Month: October 2014

Sold Out

/ Hope and Dave / Leave a comment

sold-out3

Hope and I decided to start this blog in the middle of September. We set up the site, started a Twitter account for our blog, and were all set to get started. The following week, an opportunity came up for Hope that had an impact on her first post, and will have an impact on our family for a long time. She mentioned it here, and I want to use it as an example of what I believe the secret is to making a remarriage and a blended family work. That secret is simply this: be sold out.

We’ve now been married for a year and a half. It seems like time has gone into warp speed, but I can look back and see where we’ve made little decisions and big decisions that have had a positive impact on where our marriage and family is headed. Decisions like taking the time each week to sit around the table as a family and just talk. All five of us. Decisions like getting involved in a church after we moved to a new area. When Hope made the decision to go to the Stepmom Conference, it made an impact both on me and the children. That kind of decision sends a message: “I want to learn how to do this right, whatever it takes.” Making decisions like that ensures that there is positive momentum, which is important when negative forces come into play, and we all know that they do.

Being sold out to your spouse and family isn’t some new idea. This doesn’t only work for remarriages. We know that is how you make a first marriage work too. There are different dynamics in a step or blended family, but the principles are still the same. That being said, they are more difficult to implement in a remarriage because of loyalties to the children, the relationship with the “exes”, and all of the complications/drama that come from divorce. Hope and I have learned that we have to make each other the priority first, be sold out to each other, and that our relationship sets the tone for the entire family. If the children see any disharmony or disunity between her and I, the consequences of that would be immediate and damaging. That doesn’t mean that you have to agree all of the time, it means that when you disagree, you do it in a discussion that takes place without the children around. You keep the emotions out of it, you let the dust settle. Being sold out to each other and to your family means putting your desire to be right aside, making a commitment to come together to discuss the situation.

My mom passed away two weeks ago. Because of our custody arrangement, and the circumstances surrounding her death, Hope ended up being the first from our home to have any personal contact with the boys after her death. I was four hours away, and had been gone for nearly a week while my mom was on life support. Hope became the one responsible for picking the boys up after school and riding four hours with them as they dealt with their grandmother’s death. This is a tough situation for a step-mother to be placed in, yet she handled it perfectly. A lesser woman would have backed down, would’ve said “you need to drive home to get them, I can’t handle this.” Never once did I sense any fear from her, she remained sold out to the boys and to our family.

Being sold out to the family means being placed in difficult circumstances and handling it with grace. It means putting the fear aside and conquering whatever the situation is without letting your feelings get in the way. If you are struggling with your remarriage or your blended family because you operate in protective mode, it’s time to let your guard down. The only way to make it work is to make yourself vulnerable to your spouse, your children, and your step-children. When you’ve been divorced, this is tough because you’ve already been burned. Don’t let the scars from the past keep you from looking forward and seeing what is in store. Be sold out completely to making it work, and that will go a long way toward making sure that this time around you get it right.

Finger Peepers & Facebook Creepers

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Finger Peeper = It’s what I look like when I’m watching the Walking Dead.  You hear the music change to a minor key and watch with trepidation as long as possible until you can’t take it anymore and you cover your eyes but then get brave and extremely curious and spread a finger, or two, and take a peek to see if anyone survived. (spoken really quickly followed by a big dramatic breath)

finger peeper

Facebook Creeper = People who never post anything on Facebook but emerge randomly from the shadows.  You know, those people who will never like or comment on your posts, but will approach you with input about something you wrote weeks ago.  What about that odd co-worker (or family member) that you were guilted into adding as a “friend” but you’re pretty sure they stalk you.  Oooooorrrrr how about those folks that don’t feel like they have anything clever to say but will share their story or experience and blow your mind.

After I settled into my 750 sq ft apartment from my two-story home, the adjustment really started.  The shock of separation and pending divorce had passed by that time and the work to heal was well under way.  I chose to disengage from the internet all together.  Watching social media was torture.  My relocation meant new friends, new community, new history.  This was a giant blessing in my mind because that meant that I didn’t have to explain anything.  I didn’t have to hurt when someone asked me what happened to us.  It meant that I didn’t have to cry as much. In my mind, it was less painful that way.  You see, my life as I had always known it, as I had planned it, came to an end.  In a matter of weeks, what had carried on for ten years as normal, dissolved into a lifeless shell.  As I browsed my news feed and saw life went on for everyone else, it made me feel completely alone.  Pictures of landscape projects completed, birthday parties, family vacations and date nights seemed to show me that what “they” had, was no longer mine.  It got too painful, so I unplugged.

It was this same kind of pain that kept me from attending church.  Seeing families walking together, dining together, holding hands and being together, hurt.  I noticed how couples interacted.  What they did and didn’t do.  I was searching for clues as to what went wrong in my own marriage.  I listened as women described their relationships and watched as men accompanied their wives.  I tuned in to the language, both spoken and unspoken.

