here, here, and here) about the dearth of readers, a thing too awful to be imagined really. I love reading, I'm forever outgrowing my bookcases, and books are strewn haphazardly and in little neat piles all over my house. My friend Catherine talks about imagining her death as happening when her book collection topples over onto her in her apartment and buries her alive.


My love of books and reading started early. My mom is one of the most voracious readers I've ever known. She reads mysteries for sheer pleasure, but I know whenever I go home there will be a pile of library books next to her chair in the living room, and I know it will usually include books on cooking, decorating/remodeling, business, politics, history, or any of another half-dozen topics. The variety of her reading inspires me to break out of my fiction world and read biographies and memoirs and nonfiction titles.


Every time we moved to a new town, one of the first things we did was get our library cards. Going to the library was a weekly ritual for us growing up. Each week, we would get amused smiles from other library patrons (or annoyed looks from those behind us in line) as mom, me, and my two brothers each stood there with our library cards and our stacks of books for the week. The two little guys were active with a capital A, but they would sit quietly for an hour or more, snuggled under an arm, while we read to them. Ah, the magic of books!

And really, I think, why don't more parents figure out this secret to sane parenting? Who wouldn't want to spend an hour snuggled up with a warm, quiet toddler, reading about mice who drive cars or lions who get scammed by rabbits or elephant kings who speak French? As inspiration, here's a picture of my mom reading one of my favorite books to me.

Good grief

I was supposed to turn in a resume?? Why didn't anyone tell me?

Love, Peanut

Ben and Jon are my brothers. They were 1 and 4 when this letter was written:

Jon is so adorable. He had such beautiful hair. Then one day Ben decided Jon’s hair was too long so he cut it. He did it so short that to make it look better Ken had to give Jon a crew cut. He is still adorable though.

Shalom and divorce

The grandparent of a child of divorce emailed me recently to let me know she reads the blog. Her son was in a very bad marriage that he tried valiantly to save, but to no avail. This grieving mother and grandmother wrote that she wanted to "speak out about the hurt and pain for a whole extended family."

The other night, a friend recommended a book to me on shalom. It's a term with which I am very familiar from my many years at Prison Fellowship. Chuck Colson often uses that term to talk about the broader effect of crime. We often think of -- and our criminal justice system often focuses on -- crime as a matter simply between the criminal and the victim. But when a crime occurs, the peace of an entire community is broken.

I experienced this recently. Sitting at my computer working one afternoon, I began to hear an argument taking place somewhere nearby, between a man and woman. It continued long enough that I began to get concerned, so I wandered downstairs and looked down the street to see the couple. He was holding onto the front of her shirt and she kept asking to just be let go. I dialed the police non-emergency number to ask if they could have an officer just drive by to check on things and cool the argument down, but as the phone was ringing, I saw the man begin dragging the woman toward the house while she screamed and tried to get away. Shaking, I hung up and dialed 911. I love my local police because they are always so responsive. Within minutes, two police cars pulled up and were at the house. By that time, however, the man had forced the woman into the house so all was quiet from the outside. She must have convinced the police that everything was okay, because they stayed for a few minutes and then left.

Since then, everything has been quiet in the neighborhood. But the shalom is broken for me. The peace of my neighborhood is not the same now that I have witnessed an assault. I am more anxious for the baby dog to arrive so I can have a barking alarm. I was neither the assailant nor the victim, but the crime has affected me.

In the same way, divorce breaks the shalom of a much larger group than just the couple and even their children. As several of my extended family members have gone through painful divorces, our whole family aches for them. When my parents divorced, I know some of their friends were hurt and felt torn between their friendship for each of my parents. When Christian couples divorce, the body of Christ suffers (or should; we are all members of one body).

At Prison Fellowship, our focus on shalom was about more than theory. It was about finding better ways of administering justice that incorporated restitution and restoration of shalom into the process. You will see a powerful representation of that concept here. In the trailer for this film, you will see men building, stacking bricks, smoothing them. These men are building homes for people whose families they murdered, people who they mutilated and raped. They are doing something practical to restore the peace of the community, a peace they brutally shattered.

So how can the concept of shalom be incorporated into divorce? I don't have an answer, just a question. It seems clear that divorce breaks the shalom of a larger group of people. Are there practical ways that it can be restored? What do you think?

Hope for families with Down syndrome

The American Journal on Mental Retardation released a study showing that divorce rates among families with a Down syndrome child were actually lower than among a control group without disabled children and lower than families with other identified disablities. Of those families with Down syndrome children who did divorce, most of the divorces occured within two years of the child's birth.

Taken together, the results of this study have important practical and theoretical implications. Practically, parents of newborns can be counseled about the risks and timing of possible marital discord. For many families, especially those steeped in the still commonly heard notion that "divorce is rampant" among families of children with disabilities, it may be comforting to know that divorce is neither a necessary nor a common outcome of having a child with Down syndrome.

Via disabled Christianity.

Thursday Funny

I saw this sign across from Notre Dame in Paris last May and it cracked me up. Everything is so glitzy in Paris! In case you're wondering, I checked the sign for another "c" -- it really is a misprint, not a weird font issue.

Divorce and faith

In Between Two Worlds, Elizabeth Marquardt talked about the effects of divorce on the faith of the kids involved. While children of divorce were less likely to embrace faith than their peers, those that did were more likely to wind up as evangelicals for a variety of reasons. This article in USA Today profiles several individuals who are taking their faith more seriously than their parents. Two of them are from divorced families.

Brooke Havarty, 21, says her parents struggled when she transferred from Arizona State to Liberty University in Virginia, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.

"I had a great childhood in a great family," she says. "We went to church on Sundays, but it was just what you did. I was never shown the value of the Bible, the role God had in my life. I saw the consistency and joy in the lives of faithful Christians, and I wanted that in my life."

Havarty, whose parents are divorced, adds that her dad "is an amazing father, but he doesn't want to give every area of his life to Christ the way I do. It's hard for him to understand why I'm so black and white about things."

...Nolan says she felt a deep connection to Catholicism as a teen when her family had just moved cross-country for the second time. She insisted her parents, nominal Catholics, send her for religious studies and drive her to Mass.

"At first I was a little obnoxious. There were a few conversations like, 'You need to calm down,' " she recalls. And when she chose Franciscan, known for its traditionalist fervor, "I know my dad was leery."

Her father, Tom Nolan, 53, of Atlanta, says the demands of a divorce, a move and travel in his sales job have left him "disconnected from church." Yet he supported her, as he does now that she's going to do social work in the Andes instead of going straight to graduate school.

Love, Peanut

From letter to my grandparents at age 15:

"The typewriter from Dad arrived today! What a perfect gift. I can’t wait to try it out….The best present I got however was from myself! I started reading my Bible daily. It has really been a blessing and I have gained a lot of happiness and insight."

Love, Peanut

From a letter I sent to my grandparents after my twin cousins were born. Grandma Smyers was my great-grandma and was 80 when the twins were born.

The twins are really cute and both of them like me! Grandma Smyers did not want to hold Paul because he wiggles and jumps a lot! So she held Rachel. Rachel just giggles and cries.

Paul took me to lunch almost a year ago when I was in North Carolina and stopped to visit him at Duke where he was getting his MBA. He doesn't wiggle and jump as much anymore. Rachel still giggles though.

