I've been driving back and forth through town for several hours finding thrift shops to stop in and wildflowers to pick. I've also been searching for a place I can wash my own car for a few quarters and not pay six dollars to go through a drive-thru that scratches the paint, but I failed at that little scavenger hunt. Mostly I've been passing Mama Carmen's trying to talk myself into stopping to write this post. It has the potential to make you and me both a little uncomfortable, and I can't say I've been dying to put it out there. But here we go.
My parents were married on June 27th, 1987. They were 22 year old high school sweethearts. I wholeheartedly believe they meant what they said when they held hands and exchanged vows. Two years later I was born, and three years after that Jake made us a family of four.
I had a privileged childhood. The older I get, the more I realize how many things I got to do growing up that most kids didn't. We spent almost all summer every summer getting dragged behind our little speedboat around Lake Keystone on an inflatable tube. We camped and roasted marshmallows most weekends. My dad built a wooden backstop at my elementary school when he saw the need, and my mom designed the Grissom yearbooks and ran my campaign for student council president when I was in fifth grade. I played club soccer and Jake raced dirt bikes. We ate a lot of McDonalds and drank a lot of Mountain Dew--every child's dream.
If I was able to subtract one simple yet devastatingly heavy phrase from my everyday childhood, I could look back and say it was blissful, happy--a place I would want to revisit.
"I want a divorce."
I can't remember the first time I heard it or which parent said it, but I do know it was said and said often. When I was really young, it made me cry. I'd tell my best friends Lizz and Nataley that my parents were getting a divorce, and I think they eventually thought I was crazy because it never happened. But I bought the threat every time because it always accompanied an intense screaming match that made it impossible for my young mind to believe my parents actually loved one another.
(I'm not writing this to air out my parents' dirty laundry. I'm trying to write it from the perspective of my changed views on love and marriage, and a little backstory is necessary, I think.)
Can I be honest? I think I've only ever voiced this to Daniel, but I really hate Disney princess movies. All those sweet stories with pretty girls wearing bright colors were shown to me at a time I couldn't compartmentalize love into different shapes and sizes, into fact or fiction. I watched them because I was expected to, because they were given to me as birthday gifts, but they made me so angry because they were a lie and I knew it. What made me even more mad was that my friends didn't seem to know it, or if they did they were good at hiding it. For a time, part of me assumed all parents treated each other like mine did within the closed doors of their homes, but if they did, why would anyone like stupid movies about a kind of love that didn't exist?
I heard another slew of sentences often, usually after a fight when I'd try to talk to one of my parents. I can remember them both, separately, telling me, "Do not rely on a man to support you." "Make sure you can always support yourself." "Do not become dependent on a man."
I took this advice to be my way out, the key to not ending up like my parents. I would be independent, self-driven, I told myself--sometime around the third grade. I didn't need a man. I didn't need anyone.
In middle school I "dated" the same couple of boys several times off and on, because some days they bugged me and based on what I'd seen at home, that meant it was time to end things. I broke up with these boys like it was my job because it proved I was independent and would be fine without them. Either way, I would've been fine without them because I was twelve, but I can still look back and see a habit forming.
When I was fourteen, I fell in love with Jesus Christ and found out He'd loved me all along and always would, no matter what I did. His love was a lot more bloody than a Disney movie but a lot more free than what I'd seen at home, and it confused my angry little heart. I actually wanted to shout it from on top of a mountain, but I didn't have a mountain. Instead I found an even more obnoxious way to share it--by writing bible verses on little slips of paper and sticking them in every student's locker before school. I'm sorry, I just really didn't know what to do with myself all of a sudden. My heart felt more open to the concept of love, that all of a sudden instead of wanting to break other people's hearts to make them feel like I did, I wanted to save them like I'd been saved.
So when I began high school, that was my mission--to love the wrong boys and save them in doing so. My parents' relationship seemed like a lost cause, but if I could help someone else, I'd feel better, I thought. What I didn't know then was that relying on my own strength to try and save someone would result in me almost losing myself and losing sight of my new relationship with the Lord. I got caught up and at sixteen I wasn't worried about it turning into a forever thing because I still wasn't sure I'd ever want to get married.
