when your heart can’t heal and divorce steals

lies the world tells us about divorce

No one could prepare my heart for the loss I would go through back in 2006 when my first marriage broke up. The history lessons I have learned since then are book worthy! Divorce was for the ‘best interest’ for the kids. This is a lie the world convinced me of. I digress, I am sure everyone in my life and my husband today would disagree, however I realize I have not grieved the loss of that lie I was told.

we were a team before the divorce

I would have told you seventeen years ago that nothing would ever come between my kids and I. The kids and I were a powerhouse of personalities with a drive for teamwork and to make sure we didn’t just survive but we thrived.

This picture is not the last one I have it was the one saved to my computer; and I looked desperately for one where Dalton’s beautiful blue eyes would have been open. I decided to stick with this picture instead of trying to upload another one from my phone because I see them here.

My kids are my everything, I would never leave them with anyone and the handful of times I did leave them overnight was stressful on my heart. I stayed at home with them and did the best I knew how to be a mom with drive for their sweet little lives. There was never a thought “well, I have to check my calendar to see what I have going on” before I said yes to something for the kids, I was last and they were first.

who is this for?

I am trying to get to the big punch to the gut point of this writing, thinking about who this is for. Is this for me to work through the last six months of my life or is it for the other parents who are knowing they are not alone? If I was truthful with myself, I want my kids to know my heart, I want to write this down on paper and send it out, hoping one day they would read it. They would understand from their mothers heart how much emptiness is here without them.

pay back is a bitch (sorry if that word offends you)

No one talks about parental alienation when the kids do it to the parents! Pay back is a bitch is rushing through my head right now. All of the years of fighting back and forth trying to keep the kids safe from their abusive and often unsafe home at the time didn’t just start in divorce, it only got exaggerated and I had way less control on how to protect the kids. They lived out of bags, back and forth each week in the summer and every nine days for three nights in the other months. The kids were never settled, often angry, agitated and confused about why things had to be so unstable. I do not blame them. It was!

the divorce courts best interest

History lesson number one was that in divorce, the focus was on how I would move on, get support, find a way to create a new life. The shift went from my kids best interest to protecting my kids best interest against the courts best interest. I became the secondary parent to the courts. Fighting back became the norm, living in anxiety and trying to prove myself became part of my nature. This whole time not realizing I was losing that precious time with my kids that was joyous, fun and filled with laughter and muddy messes, only a few short years earlier.

No one won in our divorce. No one. We all lost. A bunch of losers to the system that promised a ‘better life’.

inside vs. outside joy

Please do not think that my life today is not solid, it is. We have a great life together and often I have to pinch myself to really see what I have come out of, but it is tainted with the stealer of joy. The inside joy is when you feel you know everything makes sense in your life. Even as bright as the outside shines, the inside of my heart is still mourning the loss of my kids.

i will never know if divorce was the best thing for them

The start of the loss happened inside of the marriage when I noticed my oldest son shifting from protecting me from my husbands abusive screaming to him saying as a cute little eight year old, ‘mommy just do what dad says so he doesn’t get mad at you anymore.’ Or the one that sticks in my head even heavier as I was crawling in the ditch nine months pregnant with our daughter, “Mommy get in the truck, daddy won’t hurt you anymore”. This little boy shifted. I do not know how much worse he would have shifted if I had stayed but that is for God to know.

harsh truth

If someone would have shown me the pain I would be going through today I would have probably never agreed to be married and have kids! Harsh? Probably. Truth? Yes. Why write this down if it isn’t truthful. I want to run away every other day, but I can’t. I have to see this second chance through to the end, it isn’t over yet till God calls me home.

tmi

The pain is extremely debilitating. Some days, I can’t even brush my teeth and showering is effort I do not like to do on my bad weeks. Thankfully I love perfume and my husband doesn’t like French kissing.

fear of judgement

No one sees this side of me in the public because I feel convinced they will judge me that I must be a bad mom. What kind of mom must you be to have two of your children hate you so much that they never talk to you again. They do not let you meet your granddaughter and they live only twenty minute’s away. What did she do? I always knew she was to blame. These are the statements I think people will say about me so I hold it in. I cry and complain at home.

wailing felt good

I wailed the other day in the farm truck, parked in the middle of the yard. I screamed and bawled to God asking him what I did to deserve this pain. Why does he keep me here to endure this struggle? What am I supposed to learn? I was terrified after twenty minutes had gone by that someone would drive in the yard with police because I am sure the neighbors could hear me! Slowly I opened the truck door to see if I could catch my breath by the cold air and stop hyperventilating… my energy collapsed and I almost fell out on the ground. I shut the door, wiped the dripping snot from my face and continued to do chores.

god had an answer for me

His answer, patience. “Quit begging for something I have already done.”