Broken toy home

This is the kind of toy that belongs in a therapist's office, not the playroom in your house. I'm sure it was well-intentioned, but come on. While we're at it, let's make sure that Barbie's Tawny Horse comes with a shotgun so you can shoot him when he breaks his leg.

I went, I wrote, I conquered!

Appropos of nothing, I am delighted to announce that I am the official winner of the Angelina Jolie limerick contest. What? You never heard of such a thing? Well, if you followed the links I've recommended in the sidebar and found Relevant Blog, you would see that Mary DeMuth is running contests to give away copies of her two novels (here and here) which she had autographed to various celebrities and which are being returned to her by some of the celebrities and their peeps. Angelina Jolie's books came back, and Mary announced a contest to get her copies. The task: write a limerick about Ms. Jolie. And the winning entry, written by moi:

The famous girl named Angelina
Looks too much like a string bean-a
Instead of L.A.,
Brad, take her to Pompeii
And make her fill up on tortellini-a

Perhaps not Pulitzer material, but I have been wanting to read Mary's two novels, about which I have heard many good things, so I am very excited. Definitely the boost my Saturday needed.

Later in July, I'll be posting an interview with Mary and some information about her newest nonfiction release, Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture. Stay tuned!

I did it all for the kids--and a cookie

My oh-so-funny and scary-smart colleagues at The Point, Gina and Roberto, have put up two posts that are must reads. Gina points out the shallow way we sometimes throw around the word "martyr" and Roberto expands on Gina's comments by quoting Chris Rock, who appears to be gunning for Bill Cosby's spot as truth-teller-in-resident.

Grunge and grace

I was trying to track down this quote:

"Grunge is what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars"

which was in an earlier post I did on the book Smashed.

I found the orginial Newsweek article text here and was drawn into the sad, sad story of Kurt Cobain.

Cobain's mother was a housewife; his father, Don Cobain, was a mechanic at the Chevron station in town. They divorced when the singer was 8. ...The image one gets is that of a frail kid batted between warring parents. "[The divorce] just destroyed his life." Wendy O'Conner tells Michael Azerrad in the Nirvana biography, "Come As You Are." "He changed completely. I think he was ashamed. And he became very inward-he just held everything [in]....I think he's still suffering." As a teen, Cobain dabbled in drugs and punk rock, and dropped out of school. His father persuaded him to pawn his guitar and take an entrance exam for the navy. But Cobain soon returned for the guitar. "To them, I was wasting my life," he told the Los Angeles Times. "To me, I was fighting for it." Cobain didn't speak to his father for eight years. When Nirvana went to the top of the charts, Don Cobain began keeping a scrapbook. "Everything I know about Kurt," he told Azerrad, "I've read in newspapers and magazines." ...Ed Rosenblatt, Geffen Records president, says, "The world has lost a great artist and we've lost a great friend. It leaves a huge void in our hearts." That is certainly true. If only someone had heard the alarms ringing at the rambling, grayshingled home near the lake. Long before there was a void in our hearts, there was a void in Kurt Cobain's.

And now I am reminded why I am writing about the incredible hope and healing we have in Christ.

Love, Peanut

Excerpt from letter I sent to my grandparents, age 8:

"A week ago I swallowed my tooth! I was eating a vanilla wafer and it's how I swallowed my tooth."

I lost another one to corn on the cob after this. Sadly my adult teeth emerged in the most frightening, crooked mess ever seen. I am the before and after success story of orthodontia. My mother will be glad to know that I have long since given up the dream of torturing my orthodontist to make up for the pain he inflicted on my metal-bound mouth. Yes, it was worth it.

Calling all pastors

I finished reading David Instone-Brewer's Divorce and Remarriage in the Church over a taco at Moe's on Saturday. It is a thought-provoking book, and to be honest, I feel inadequate to fully evaulate his claims. So I'm going to appeal to you pastors out there. I think there are a few pastors who read this blog from time to time. Instone-Brewer's book is sub-titled "Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities," so his book is really for you anyway. I'll give you the basics of Instone-Brewer's premise here, but don't cheat -- go read the book, follow his entire argument, and let me know what you think. (OK, if you want to cheat a little, you can go to his web site and get a quick summary of his thesis.) You can leave a comment here on the blog, or email me (you'll find my email address in my profile).

Instone-Brewer says there are two main Old Testament teachings and two main New Testament teachings on divorce; they are interlaced, as the N.T. teachings refer back to the principles in the O.T. teachings. So the O.T. passages are Deuteronomy 24:1, which allows divorce for adultery, and Exodus 21:10-11, which allows divorce for neglect of food, clothing, and conjugal love (which we could extrapolate into abandonment, abuse, and neglect). The N.T. teachings are in Matthew 19:3 and following, where the Pharisees question Jesus about Rabbi Hillel's "Any Cause" divorce, a (willful?) misinterpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1, and I Corinthians 7, where Paul instructs the believers in Corinth on marriage, singleness, divorce, and widowhood. Instone-Brewer's argument on this latter passage is far too involved for me to try to sum up here.

So pastors and other Bible scholars, get a copy of the book and let me know if you think his arguments stand up.

Why does this matter for a blog on the children of divorce? As I mentioned before, the church has often excluded families after divorce. Sometimes it was the subtle exclusion of people who didn't know what to say and simply felt uncomfortable around those who are hurting. But sometimes it was the overt exclusion that forbade our moms and dads from being members of the church or serving in leadership. Not long ago, I knew a man who lost his job with a denomination after his wife had an affair and divorced him. You'd better believe the children of that couple were hurt by the denomination's actions.

The way the church treats divorced individuals affects entire families, not just the former spouses, and much of that treatment rests on our understanding of the legitimacy of divorce as informed by Scripture. I grew up on the conservative side of these issues, and I was challenged by this book to rethink some of my assumptions about divorce. For those who grew up on the liberal side of these issues, I think you will also be challenged by this book in some of your assumptions. And really, if a book makes us think, hasn't it pretty much done it's job?

Saturday distractions

An entire flock of sparrows has been emptying my bird feeder and giving me good excuses to be distracted from the writing I'm supposed to be doing. The new birdfeeder is also attracting a pair of cardinals, a bunch of blue jays who are too big and too dumb to figure out how to get to the seeds, a grackle who can't fit inside but who hilariously hangs on to the bottom and spins around while pecking furiously between the openings in the cage, doves and robins who happily pick up whatever spills on the ground, a lone nuthatch, and of course wily squirrels who are not supposed to be able to fit in the cage but who of course do.

Love, Peanut

Excerpt from letter Mom sent to my grandparents, when I was age 7:

"She has made several friends at school. Her best girlfriend is Jessica. She's on her second 'boyfriend' who is Billy [name deleted to protect the innocent]. It seems Billy 'lets' her hold crickets (which, according to her, aren't the same as bugs). She even brags that she's the only girl in her class who will hold crickets!"

Um, I've since changed my mind, both about Billy and about crickets.

Jesus and the rabbis

I'm reading David Instone-Brewer's excellent book Divorce and Remarriage in the Church. So far, I've made it to chapter 5 and, based on my reading thus far, I can heartily recommend this book.