I've only really had my heart broken once when it comes to romantic love, and that was at the end of high school into the beginning of college. I had allowed my freshly opened heart to let in the wrong type of love, and it ended badly. I came to college with a broken heart and vowed, again, not to let anyone in. For the first two years, I didn't.
My parents were legally divorced the summer after my freshman year when I was in India, where I was broken in a completely different way. I looked around that summer and saw things differently--being angry wasn't worth it anymore because my fight against love or lack thereof wasn't worth being worshipped. I had spent so much time being angry about my circumstances and my inability to fix them and not enough time loving the people around me I could help. I began letting go of the idea I was destined to become my parents and stopped putting so much energy toward doing everything differently than they did. I quit kicking and punching and let God hold me like He did when we first started our relationship.
My best guy friend Daniel showed up at my dorm during the last week of my sophomore year for a hall group date thing. That summer we spent almost every day together and it turned into something. I can't really explain what happened other than God opened my heart up in a new way to someone I already trusted--we'd been close friends for seven years. I know the Lord could've done it any way He wanted, but this made sense for me when I thought nothing could ever make sense. I wasn't stand-offish to Daniel because I already knew him and he already knew me--he knew I was jaded and scarred by my parents' divorce and my own breakup two years before. He knew and loved me anyway, like Jesus did.
I can't say I knew that summer that Daniel and I would be planning our wedding three years later. I can say I quit fighting so hard to do everything on my own without consulting anyone else. Although my independence habit is still something we're working through and probably always will be (because Eve had the same problem and God said, "Your desire will be for your husband"), I love doing life with someone who genuinely cares to know what and how I'm doing. It's nice to have someone on my team and to get to cheer for him, too.
I'm aware of the statistics on children of divorce being more likely to get divorced. Those numbers aren't my favorite thing. But, God is constantly reminding me I am more than a statistic, and my relationship with Daniel is not a mirror of my parents' relationship or his parents' relationship or any other relationship. We hope, if anything, to mirror Jesus' relationship with the church, a great model no matter what you believe. He loves her and lays his life down for her, and she respects him and submits to his leadership. (If you had told me a few years ago I'd be using the whole submission concept in my writing and that I'd be excited about it, I would've laughed. Oh, dear old independent me!)
Daniel and I have already implemented the whole NEVER USE THE WORD "DIVORCE" rule, and we pray we'll be able to stick to it. I know he's serious about it, because a while back he was making fun of me for something and I jokingly said something along the lines of, "I'm gonna divorce you before we even get married," and he got super serious all of a sudden and said, "We DO NOT say that, Jordan, even as a joke." I appreciate him.
I'll try to go a little deeper into the personal issues I've been struggling with as I prepare lately and maybe share a little more dialogue (that will make Daniel look like a sweet little puppy and me the big bully who runs across the playground to kick him, of course) in the next few posts. Please let me know if you have any specific questions or issues you'd like me to discuss on here--I'd love to hear more from you guys.
(I'm not writing this to air out my parents' dirty laundry. I'm trying to write it from the perspective of my changed views on love and marriage, and a little backstory is necessary, I think.)
Can I be honest? I think I've only ever voiced this to Daniel, but I really hate Disney princess movies. All those sweet stories with pretty girls wearing bright colors were shown to me at a time I couldn't compartmentalize love into different shapes and sizes, into fact or fiction. I watched them because I was expected to, because they were given to me as birthday gifts, but they made me so angry because they were a lie and I knew it. What made me even more mad was that my friends didn't seem to know it, or if they did they were good at hiding it. For a time, part of me assumed all parents treated each other like mine did within the closed doors of their homes, but if they did, why would anyone like stupid movies about a kind of love that didn't exist?
I heard another slew of sentences often, usually after a fight when I'd try to talk to one of my parents. I can remember them both, separately, telling me, "Do not rely on a man to support you." "Make sure you can always support yourself." "Do not become dependent on a man."
I took this advice to be my way out, the key to not ending up like my parents. I would be independent, self-driven, I told myself--sometime around the third grade. I didn't need a man. I didn't need anyone.
