Better than Sox
The Greatest Gift for the Newly Divorced
Divorce loves surprises. It snaps your jaw with an overhand right of reality, leaving you on the mat with your world spinning all around.
Sometimes life after divorce is the favorite TV show you’ll never watch again. It’s the takeout place you’ll never go to because they added her favorite to your order last time. It’s the beach you’ll travel to the other coast to avoid. It’s the air freshener never to be snapped onto the heater vents of the car they didn’t help pick out. Divorce is like that.
Some are in the thick of it, some in the ‘numb’ of it, and others are in the ‘so done with it’. No matter the phase, everyone experiencing divorce yearns for something that may take years to find. It evades herculean efforts of forming a coherent sentence but will move mountains to discover its treasure. Casting nets, only to catch the memories of what once was hoping to lure in that trophy marlin. It’s the thing that once said out loud, sounds generic, even silly, but it’s the only prescription you need filled right now.
100 mg of normal. Twice daily.
You ache for home. Not the one your ex just planted a for sale sign in the front yard of, but the place where life made sense. Where mismatching pajamas and untamed hair were given safe passage. Vows of secrecy were pledged over who confessed to having cosmetic surgery during ladies Bible study last week. Morning breath kisses were the sunshine needed to start the day, and dinner was the decision no one could ever seem to make. They were your home, the rhythm of normal.
They sit in our churches every week aching for the compass to stop spinning and point them to normal.
Make way for boring. There is no greater healing balm than hearing someone asking if they can help weed the flower beds this spring or take the kids to school once a week. It’s a crockpot on a doorstep after work. It’s a conversation about Super Bowl XL being stolen from the Seahawks by the refs in 2005 (not bitter) or how your mullet is finally in style again.
You’re not avoiding the obvious. This isn’t about playing pretend or dismissing someone’s pain. It’s a quiet commitment to steady the weathervane towards a normal they can’t see yet, no matter how hard the wind is blowing.
Waxing biblical on divorce before the service begins won’t get an “amen”, the twelve step plan of recovery you swiped from ChatGPT won’t be read, and the invite to the divorce class on Thursday night won’t land. Sometimes, the weather is the most spiritual conversation they need.
Don’t take the bait. It’s tempting and juicy, but the aftertaste leaves you reaching for a bottle of holy Scope. The road to normal dead-ends with the ex. Venting sessions have their place, but it’s not with you and not in the church lobby. The following statement is littered with caveats, but the adage: “There’s his story, hers, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” carries weight, and their version usually leads to one place, and it’s not normal.
Ignoring the ‘divorce’ elephant in the back row isn’t effective zoo keeping either. It’s there, everyone has eyeballs, but the goal is to keep it tame until we can find it a new home. Divorce is raw and human tendency is to get as many on their side of it as possible. Truth is, they may be right, and that may be a problem. Is the goal to point them toward finding a path forward or taking up their offense? Confronting someone’s ex about their wrongs goes about as well as telling your wife to calm down. Elephants are hard to calm down. Don’t ever compare your wife to an elephant. See what happens when you get involved? Human default mode wants to take sides. Don’t lunge at the worm on the end of that hook. Stick to the weather, don’t poke the ivory tusked monstrosity sleeping in the back.
No one wins when churches take sides. Before you start in on the “Well, what about _______?” There are exceptions. If there was a clear violation of marriage vows, there needs to be an acknowledgement, for the sake of the violated, but that’s for an entirely different article. Taking sides risks dividing a church and forcing people into camps.
Remember, this is dealing with someone who is already divorced. Divorced couples rarely remarry and the ones who do carry a higher risk of divorcing again.
Put down the cape. Unstrap it from your neck and just be present. Never underestimate the power of presence. You’re not coming in to save the day, fix everything, and speed off into the sunset. You don’t have a good enough quote to snap them out of it. Stop orchestrating the reconciliation parade of a marriage that doesn’t exist anymore. Building false hope is one of the most dangerous things you can do to someone who isn’t thinking straight. The best advice is your presence when life isn’t making sense for someone.
Regurgitating what you heard on a podcast isn’t what’s going to help them process and parse through the intricacies of divorce. Pointing them to normal is pointing them to a licensed, godly counselor who will guide them through the minefield of intense emotions and diffuse them in a biblical way. Does this mean never giving advice? No, just the unsolicited and unbiblical kind. They don’t need your opinion wrapped in a Bible verse. Remember this, you are accountable for the counsel you give.
Normal sounds trivial, unspiritual and shallow. It’s the slow process of watering a new garden out of scorched soil. It’s not the haymaker you were hoping for in fighting for someone who’s in the thick of it. We love the knockout punch that removes problems for good as the crowd chants “Rocky, Rocky, Rocky.” We love being the hero and normal doesn’t feel heroic, it sounds like a sidekick, and that’s the point. It’s committing to walking with them through the tornado of their life and guiding them, in boring ways, to where normal is.
Give them the gift they never asked for.
**During the writing process, it was quickly evident that one article would not cover all the dynamics that go living life after divorce.
This will be the beginning of a long running series to encourage the divorced and the church through one of the most difficult issues to navigate.
Thanks for reading, stay tuned!