Instone-Brewer applies his extensive study of Jewish rabbinical thought to the biblical passages on divorce. The teachings of the ancient rabbis represent an enormous gap in modern Christian thinking generally (not just as it applies to divorce), as I began to discover years ago when I started reading Chaim Potok's novels. Potok writes about Jewish characters and is usually exploring the conflict between branches of Judaism. Most famously, in The Chosen, he contrasted Hasidic and Orthodox Judaism. Reading Potok's passages on what the different rabbis thought about this or that Old Testament (for us) teaching gave me a deeper and richer understanding of my Christian faith. In that tradition, Instone-Brewer asserts what I have read elsewhere: that Jesus' teaching on divorce in Matthew 5, in response to a question from the Pharisees, is basically His way of deciding between the divergent teachings of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammei. Understood in that context, Jesus' teaching takes on a very different meaning than the Christian church has traditionally taught.

Ultimately, this argument has extremely modern applications since it centers on whether divorce can be obtained without cause. Jesus says, no; there are allowances for divorce in the law, but they are for specific reasons and can only be initiated by the wronged party. Divorcing for reasons outside of the law constitutes an invalid divorce. If the divorce is invalid, than so is a subsequent remarriage.

When I was growing up, much of conservative Christianity taught that any remarriage after a divorce constituted adultery. If Instone-Brewer is right (and you'll have to read his book and follow his thesis to decide that), than this teaching is false; and if it is false, than the church has wrongly subjected those who have divorced biblically and their children to unwarranted shame and condemnation.

Furthermore, Instone-Brewer acknowledges (though indirectly--at least through chapter 5) one of the bitter complaints that comes up so often among divorced folks: namely, support payments. According to Instone-Brewer, if a Jewish man in Jesus' time divorced his wife because she had broken the marital vows, she was not entitled to a settlement of any kind. But while Jewish men of the first century liked having the easy out of a divorce for any cause, their wives also liked it because, having not been found guilty of violating their vows, they were entitled to a settlement from their husbands, one that was often sufficient to care for them for the rest of their lives. Do you catch the modern application here? If we followed biblical models for divorce, we wouldn't have all these bitter exes complaining about the money they have to pay for spousal support.

More to come as I keep reading.

Love, Peanut

Excerpt from a letter my mom sent to my dad's parents when I was 4:

"We bought her some Valentines for her to take to Nursery school the other day. She thought she was supposed to take them to sell! She doesn’t quite understand why she’s supposed to give them to the other kids."

Love, Peanut

Actual excerpt from a letter to my dad, as dictated to my grandma around the age of 4 or 5:

"I talked to Santa today at the mall. He got my letter. He has real whiskers. So does Otto, Doug's dog."

The good stepdad

Since birthmothers often are awarded primary physical custody of children after divorce, a stepfather has a wonderful opportunity to mold a child's daily habits, friendships, values, sense of responsibility and approach to school and to life. Here are some suggestions. [source]

It's really refreshing to see something complementary about stepfathers in the press. Usually, stepfathers are portrayed as potential sources for abuse as "an unrelated male in the house." Does that happen? Sure. The evil stepmother also exists outside of fairy tales. But not every stepparent is evil incarnate. And it's good to see an article that not only acknowledges the very positive role that an active stepfather can have in a child's life, but that also gives stepfathers some tips for how they can engage in that role.

Modeling forgiveness

Now, here's a mom who gets it. (Courtesy of Jen Abbas, whose aunt this mom happens to be.)

If you can't grow up and put aside differences for one day then how will you ever teach your kids forgiveness?

Yes, evil exists

Seriously, what is wrong with people?

Dad kills child, self
Mom beat baby to death over divorce

OK, I know the answer is sin, but does Satan really have to get this kind of joy? No wonder God hates divorce.

One divorce, sunny side up

A new children's book, written by a now grown child of divorce, looks on The Bright Side:

He found that he has actually benefited from being a child of divorce.
· He met lots of new people and learned a lot about his parents.
· He became more independent and gained insight into himself.
· He could talk more openly with both parents.
· He learned how to stop blaming himself and separate his parents’ problems from his life.

The kids made me do it

I really and truly love the people at DivorceCare. They have done so much to heal broken lives within the church and they have made the church a wonderful place of healing and hope for broken people in the community. I really just can't say enough wonderful things about them. Which is why I was so sad to see this pop up on one of the daily emails they send out:

"Children are the leading cause of second marriages coming to divorce," says Gary Richmond.

Mr. Richmond goes on to say:

"They see the stepparent as the enemy, and they strongly defend the missing parent in the home."

Now, to be fair, the entire rest of the email is focused on positive ways that parents can help their children adjust to a new stepparent, and it is good. But the first part of this quote by Mr. Richmond is rather stunning.

First of all, since when are we blaming children for the failure of their parents' marriages? Hey, I realize there are angelic kids (like me, natch) and then there are holy terrors. The post right before this one covered a marriage program by an organization focused on autism, and certainly parents dealing with disabled children face an added strain on their lives, including their marriages. Parents who lose a child to death often divorce. But, really, we're blaming the kids now? How about adults taking responsibility for their actions and their decisions? How about remembering who the grown ups are?

(And, again, to be fair, I think the whole context of the DivorceCare email does that, but yes, this one statement sets me off.)

Second, I'd like to see the statistics to back up Mr. Richmond's statement. And I'd like to see how those stats are being determined. Because parents are told over and over again to let their kids know that the divorce doesn't have to do with them, it has to do with Mommy and Daddy. And if that's the case, how are we sure that Mommy and Daddy have fixed their issues before hooking up with Stepmommy and Stepdaddy? If Mommy was Runaround Sue in her first marriage to Daddy, chances are she'll be the same way with Stepdaddy, and that sure isn't the fault of little Johnny or Jane, no matter how loyal they feel toward Daddy.

Now, my guess is that Mr. Richmond is instead extrapolating and interpreting data, skewing it to suit his purpose. Yes, I've seen the statistics that say second marriages are more likely to fail than first marriages, and when there are children from the first marriage, that likelihood rises. I don't dispute that. And no, it's not always like the Brady Bunch. It might be difficult and there may be days when Mom and Stepdad or Dad and Stepmom wish they could hang the little brats by their thumbs. But the kids can't march off to divorce court and dissolve the marriage. Only the people who made the vows can break the vows.

So, may I submit to you, my readers, that people filing for divorce are the leading (only) cause of second (any) marriages ending in divorce.

Keeping everything the same

Life is hard enough for kids with autism. One thing that helps autistic kids is routine and stability, so imagine how much more traumatic divorce is for these vulnerable children. With that in mind, this is very good news:

Today the National Autism Association (NAA) announced the launching of its Family First Program, a comprehensive national marital counseling program to combat divorce rates within the autism community. The new initiative offers couples with autistic children immediate access to marital counseling, and a grant program for those unable to afford it.

Read more here.

Unborn child of divorce

Well, it had to come to this some time:

She got the house and he got the Honda. The problem in Augusta and Randy Roman's divorce came over the little things -- the really little things. Frozen embryos that they once hoped would bring them children.Augusta Roman wants to keep the embryos and try to have a baby. Randy Roman wants them destroyed, or at least kept frozen.

A marriage good enough

Women like this will put people like this out of business. And that would be a good thing.

It's good to be admired

My friend's two-year-old thinks I'm great. Her four-year-old is less impressed by this stage of life, but the little one's eyes still light up when I show up at their front door.