In middle school I "dated" the same couple of boys several times off and on, because some days they bugged me and based on what I'd seen at home, that meant it was time to end things. I broke up with these boys like it was my job because it proved I was independent and would be fine without them. Either way, I would've been fine without them because I was twelve, but I can still look back and see a habit forming.
When I was fourteen, I fell in love with Jesus Christ and found out He'd loved me all along and always would, no matter what I did. His love was a lot more bloody than a Disney movie but a lot more free than what I'd seen at home, and it confused my angry little heart. I actually wanted to shout it from on top of a mountain, but I didn't have a mountain. Instead I found an even more obnoxious way to share it--by writing bible verses on little slips of paper and sticking them in every student's locker before school. I'm sorry, I just really didn't know what to do with myself all of a sudden. My heart felt more open to the concept of love, that all of a sudden instead of wanting to break other people's hearts to make them feel like I did, I wanted to save them like I'd been saved.
So when I began high school, that was my mission--to love the wrong boys and save them in doing so. My parents' relationship seemed like a lost cause, but if I could help someone else, I'd feel better, I thought. What I didn't know then was that relying on my own strength to try and save someone would result in me almost losing myself and losing sight of my new relationship with the Lord. I got caught up and at sixteen I wasn't worried about it turning into a forever thing because I still wasn't sure I'd ever want to get married.
I've only really had my heart broken once when it comes to romantic love, and that was at the end of high school into the beginning of college. I had allowed my freshly opened heart to let in the wrong type of love, and it ended badly. I came to college with a broken heart and vowed, again, not to let anyone in. For the first two years, I didn't.
My parents were legally divorced the summer after my freshman year when I was in India, where I was broken in a completely different way. I looked around that summer and saw things differently--being angry wasn't worth it anymore because my fight against love or lack thereof wasn't worth being worshipped. I had spent so much time being angry about my circumstances and my inability to fix them and not enough time loving the people around me I could help. I began letting go of the idea I was destined to become my parents and stopped putting so much energy toward doing everything differently than they did. I quit kicking and punching and let God hold me like He did when we first started our relationship.
My best guy friend Daniel showed up at my dorm during the last week of my sophomore year for a hall group date thing. That summer we spent almost every day together and it turned into something. I can't really explain what happened other than God opened my heart up in a new way to someone I already trusted--we'd been close friends for seven years. I know the Lord could've done it any way He wanted, but this made sense for me when I thought nothing could ever make sense. I wasn't stand-offish to Daniel because I already knew him and he already knew me--he knew I was jaded and scarred by my parents' divorce and my own breakup two years before. He knew and loved me anyway, like Jesus did.
I can't say I knew that summer that Daniel and I would be planning our wedding three years later. I can say I quit fighting so hard to do everything on my own without consulting anyone else. Although my independence habit is still something we're working through and probably always will be (because Eve had the same problem and God said, "Your desire will be for your husband"), I love doing life with someone who genuinely cares to know what and how I'm doing. It's nice to have someone on my team and to get to cheer for him, too.
I'm aware of the statistics on children of divorce being more likely to get divorced. Those numbers aren't my favorite thing. But, God is constantly reminding me I am more than a statistic, and my relationship with Daniel is not a mirror of my parents' relationship or his parents' relationship or any other relationship. We hope, if anything, to mirror Jesus' relationship with the church, a great model no matter what you believe. He loves her and lays his life down for her, and she respects him and submits to his leadership. (If you had told me a few years ago I'd be using the whole submission concept in my writing and that I'd be excited about it, I would've laughed. Oh, dear old independent me!)
Daniel and I have already implemented the whole NEVER USE THE WORD "DIVORCE" rule, and we pray we'll be able to stick to it. I know he's serious about it, because a while back he was making fun of me for something and I jokingly said something along the lines of, "I'm gonna divorce you before we even get married," and he got super serious all of a sudden and said, "We DO NOT say that, Jordan, even as a joke." I appreciate him.
I'll try to go a little deeper into the personal issues I've been struggling with as I prepare lately and maybe share a little more dialogue (that will make Daniel look like a sweet little puppy and me the big bully who runs across the playground to kick him, of course) in the next few posts. Please let me know if you have any specific questions or issues you'd like me to discuss on here--I'd love to hear more from you guys.
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