Patience is a virtue I did not learn, and I was not exposed to as a child. If you want something, go get it. If you do not like something, fix it. As I grew older I realized there was a lot of complaining by my own parents and they wouldn’t fix anything, they just liked to complain. I guess they taught us to do what they were not doing at times in their own lives. Hard work was a virtue that I have learned and working felt better than dealing with the inside pain. WORK became my outlet, my drug, my life.

I am a scattered mess right now, skipping all over the place in my writing. If you have made it this far, I appreciate your time you will never get back. Thank you. If you want me to buy you a coffee scroll to the bottom of the page… if you want to buy me a coffee, ( I may put some baileys in it), click HERE 👈

My professor stated last weekend that grief never goes away, you figure out how to live with it. I agree with the first part of her statement, but the last part has me perplexed. How do I live with this pain?

i just can’t do this

God has a plan, I know this. My mind knows that God always has made things better than before. My heart has not caught up. Some show I watched the other day had mom’s talking about how they have not seen their kids for years! I looked over at my husband and I said “I can’t do years, I just can’t”. He brought me home flowers, he does not have anything else to give me.

divorce is not the victim, people are

My daughter disowned me and my response was “You can’t disown your mother, I am your mom!” Well in hindsight, that made no sense, but ‘mom’ meant to me… ‘You are part of me.’ My oldest son is stubborn, and his pride has been built up from years of being disregarded. My kids are victims right now. We all are. Their dad, myself and the kids are victims. I coach people out of their victim ‘mentality’ I do not mean that we have that, I mean we are truly victims.

Being a victim means that we were all violated by something at some point. Our family unit was severed and we all became these people we are today. We have baggage, pain, trauma and memories hard to forget. All of us have made good of our lives and on the outside we are successful, strong, beautiful people, but on the inside we have hurts so deep that only God can heal.

pretty aftermath of divorce

No one talks about the aftermath of divorce unless you are one of those couples that remained friends, almost closer in communication and understanding than when you were married. This always confused me, why not just stay married and work out your issues if you are still best friends? Anyways, I digress.

i am half a person without my kids

I miss my kids. My middle child is away at work a lot, conversations are hard, almost forced at times and one slip up of my emotions and I wonder if he will walk out too? He is ‘Switzerland’ he says, which is how he has been his whole life, however, at some point everyone takes a side, I just pray there are no sides to take by the time this happens.

separation cannot erase the memories

A love a mother has for her children is deeper and than any other love. Sorry if that offends people, I am sure I will offend someone, I usually do. My body held them, grew them, loved them before they even came into the world and this separation cannot break those memories. On my worst days I beg God to take the memories away, take my brain and make it not know, take my heart and make it forget so the pain goes away. He won’t. He knows one day they will understand my love, and when they do, those memories will be cherished.

turning my pain into purpose

I listened to a lady talk about losing her two sons in a horrific accident both on the same day. My heart ached for her immensely and she said something I will never forget: “I will not allow one ounce of this pain to go to waste.” This is how I feel about the divorce, the pain it caused and the pain it continues to cause.

There will be days I lose my purpose, but for today, I will not allow my pain to go without purpose.

Thank you for reading this assortment of pain to paper writing. Honestly, if you have read it all I’d love to know. Wait! No I don’t I am not ready for that yet. LOL My tender heart cannot handle more rejection.

If you want to talk with someone who understands what divorce or family division can do to a family, I would love to have a zoom coffee with you. Click the button below to see a little more about who I am and what I do as my ministry. Trust me I will not spam you if you reach out!

I am a real person, wishing for real healing for all of God’s people.

Another post I wrote talks about facing the crap! Yes I know I have tendency to use poopy words, again I apologize if this offends you. Sometimes the word crap is the best word to use for what we are going through. Click the link to read some more of my crap HAHA.