So yesterday, my friend emails to tell me that she and her husband and their girls were sitting outside, admiring the beautiful sunset colors. As she often did with her four-year-old, she turned to the two-year-old and asked, "Who made the sunset for you?" The four-year-old has long known the answer to this one, which is of course, "Jesus." Apparently, the two-year-old hasn't had quite the same theological training yet. When asked, "Who made the sunset for you?" she looked up at her mommy and said, "Kristine?"

Not your ordinary sleepover

Elizabeth Marquardt on the oddities of a child's life post-divorce:

one of my first thoughts (after first simply appreciating this terrific childhood-from-the-child’s-point-of-view piece of writing) was that this experience precisely parallels what life is like for children of divorce, except that your friend’s (perfectly nice) mom is your (generally perfectly nice) stepmother or stepfather (who, nevertheless, might as well be from Mars), and no one comes to pick you up at 2 am.

Just say no

...to Ritalin.

A new study released in Canada found that kids there in divorced families were significantly more like to be on Ritalin than kids in intact homes. The reasons are unclear--maybe the stress of divorce caused the child to act out, maybe mom or dad is too stressed to deal with normal childhood behavior. Whatever the cause, the news isn't good, as one Canadian doctor noted:

Because … if we are going too quick to prescribe medication, like Ritalin, like methylphenidate, we may not only be masking the normal process of adaptation to divorce, but we may be contributing to the degree of distress the children of divorce are experiencing.

Are you a football?

Elizabeth Marquardt talked about feeling like a football being tossed between two people, always in mid-air, floating between one parent's world and the other. If you're a kid with that story, you could be on the Today Show:

For a special series, “Through Innocent Eyes,” TODAY is looking for children between the ages of 8 and 18 to tell their story. If selected, we will give the children simple cameras for them to record their stories. They will be paired with NBC correspondents and producers, who will be their mentors. Their stories will be edited by NBC and air on TODAY.They will be selected for their ability to tell a compelling story. For example, one might be a Muslim refugee living with her family in middle America or a child with a military parent stationed in Iraq. Another might be a child of divorce moving back and forth between two households or a child of gay parents. One could be a child athlete or performing artist or live with a disabled family member.We’re looking for a variety of situations and lifestyles. We want to celebrate childhood, but not avoid the social issues of growing up poor, or disabled, displaced, or “different.”

My only question is exactly which category divorced children fall into. Surely not "different" in today's world!

Knocking on the door to adulthood

Don't ask why I was reading a review of the upcoming movie Knocked Up. I can't explain it myself. The movie, if you're not up on pop culture, is about a girl who gets pregnant after a one night stand with an irresponsible guy. She keeps the baby and, according to the review, the guy is launched down a pathway toward grown-up land. But perhaps this was why I was meant to read this review:

At a moment of crisis Ben calls his father, a nice, tolerant guy played by Harold Ramis, for advice. “Just tell me what to do,” he begs, but no help is forthcoming. (“I’ve been divorced three times. Why are you asking me?”) The absence of a credible model of male adulthood is clearly one of the forces trapping Ben and his friends in their state of blithe immaturity.

I've read about this notion of men trapped in adolescence, most notably in Don Miller's book To Own a Dragon. Now that it's hit the big screen, I guess it's officially a social phenomenon.

Change isn't the only permanent thing

From a divorced dad, who also happens to be a divorce attorney:

CHANGE IS A PART OF LIFE. Every day we move from dawn to daylight to dusk to dark. At each stage there is a loss; a loss of darkness when we emerge into daylight, a loss of summer as we move into autumn, a loss as the child moves away from the milk of its mother to solids, a loss in moving home, in changing cars and in changing schools.Yes, change can be and often is hard but it's how change is dealt with that determines how successful are our outcomes. Looked at this way you will recognise that nothing is permanent. The body and its surroundings are continually changing. So everything is impermanent. These are unavoidable truths.So the sooner your child understands this about the world the less your child will suffer.

This dad's point is that children should just accept that change is a natural part of life and get over it. Divorce is certainly natural--in the spiritual way that Scripture uses the word. That is to say, it is sinful and fallen, not redeemed and whole.

There are a lot of broken, impermanent things in life, it is true. What is also true is that each of these things ought to make us realize that brokenness implies the absence of a perfect whole; it is less than what it ought to be. These things should drive us to seek the perfect, the permanent. They should drive us to seek God, who never changes, who is a Rock of permanence in a world of tumult.

Running away from divorce

I came across this interesting article today, linking divorce and runaways.

A 2006 report from the National Runaway Switchboard, a Chicago crisis hotline for runaway youth, shows that family dynamics, such as divorce, arrival of stepparents and sibling friction account for nearly 30 percent of calls in 2006. There is a clear link in Illinois between divorce rates and the number of missing children.

I was a little skeptical of the data, since most of the counties mentioned are in Chicagoland. Were they misreading the data since those counties have dense population? As if reading my mind, the article went on:

Some may believe that the high number of missing children in specific counties can be attributed to population size, but census data proves otherwise. Although McHenry and Madison counties are among two of the top 10 largest populations, neither are within the top 10 counties with missing children.

Although it would be nice to know where McHenry and Madison counties fall with regard to divorce rates. If they were also not among the top 10 counties for divorces, then the case for a correlation would look stronger.

School of hard knocks

Having parents who divorce after the kids have left home carries its own unique pain and loss. From Georgia Family Law Blog:

"For a lot of students, it's a loss of their security," says Mary Anne Knapp, counselor for CAPS. "They think, 'I just got here and am getting my bearings. I wanted something constant to go back to. I wanted to know there was security at home.'"

Darn messy kids

I just couldn't pass this one up.

Split-family living isn’t easy. Children of divorce often ride a roller coaster of emotions that can sometimes make even the best of divorces seem chaotic. They withdraw. They throw tantrums. They refuse to eat. They cry. They get angry. They say horrible things. Even when both parents are very involved and there is absolutely no abuse or other negative activity going on, kids go berserk.

Oops, so sorry that we managed to make your perfectly lovely divorce a nightmare; we should have taken the destruction of our family as the happy news it really was.

And can I just point out that ALL children occasionally withdraw, throw tantrums, display bad eating habits, cry, get angry, and say mean things? Welcome to parenting.

Reality bites

Yuck! This is one reality TV show I will not be watching. Who comes up with this stuff--and why are they still employed?

How do you mend a broken heart? By getting angry, getting even and getting over it! Real people who have undergone traumatic divorces learn how to move on with their lives, on Ex-Wives Club, an empowering new reality series premiering MONDAY, MAY 28 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. The show is hosted by three women who know all about breaking up -- famed "exes" Angie Everhart, Shar Jackson and Marla Maples.

OK, that last sentence is actually kind of funny. The only one of those names I even recognize is The Donald's ex. Apparently, Shar Jackson is the significantly less famous ex-wife of K-Fed, who is himself only famous because of his other ex-wife. And I still can't figure out who Angie Everhart is supposed to be.

Commercials airing now show one woman pushing her ex's car out of an airplane and watching it implode on the desert floor. According to the web site, getting revenge is one of three ways the show is 'helping' people 'move on' after their divorces. And instead of Dr. Phil, we get some lady who wrote a book called Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life. As if.

Let's hope this one gets canceled after the obligatory three episodes, never to rear its ugly head again.