As I healed and life continued one day at a time, something began to happen.  Instead of being hurt by the normalcy of the pace of life, I began to miss it.  I logged back on after several months to learn of new births, new relationships, new jobs….and new separations.  I smiled at the good news of the lives represented that continued to plunge forward in their normalcy.  I also hurt with a new empathy at the news of broken hearts.  The shadow of obscurity seemed less of a protection, and more of an excuse.  I began to hope.  I began to understand the beauty of community and the joy of sharing my experience.  I could feel the life returning to me.

You know someone in your life who is doing what I did.  They have disappeared into the shadows and withdrawn.  Some people do it for a season, but others do it permanently.  Know that your life is unique.  Your story matters.  Your experiences help others.  But it is up to you to give them a voice.  Don’t ever underestimate the power of sharing your hurt.  You have no idea what your survival could mean to someone in the midst of a raging battle.  There will always be haters, but know this, haters have been hurt too.

When Your World Falls Apart

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Posted by Dave

2014-10-03 04.25.56The subject nature of this blog is remarriage and blended families. At its core, getting married again and shaping your new family has happened because of a divorce. No matter when or how it happens, divorce hurts. Even when good comes from a divorce, there are lifelong implications. Anyone involved in a divorce as a spouse or as a child (I’ve experienced it both ways) will be the first to acknowledge this. It never really goes away, however, it can be a turning point to a better future. The key to a successful remarriage is learning the things about yourself that caused the previous divorce, and learning how to deal with the pain that resulted. I want to share a resource with you that helped me do just that.

The response to Hope’s first post, along with a discussion that I experienced at a men’s small group this past week, have led me to go back to this most painful period of my life. Hope knows this well, I go back there a lot. Not in an unhealthy way, mind you. Not with regret, shame or guilt. I go back there to remind myself of what happened to a broken man, a man who needed to be broken to experience the things that were in store for him. If this is you, and at this moment you are feeling that pit of emptiness in your stomach, let me encourage you. Life is not over.

Allow me to quickly set the stage for you as a way to direct you to this resource that changed my life. My first wife informed me that she was done with our marriage and that she was moving out. Obviously, that statement doesn’t even come close to describing what led to this. As we all well know, it didn’t get to that point overnight. Regardless, I began walking through those very painful first days of separation, watching as my three sons (ages 3, 6, & 9 at the time) dealt with this in their own ways. Complicating matters is that I was in full-time ministry at the time, serving as the Associate Pastor at our church. The Senior Pastor felt the best thing was for me to stand in front of the congregation and explain what was going on. That Sunday is forever engrained into my memory. It was one of the most difficult days of my life as I looked out toward an auditorium of people, and spoke words that I never thought I would have to speak. Little did I know that my heavenly Father was getting ready to begin transforming my life.

Several days after this, opened my laptop to check my email, and received one of those e-blast emails that Christian booksellers use to advertise their latest deals. Normally, I deleted those emails before I even read them. The subject line of this one wouldn’t allow me to delete it. The title of the book was “When Your World Falls Apart” by David Jeremiah. The book is about how he dealt with his cancer diagnosis and treatment. I immediately clicked the link and bought the book. Inside those pages was some truth that was going to change the direction of my life.

In the coming months, I read this book twice. Once wasn’t enough. I can honestly say that besides the Bible, this book was one of the keys to helping me redirect the focus of my life. Here are a couple of excerpts:

“You find yourself in a crisis with no immediate resolution. You know this thing isn’t going away. You know that when you wake up tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, this matter will leap to the forefront of your mind as soon as you wipe the sleep from your eyes. Some problem has risen up like a great tidal wave from the depths, and it dominates your landscape. But if you’re like David, there is something behind that wave – or perhaps it is between you and the wave – and that thing is called hope.”

“Genuine praise, offered stubbornly in the face of adversity, makes no sense by any worldly calculation. That’s fine. There are deeper truths that don’t ‘make sense’ on the surface of things. God’s rules fly in the face of our logic. When we begin to praise God, not in response to prosperity, but in defiance to misfortune, we align ourselves with the deepest truths of the universe, the place where God dispenses deep wisdom and spiritual maturity. We unleash His victorious power in the world of pain and suffering. We create the environment where miracles occur.”

Since then, the book has been re-branded and reprinted. It is now called A Bend In The Road, which you will find is appropriate once you read the book. When people ask me how I made it through those days, I never recount it without mentioning this book and what was on those pages.

Maybe you are facing a separation or divorce. You’ve lost hope, you can’t see how life is going to go on from here. Don’t waste what God wants to do in your life through this period of time. Know that while there is plenty of finger-pointing going on and plenty of blame to go around, there is something inside of you that God wants to change. Go to counseling. Remove people from your life who bring negativity and feed into your pity. Learn to forgive. Learn to ask God to forgive you for the things you did to cause it, because no one is blameless. Spend $15 and buy this book. Read it and mark it up like I did. Put dates on the pages to remind you later of where you were when you read something that impacted you. In preparation for this post, I pulled my tattered copy off of the shelf. I looked at the dates and notes, and immediately, I was back “there”. Only now “there” means something much more to me than it did then.