The Effects of Divorce

I wanted to take the time to thank all of you who have read all or some of my blogs entries, it has been a pleasure to be able to write all these weeks. For my last entry, I’m going to write about divorce. Now obviously, no one gets married planning to get divorced, and if you do, there’s probably something wrong with you. Divorce can be a really long drawn out process, and it is pretty painful as well. I don’t know how painful it is for spouses, but I can speak from the perspective of a child with divorced parents.

I understand that sometimes things just don’t work out and divorce is the only solution. Other cases in which the result is divorce are probably caused by one or both spouses not willing to work things out and there’s a wide variety of causes. Divorce may seem good in the beginning, especially in the eyes of the spouses, but one must take into consideration the fact that a divorce has an impact not just on the couple, but on the children, the extended family, and anyone else involved. It can be a lot more damaging than people think. I know it was difficult for my mother, she had a hard time trusting in men. Even though I was young when it happened, it started to have an impact on me as I grew older. I soon realized that I didn’t have a close connection with my father’s side of the family as I never really saw or interacted with them. To this day I’m still not very close with them, though I’d like to be. I know for a fact that having a father in the house would’ve changed the family dynamic in a significant way.

A good friend of mine who was divorced recently has said that it has been positive for both her and her kids. It was really tough at first with her kids being so young and unable to understand why “daddy had to live somewhere else.” Sometimes her kids would tell her they hated her, even though she was trying her best to support them and take care of them on her own. But there seems to be a sense of normalcy in their lives. I know in her case it wasn’t a question of which parent the kids would live with, but that is a huge question in a lot of divorces, as well as how much time they’d spend with one parent or the other. One thing that I am grateful for knowing what I know is that my mom never said anything negative about my father and that’s the way it should be. Parents shouldn’t try to convince their children that they were the “good parent” by tearing down their former spouse. Both are human beings with struggles and flaws, there’s no need to cause the rift between the family to get any bigger.

The Power of Family Work

I am a firm believer in the idea that hard work builds character. Work is something I feel is necessary for not only our physical growth, but our emotional and spiritual growth as well. Today I want to talk about the importance of family work and how it is not a burden, but a means of strengthening the family. The world in which we live today teaches us that our ultimate goal should be to do as little work as possible. In an article called Family Work written by Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless, they mention that “Reformers of the day sought to alleviate these miseries. In the spirit of the times, many of them envisioned a utopian world without social problems, where scientific inventions would free humans from physical labor, and modern medicine would eliminate disease and suffering. Their reforms eventually transformed work patterns throughout our culture, which in turn changed the roles of men, women, and children within the family unit.” The family unit has changed drastically since the world began and I believe work is a huge part of it.

Since the days of Adam and Eve, and before the Industrial Revolution, family work was work. In the Old Testament, particularly Genesis 3:19 we read, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground…” They labored for everything, their whole life was working to support themselves. This is the kind of work that builds families.

I don’t have many memories in my own family of hard physical labor other than having to clean the house every Saturday while being yelled at and told what to do constantly. They aren’t the best memories of work in the home. But I am grateful to have been part of my best friends’ families and for their parents’ hard work. I remember having several opportunities to work in the yard with my best friend and his father. It was hot, I was sweaty, but I enjoyed it. I’ve helped in building a shelf for their garage, and I’ve spent hours helping them with cleaning their garage. There’s another friend of mine with whom I spent all day helping him cut down a huge tree in his yard. He and I have done quite a bit of laboring together. I have had a lot of fun with my friends over the years, playing all kinds of games and doing all kinds of activities, but it is the times we’ve worked together I cherish the most. Someone in my class mentioned that all the fun and games invites competition while work builds unity. There is something to be said about spending a significant amount of time with someone you love building something or making progress on something rather than spending a couple of hours having fun only to realize you didn’t actually achieve anything. I’m not saying having fun and playing is bad, I definitely won’t stop having fun, but what I’m saying is work is what really brings us together.

In closing I’d like to offer some words of wisdom. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give your kids allowance, they shouldn’t be paid to help around the house. You’re not their employer and helping around the house shouldn’t be something that’s an option. They should learn the value of helping without expecting anything in return. I personally would want my kids to grow up knowing that helping is a reward in itself. I love to serve others and to be helpful. Can you imagine a world in which everyone is willing to help one another without any expectations? That’s one of the goals of the church in which I grew up. Bahr and Loveless have said, “Here lies the real power of family work–its potential to transform lives, to forge strong families, to build strong communities. It is the power to quietly, effectively urge hearts and minds toward a oneness known only in Zion.” To put it simply, Zion is a community of oneness, a community in which we all support and strengthen one another. Hard work, when done in oneness can change the world.

Compromise vs. Consensus

Every family at some point has important decisions they need to make. There are big questions that need to be answered such as where you’re going to live, how many kids you’ll have, how you’ll raise them, how you’ll maintain a budget, will both of you work or will one stay home and rear the kids and many more. There are also questions that can be unique to a specific family for example, I know a family who faced a really difficult decision, and keep in my mind that it doesn’t just have to be decisions made between husband and wife, extended family can be involved as well, in which the mother of the parents was very old and had Alzheimer’s. What should they do about her, which of the children she had should she live with or should they put her in a home? A decision that big can result in some tender or bitter feelings. What about another scenario in which a relative is in critical condition and on life support, there doesn’t seem to be any chance of them making it, what do you do? Those are obviously extreme scenarios, but maybe you in your family have some very important decision that is unique to your family that you feel is really challenging. Maybe you haven’t come up with a solution and are still trying to figure out a way to make it work. I hope to provide some principles that will help coming up with solutions easier. My goal is to highlight the difference between compromise and consensus.

Now there are a number of families I have seen that compromise on most, if not all, major issues. When it comes to compromise, you usually come together with two different opinions or ideas, or two different ways of thinking, they don’t always have to be disagreeing. From what I understand about compromise, you come up with an agreement in which both or all parties sacrifices something to come to a decision. What usually ends up happening in someone ends up sacrificing more than another which can result in someone feeling they were treated unfairly. Let’s say a couple was deciding on where to move, one wanted to live in California, the other in let’s say the other wants to live in Utah. It then becomes either one person gets their way or no one at all in the event they say, “Well let’s meet in the middle and move to Nevada.” Marriage just can’t be about winning and losing battles. Compromising may work for smaller decisions, but it isn’t a good recipe for all your decision making, especially those extreme scenarios I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Many families may feel that compromising is the best they can do, but coming to a consensus is very possible as well as ideal for any family. When you come to a consensus, yes you may have to sacrifice, you may even have to sacrifice something you feel very strongly about, but you ultimately do what is best for the unit as a whole. It’s not a matter of being right, it is a matter of what is right, not just for one, but for all. It is my personal belief that every family should come together and counsel when there are important decisions to be made. I caution against inviting collusion into your family by recruiting allies for your ideas or against someone else’s ideas. Families should pray together before and after having these counsels and if you don’t pray, invite peace and love into your counsels by expressing affection towards each other before so it is easier to not simply focus on yourself and your own wants. It’s important to also involve your children in the decision making so that they learn. Of course they don’t get the final say, but it’s crucial that they’re included because they are also a part of the family and your decisions affect them too. Ultimately, it can be a much more powerful experience when you’re able to reach a mutual agreement as a family. There is just this understanding when everyone has the family’s best interest in mind. It’s a lot easier said than done, but it can be done.