King of commitment

Did anyone see last night's finale of The King of Queens? I was busy multi-tasking and channel surfing, but I saw a few snippets here and there. Carrie and Doug have been having some marriage problems in the last few episodes and things came to a head in the finale. On the loading dock of the building where Carrie's dad's wedding reception is taking place, the king and his queen have a showdown.

Doug accuses Carrie of not being committed to their marriage, after finding out that she has kept an apartment in Manhattan that he thought she had given up. He asks when she has ever gone out on a limb for him. Carrie says, "I married you, didn't I? What do you call that?"; to which Doug replies, "Um, hitting the jackpot!"

Then he follows it up with a really touching and insightful speech. He tells his wife that a couple doesn't go out on a limb for each other when they get married. Couples getting married think that everything is going to work out great; they're in love. Then, ten years go by and--in the case of Doug and Carrie--she realizes that he's not getting any thinner, and he realizes that she's not getting any nicer. That, Doug says, is when they have to go out on a limb for each other...to stay together even when things don't appear to have worked out perfectly.

In real life, actors Kevin James and Leah Remini who play Doug and Carrie have each been married just a few years. But the actor who plays Carrie's father is Jerry Stiller, father of actor Ben Stiller, and husband of 53 years to actress Anne Meara.

The other Bono

From Dawn Eden's blog:

I remember liking the fact that Chastity's parents sang "I Got You Babe" together with her in tow. There was something about that image of a supportive family that I longed for, as my mother and father were having marital problems at that time. As it happened, I was six months ahead of Chastity in the divorced-parents department as well.

Read the whole post, complete with pictures and video, here. (Scroll down to Tuesday, May 8.)

Novel divorcees

NPR has an article up about books that aren't getting a lot of press but that are worth the read. One of their picks is Our Kind, a novel consisting of stories of women who married in the '50s and divorced in the '70s.

The group includes the artistic one, the recovering alcoholic, the one whose daughter killed herself, and more. Narrated by these women collectively ("Years ago we were led down the primrose lane, then abandoned somewhere near the carp pond"), the stories of their current lives include an intervention with the local Realtor, trying to save the geese at the Country Club, calling old lovers on the phone — and my favorite, a priceless chapter called "Sick Chicks," which describes a book discussion group that meets in a local hospice (at this meeting, they're talking about Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway).

Follow the link above to read the whole review and an excerpt from the novel, including this:

Know that we are a close-knit community. We've lived here for years, which is not to say that our ancestors are buried here; simply, this is the place we have all ended up. We were married in 1953. Divorced in 1976. Our grown daughters pity us; our grown sons forget us. We have grandchildren we visit from time to time, but their manners agitate, so we return, nervous, thankful to view them at a distance.

Most of us excel at racquet sports.

Marriage-affirming words

Joni Eareckson Tada shared some nuggets of encouragement from her marriage to Ken Tada while speaking with Nancy Leigh DeMoss a few weeks ago. The transcript is well worth reading.

Joni talks about her and Ken's humorous first date, which was a good test of how he'd handle the day to day challenges of marriage to a quadriplegic. She talks about their rocky first year of marriage, and how she sought the Lord for help. And she talks about how she continues to encourage and support her husband.

If you need some encouragement in your marriage or in your singleness, go read this interview.

Marketing divorce

From my friend and co-blogger Holly at The Point:

"Life's short. Get a divorce." That's the tagline being used by a Chicago law firm to promote their divorce "services." The huge billboard, which hangs in Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast neighborhood, features two scantily clad bodies. It screams sex. The law firm is defending the "cutting edge" ad. Divorce attorney Corri Fetman audaciously says, "If you're unhappy, that life is too short to continue in an unhappy marriage, those images provide hope."

Follow the link in Holly's post, if you dare, to the Fox News video story on this tasteless ad and you'll see the billboard: a catchy tagline and contact info for the law firm, flanked by the scantily clad torsos of a woman on the left and a man on the right.

OK, so the real message here seems to be that life is too short to be with a dumpy loser like the one you're holding hands with as you stroll down the street and see the billboard, and that if you would just get a divorce, you could hook up with a model-licous hunk or babe like the ones pasted overhead. Really? Come on!

This ad and the notion behind it reminded me of an old article at Boundless. In "Brother, You're Like a Six," Scott Croft lamented a similar fantasy that plays out among the unmarried crowd:

I once counseled a Christian brother in his dating relationship with a great woman. She was godly, caring, and bright. She was attractive, but not a supermodel. For weeks I listened to this brother agonize over his refusal to commit and propose to this woman. He said they were able to talk well about a lot of things, but there were a few topics he was interested in that she couldn't really engage with, and sometimes the conversation "dragged."

He also said that, while he found her basically attractive, there was one feature of hers that he "just pictured differently" on the woman he would marry. I would ask about her godliness and character and faith, and he said all those things were stellar (and he was right). Finally, he said, "I guess I'm looking for a 'ten'."

I could hold back no longer. Without really thinking, I responded, "You're looking for a 'ten'? But, brother, look at yourself. You're like a 'six.' If you ever find the woman you're looking for, and she has your attitude, what makes you think she would have you?"

Exactly. This law firm is trying to sell the ridiculous notion that all of us ordinary Joe's and Jane's deserve better, that we deserve to be with the hottest thing around. Because life would be so much better if we were arm in arm with someone better looking. Well, maybe for the first five minutes, until the person you're arm in arm with realizes that they deserve someone better looking than you.

And where in all of this do we find character, honesty, kindness, depth, compassion, love? Those are the things life is too short to be without; those are the things we can all display, with a little work and discipline, and the things we should hope and pray for in a spouse.

The power of (grasping) love

My pastor is preaching through Ephesians and this morning's sermon covered the third chapter. I'd been reading it all week, preparing my heart and mind for this weekend's homily. I thought I had it down. But, oh, how wrong I was.

In his excitement, Paul keeps getting sidetracked and takes until the very end of this third chapter to finally tell the believers at Ephesus what his prayer for them is.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I made a special note in the margin of my Bible that grasping, understanding, this love of Christ takes power. Paul uses the word twice. That's from the Holy Spirit, and I've got the Holy Ghost power, amen. But as Mike preached and expounded on this perfect love that God has for us, this love that will never let us go, this love divine, all love's excelling, I realized how very little of it I understand, how far I come from truly grasping it. Indeed, my hold on this love is tenuous and tentative at best.

The truth is, I don't trust God's love. I think He's fickle sometimes. I think His love is hard and demanding, tough love. That's what I expect from God. I want His tender compassion and His mercy renewed every morning, but too often, I look around and think: This is it? So I am disappointed and decide that God must be sovereign and lofty and oh so good, but I have a lurking doubt about that love part.

Now I know why Paul's prayer for the Ephesians was so passionate and so important that it needed to become part of Scripture. I think this must be God's desire for us: to know His infinite, gracious, tender love; to trust in it, and in Him, completely; to grasp it, knowing that He is grasping us in His own tight grip and will never let us go.

Dive right in

Friend of the blog, Jen Abbas, is planning a wedding. In July, she'll wed beau Niels. Jen is the author of Generation Ex, a book that I know a lot of adult children of divorce have found tremendously beneficial. As she gets ready to walk the aisle, Jen offers some thoughts on the unique challenges of wedding planning for children of divorce.

"...how does one plan a wedding with all the naive, optimistic hope that makes two people giddy enough to take the plunge when some of the most important guests have shown us that sometimes the water's not so great for swimming?"

Read more here.

Knowing what not to do

A few years before he died, my Grandpa C. wrote an autobiography. In his late teens, he found out what he didn't want to do with his life:

In the summer of 1943 I got a factory job working at the CB&Q Foundry in the machine shop. Bob worked there and he got me the job. The whole summer I stood at an automatic drill drilling two holes into small plugs, which fit into the small hole in the end of barrels. I thought I had drilled enough of these pieces to last forever. After standing at that drill all summer, I made up my mind that I was going to do something besides work in a factory. A summer of this was enough for a life time.

Grandpa taught us a valuable lesson. It's okay to try something and decide it's not for you.

Somehow, with two grandfathers who were skilled carpenters, I managed to inherit not a single carpentry gene. A few weeks ago, my silverware drawer broke; or, more precisely, the slide mechanism broke. Not a problem, said I. I am woman, hear me operate a Dremel. But as Scripture says, pride goes before a fall. And as I recall, the Proverbs 31 woman was nowhere praised as a whiz with a hammer and screws.

I followed all the directions for the new slide with just a few muttered curse words as I contorted my body to fit inside the cabinet. I drilled, screwed, realized I'd measured wrong, drilled and screwed again, only to find in the final analysis that the whole assembly is mounted ever so slightly too low. There is a small gap showing above the drawer front and it's all just a little atilt.

Fortunately, I have picked up one good skill through the years: knowing when to walk away before the tears spill over. I would a thousand times rather be sitting here at the computer telling you the story, in a humorous fashion, than be down in the kitchen drilling and screwing for a third time over. I am officially crossing "carpenter" off the list of jobs I might want to have someday.

Wanting something

I subscribe to an online nonfiction book club and just picked up from the library one of the selections from a few weeks back that had intrigued me. It's the story of a girl looking for her adoptive parents. More precisely, it's the story of the man she contacts believing him to be her birth father.

As Michael Mewshaw tells his story in If You Could See Me Now, he tells of growing up as the son of parents who divorced during World War II. His mother harbored deep resentment toward Michael's father, telling her sons that their dad was a gambler who had left them ruined financially and scandalized morally. Mewshaw writes:

"When, many years later, I found the nerve to ask him about his first marriage and the part that gambling had played in its failure, he curtly replied, 'Whatever I did, you and Pat and your mother never wanted for anything.'

"I wish I had had the courage to inform my father that there were things I wanted and never had. I wanted to know him. I wanted his love and approval and his presence in my life. What I got instead--well, it wasn't without value. Early on I learned a basic premise of art--the paradoxical importance of silence in music, blank spaces on a page of poetry. While what happens to kids has inescapable consequences, what doesn't happen can have even greater impact."

What would Jesus say?

David Instone-Brewer had an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back on divorce in the Bible. It's an interesting piece. I have Instone-Brewer's book at home and will post a review of it here soon.

A space in your home

The New York Times has an interesting article on how non-custodial parents make their visiting children feel at home. Here's an excerpt:

Many American children of divorce play a residential version of the schoolyard game Red Rover, shuttling between their parents’ houses. But these children are not just visiting their mothers and fathers. Their parents often remarry or live with partners who have children, and sometimes the new couple has children too. With multiple stepparents, stepsiblings, half siblings and pseudosiblings, it’s a whole new type of family, and with it comes the challenge to design a home where everyone feels welcome. Members of these blended families, as well as psychotherapists, said creating a comfortable and inclusive home is fraught with difficulty. For adults and children alike, having a place in the house has parallels to having a place in the family. Hurt feelings and lasting resentment can spring from something as seemingly mundane as wall color or closet space.

Story time

Lest anyone be tempted to doubt my literary prowess, I give you this gem, exactly as it was written twelve days after my eighth birthday:

Once upon a time in the heart of a fast jungle there livid an elevant, who in times of trouble was a coward. For instant, last saturday, the house was om fire and he ran away! The End

Everybody gets divorced

Amanda Witt has a great article in Touchstone magazine about her children's friendship with a neighborhood girl whose mother is a lesbian. Would that more Christians had this kind of witness to their unbelieving neighbors. Here's an excerpt that relates to our topic here, starting with the lesbian's daughter.

“She’s a lesbian. But I am not a lesbian. No way. But listen—don’t tell your Mom until tonight, okay?”
“Why not?”
“Because then she won’t be able to go yell at my Mom until tomorrow, so we can be friends for the rest of today.”
My kids looked at each other. Here, finally, was a topic my son completely understood.
“Um, listen,” he said to the new girl. “I don’t know much about lesbians, but I know my mother. She is not going to go yell at your mother.”
“But she won’t let us be friends.”
“Why not? The girl who used to live in your house—her parents were divorced, and divorce isn’t a good thing, either, but we were friends with her anyway. And my mother was friends with her mother.”
“It isn’t the same thing. Everybody gets divorced—I mean, like duh, my parents are divorced. It’s not a big deal. But nobody likes lesbians.”

Follow the link

Here are ten suggestions to help make a difference for a child of divorce you might know.

New children's books

I'm trying to get review copies of both of these so I can post reviews here.

From PRWeb:
"How I Survived my Parent's Big Scary Divorce by Audrey Lavin is a warm, funny, and supportive book to help children understand and process their parents' divorce, and know that they are not to blame."
"The Summer of the Snail takes the reader on a captivating journey into the heart of a little girl. Though the book addresses the heartache of divorce in the life of a child, this is not merely a story for children of divorce. It is an unforgettable story for all families with a timeless message of resilience, perseverance and everlasting love."

Partridge parting

Actor Danny Bonaduce, the red-headed kid from The Partridge Family, announced that his wife is seeking a divorce. The Bonaduces were married 16 years and have two kids.

From the Washington Post:
"There's no fight. Nobody's mad at anybody at my house," he said.
"It's been months of `You know, I think we'd be happier apart. I'm not happy, Danny.' But thing is, she has been friendly, and helpful," Bonaduce said.

I guess she forgot the words to the most famous Patridge Family song,
Come On Get Happy.

Old update

Of course, the better Femmes song for Wendy's would have been my personal favorite, Fat.

And speaking of music, the fabulous Oak Ridge Boys were just now on Leno singing "Sanjaya," in Jay's weekly American Idol/real celebrity bit. Hilarious! The Boys were my very first concert, at the Heart of Illinois fair way back when, followed by either Jack Wagner or Rick Springfield, I honestly can't remember which, a few years later. Great...now I have a craving for a corn dog...

The day I got very, very old...

...was the day that Blister in the Sun became mainstream enough to be background music for a Wendy's commercial. Violent Femmes as muzak? Say it ain't so!

Finding security in God

Found on Jen Abbas' blog:

The only way I knew to avoid divorce was to avoid marriage. My pastor reminded me that God is my heavenly Father, and that if I let Him, He will help me to find and maintain a marriage that lasts.

Jen, who is newly engaged, has written a great post on how she got to this place in life. The story is well worth reading in its entirety. Click here.

Divorce 19th century style

I ran across this article and thought it was a little humorous.

Near the middle of one of Morgan County’s oldest cemeteries, an unassuming marker honors a man who was not unassuming.
It honors Civil War veteran James Kindred Williams, a father of 22, who arguably has one of the strangest divorce cases in the county’s history.
“He divorced his first wife because she wouldn’t sleep with him anymore,” family historian Calvin Spurlin said. “After 16 children, I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t sleep with him anymore.”

Recovering childhood

From an excellent article on the Christianity Today web site:

Another challenge to building a successful divorce recovery program lies in ministering to its youngest casualties. An estimated 32% of American youngsters live in single-parent or blended-family households.

"We aim to teach our children two things in our children's divorce recovery program: It's not your fault. And you're not alone," says Rev. Mark Skalberg, singles pastor at Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs, Colo. (woodmenvalley.org). "Those things seem obvious to adults, but all children feel they're at fault, and that there's no one else like them."

Many churches that begin offering divorce recovery to adults quickly recognize the peripheral effects of the split on children. And it generally isn't long before they add a children's program.

Woodmen Valley's children's recovery program openly discusses divorce. But the church believes there's also value in simply offering a safe, quiet place for youngsters to get away from a sometimes volatile or stress-laden home environment. Games and craft projects that may appear inconsequential to outsiders can powerfully impact children, who relish the interaction with similarly situated peers in a calm and loving environment.

The baby dog

Even before our beloved Coal died so unexpectedly, I had started looking for a puppy of my own to add to our extended family. Now that Coal is gone, my little furry pup will be the only dog in the family, and he is much anticipated even though the search for just the right breeder is still ongoing. I told my parents that I joked with my single friends about registering at Petsmart and holding a puppy shower for the expected arrival. I thought they'd laugh at my silliness, but as it turns out, they're excited about getting a granddog. (Will that make the pup a nephdog to my brothers??) I'm excited too for obvious reasons. Who wouldn't be excited about a cute, cuddly burglar alarm? Plus now I can send out Christmas cards with my dog's picture every year, getting back at all those doting parents who send me pictures of their children (some of whom I've never met) when I am most interested in seeing the bright and smiling faces of my dear friends, not their offspring be they ever so dear. (Kudos, by the way, to my closest friends--whose children I am actually very fond of seeing--whose Christmas pictures featured the entire family, confirming my good sense in having them as my closest friends.)

Let's grow old apart

Click here for a review of a new book about one woman's gray divorce and how God helped her through it.

I did, I did, I do

I ran across this rather interesting opinion piece from a religion editor. He makes some good points. Why all the fuss over Guiliani's divorces if Newt's are just fine and if no one batted an eye at the Gipper's? And what exactly about being a war hero exempts one from having to live morally in the rest of one's life? The article quotes the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land as saying, of John McCain, "When you’re a war hero, you have less to prove on the character front." That's a pretty atrocious statement. I like a man in uniform as much, or more, than the next girl, but a real hero is composed of more than guts and glory.

And for the record, I'd like to say that I have never been married to any of the current Republican presidential candidates. Wow, eight wives between just three of them? And we're worried about the possibility of a Morman president?

The bells are ringing

Hearty congratulations to friend of the blog, Jen Abbas, who got engaged in Paris this week! How cool is that? Pop in to Jen's blog and leave her a note of congratulations. A toast: to Jen and Niels!

The glory of His character

So, I'm in the thick of writing the book. I so, so appreciate all the prayers--they're working and the writing is coming along nicely.

The book I'm writing is as much about the character of God as it is about the effects of divorce on our lives. I can't wait to share with you all the awesome things I'm studying and learning about our wonderful, magnificent God.

This last week in church, my pastor reminded us of the importance of God's character. He's preaching through the book of Exodus right now, and we just covered the really cool text where God puts Moses in the cleft of the rock and parades His glory before the leader of His people. (I did a fun craft with the kids, involving a dixie cup, a paper cut-out of Moses, and a tracing of their hands that was taped to the side of the cup where it could flip down to cover Moses in the cup.) This passage is the source of the famous hymn Rock of Ages:

Rock of ages, cleft for me
Let me hide myself in Thee

And another hymn, which reads in part:

He hideth my soul in the cleft of a rock
That shadows a dry thirsty land
He hideth my life in the depths of His love
And covers me there with His hand

God hides Moses in this small chasm and then walks past him, glory ablaze. Moses can't see God's glory, even from this protected spot, and live, so God waits until only His back is visible, bits of glory trailing behind Him, before lifting His hand and letting Moses see Him. As my pastor pointed out, Moses then gives us an accurate portrait of God, thereby putting to rest all of the conjecture about the long white beard and whether He's white or black or brown or red, right? Wrong.

Having seen a glimpse of the Almighty's glory, enough to make his face shine like a beacon, Moses sees most fit to tell us what God said about Himself.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

And as much as we might want to know about the long white beard, isn't it better to know about the long-suffering grace and mercy of our God, about His justice, and--as we discover in Christ--the perfect balance of these two elemental parts of His nature in the great scope of redemption? That character, that glorious and dreadful character, is our hope and joy. Because God is compassionate, He cares about our hurts. Because He is gracious, He is patient with our failings. Because He is slow to anger, we are not destroyed. He is loving and faithful and forgiving. But He is also just. He doesn't leave our hurts unpunished--neither the hurts we experience, nor the hurts we inflict. As He assured Israel, vengeance is His, and in His wisdom and mercy, He has laid all our sins on the perfect Christ, Jesus our Savior, who willingly took our punishment.

As Philip Bliss penned, "Hallelujah! What a savior!"

Coal, 1996-2007, R.I.P.

You were the dog we always dreamed of. We'll miss you, buddy.

Trouble in Gotham

From the New York Times:

Andrew Giuliani has been at his father’s side in campaign commercials and inaugurations since he was a toddler, famously bounding across the stage in a rambunctious manner and mimicking his father’s rhetorical flourishes during Mr. Giuliani’s 1994 mayoral inauguration. But Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with Andrew has grown strained and distant since his very public and bitter divorce from Andrew’s mother, Donna Hanover, and his marriage to Judith Nathan, according to Andrew and others familiar with the relationship.

Musing

Alanis Morisette simply makes me cry. Wish we were both here.

Love and money

As if I needed a reason to marry "well," from the man who brought us The Millionaire Next Door comes this tidbit:

"Millionaire couples have one-third the divorce rate of nonmillionaire couples."

Children who divorce

I'm not surprised to see this article, and glad that someone is addressing the needs of parents whose children are going through a divorce. Parents have dreams for their children, but those dreams never include divorce. When people divorce, the effects ripple through an entire family. More and more parents have to deal with their own grief at seeing their children divorce. When grandchildren are involved, the issue is complicated further since grandparents have no legal right to visitation except in very rare cases.

You've got betrayal

From an article on Steve Case in Washingtonian magazine (which, I can't believe I lived without for the last 10 years!):

The AOL juggernaut changed the face of Northern Virginia, creating an economic boom of car dealerships, new brick mansions, private jet sales, and restaurant openings. No segment profited more from AOL's success than the area's divorce attorneys. Infused with wealth, AOL employee-investors cashed out their first wives and acquired new ones, generating complicated questions about how to divide stock options that a handful of attorneys were able to exploit. The lawyers called them "AOL divorces." Case epitomized the trend with his own messy divorce from his wife, Joanne, who had been with him since Williams College. They'd married in 1985 and had three children. Eleven years later, in 1996, Case announced that he was having an affair with Jean Villanueva, a fellow executive of the company since the days of Q-Link.

How the church can help

From Tod E. Bolsinger in It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian:

When I was a relatively young Christian, my family was in a time of turmoil. My parents had gone through a divorce, and we stopped going to church. As a college student and a staff member for Youth for Christ, I was asked to serve on the evangelism committee of my church. And at my first meeting I met Howard and Alice Thomas, a dear elderly couple. At the end of the night we prayed together, and they mentioned a dozen people or more. They prayed with a sense of passion and care for these people, none of whom were their own children. Afterward I went up to them and told them, "I'm so deeply touched by the way you pray for these people. It's like the way I picture parents praying for their children." I had never
met Howard and Alice Thomas before that night. But Howard looked at me and said, "We will pray for you every day. What is your name, son?" They put my picture on their refrigerator. When I got married, Beth's picture was added and when my children came along, theirs too. Until first Howard and then Alice died, they prayed for me every day. Today, in no small part because of those prayers, all of the members of my family confess Christ and my mother and stepfather are both elders in the Presbyterian church. That is the kind of relationship that we have to offer the world--prayerful interdependence lived out because of Christ by the Spirit.

News News News!!!

I am thrilled to announce that InterVarsity Press will be publishing my book for the grown children of divorce in 2008! This has been in the works for several months and has been a blessing every bit of the way. The official signed contract arrived today. Big huge thanks to Catherine (who introduced me to my wonderful editor at IVP!) and Lori, my fabulous writer friends who have given me the joy and will to write. Please pray with me over the coming months as I write, that God will give me the right words of hope and grace and insights into His character and love for us.

Dad and chocolate

From Dawn Eden:

For most of my life, there have been two certainties about Valentines Day: I will not have a date, and my father will send me a jumbo box of chocolates. Dad moved away when I was a kid, a few years after my parents split. I knew him then as a workaholic who sometimes had to be reminded of my birthday — but he never forgot February 14. As a child, although I never minded getting candy, Dad's Valentine gift made me a bit sad because it left me wanting more. It reminded me how much I wanted his presence — not just his presents.

Divorce and the church

Perhaps I'm a little slow, but the irony of this has only just occured to me. Read about the split in the Episcopal church and inevitably you'll see the word "divorce" used to describe the contention. Churches leaving the Episcopal denomination are aligning themselves with the Anglicans, whose origin is the Church of England. If you remember your history, you'll recall that the Church of England began because of...ironic drumroll, please...a divorce. Henry VIII, determined to have a son, wanted to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. The Catholic church would not grant him the favor, so Henry decided to break with the church and declare himself head of his own denomination. Not an auspicious beginning. But I have to believe this is one of the times when what men intended for evil, God intended for good.

Divorce and heroin

From NPR:

You don't expect your child to grow up to be a heroin addict. From the moment of her birth, you have hopes and dreams about the future, but they never include heroin addiction...When the initial shock wore off, I analyzed and inventoried all the whys and hows of Katie's addiction. I searched for someone or something to blame. I blamed her friends. I blamed her dad. I blamed our divorce. But mostly, I blamed myself.

Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

Those words come from a hymn written by Charles Wesley, and I was put in mind of them this morning, the day before Valentine's Day, as I sat down with my One Year Bible. I'm not on the read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan this year, but I picked up my One Year Bible this morning for my time with the Lord, and the passages from the Old and New Testaments were both so appropriate for this love-ly time of year.

In Exodus 35 and 36, we learn that the Israelites were to build God a gorgeous, portable dwelling place, a tent that could be moved with the people during their wilderness wanderings. This was no pop-and-throw. Everything in it was first-rate. We're told that God had, in fact, raised up men who were extremely gifted artisans for just this time. They were the Mozarts of sewing and weaving and smithing, and they were also skilled at teaching others how to do these things. These men worked diligently and happily on the Lord's Tabernacle. The rest of the people had a part to play as well. They were to bring all the materials needed for the work, including fine cloth and precious metal. They gave so joyfully that the workmen eventually had to take a break to go tell Moses that the people had to stop giving! They had already given more than enough!

When was the last time you heard that news from a pulpit? These people had just seen the glory of the Lord covering Mount Sinai, they had just received instructions from the Lord, through Moses, for how they were to live, and they were so in awe of this magnificent God that their hearts overflowed with love and they gave so much that it was too much. Would that we would have hearts so full of God's grace and power!

In Matthew 27, we read of another outpouring of love, this time love directed at us from our Creator. The familiar tale of the crucifixion of Christ reminds us of God's great love for us. As Jesus hung on the cross, He suffered intense physical agony, mental anguish, and the mockery of onlookers. Yet, in all these things, He didn't sin by cursing God, or cursing us, or giving the whole thing up as just not worth it. What kept Him there on the cross wasn't nails; it was love.

What is our response to such love? Charles Wesley got it right, I think:

Finish then Thy new creation, Pure and spotless let us be
Let us see Thy great salvation Perfectly restored in Thee.
Changed from glory into glory, 'Til in heaven we take our place,
'Til we cast our crowns before Thee, Lost in wonder, love, and
praise.

Playing it too safe

I was vegging in front of the television last night with a couple of magazines and couldn't be bothered to change the channel when Extra! came on. Hollywood fluff can be amusing, so on it stayed. Then, I heard this little gem. Jim Carrey was being interviewed, specifically about his relationship with gal-pal Jenny McCarthy.

Jim: We're never getting married.

Reporter [disappointed and shocked]: Never??

Jim: Never...BUT, the good news is, we're never getting divorced [looks smug]

Well, now there's a life philosophy for you: You can't lose if you don't risk. Hint to Jim--neither can you win. Let's imagine how this philosophy would work out if others jumped on the Jim Carrey 'Fraidy Wagon.

Tony Bennett: I'm never singing a live concert...but, the good news is, I'll never get booed.

The Gipper: I'm never running for President...but, the good news is, I'll never lose a Presidential election.

Stephen King: I'm never submitting my novel to a publisher...but, the good news is, I'll never get a rejection notice. (Okay, this one almost happened; thanks to Tabitha for saving Carrie from the garbage can, literally.)

Wilbur Wright: I'm never pushing this thing off a sand dune...but, the good news is, I'll never crash an airplane.

Christopher Columbus: I'm never setting sail...but, the good news is, I won't be ridiculed when I fall off the end of the flat world.

Greatness takes a willingness to dare, to risk, to step out and stand for something. Faint heart ne'er won fair maid, and all that. Yes, there's a risk that you'll lose it all--but it's only a risk; the actual good news is, you might grab the brass ring and take home the prize. Sigh, where have all the heroes gone?

No crystal stair

Today (because I'm up way too late) is the first day of Black History Month. This has become one of my favorite months--well, okay, it's always been one of my favorite months because it's my birthday month--but, really, it's become one of my favorite months because for the last six years or so, this is the month Miss Lillian comes to devotions and leads us in singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the Negro National Anthem, written by poet James Weldon Johnson with music by his brother. Read the words here and listen to a funky arrangement here.

Another famous black poet was Langston Hughes, whose birthday is today. Hughes was a child of divorce, his father having abandoned the family, and was raised mainly by his grandmother. This was in the first decade of the 1900s, not a time when we think of divorce even being around, though of course it was. Hughes eventually reconnected with both his mother and father, but his relationship with his father particularly troubled him. And I'm reminded, reading of his mother's long absence from his life, of Hughes' famous poem, "Mother to Son:"

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.