Thoughts on Divorce: Part 2

I mentioned in Part 1 that my parents divorced when I was a baby. For me, that divorce was just something that happened before I could even walk. I don't remember any of it. I just remember life after it. My earliest memories are after both of my parents remarried. Life as I have always known it consisted of two families.

When I was 15, my mom and stepdad separated, and they divorced when I was 16. That was the divorce that rocked my world.

I lived with my mom and stepdad, as well as two of my siblings (both several years younger than me). Aside from my raging hormones and temper, I thought our house was normal and stable. I was shocked when I learned that my parents were separating and then divorcing. If ever there has been a time in my life when I felt like everything was crashing down on me, that was it. Have you ever watched a scene in a movie where everything disintegrated? Life felt like that for a long time.

The purpose of this series isn't for me to tell you all the details of our home life. I just wanted to give you a smidgen of background.

Fast forward a few years. I was working at a summer camp, a place that God used to provide me with a great deal of comfort and solace over the years, a place where I grew closer to Him and learned about serving others.

During one of the weeks of camp, we had teenage girls in our cabin. One of them was a 15-year-old with a slight attitude. We didn't bond right away. In fact, I don't think we really bonded until her last night at camp.

We always had a worship service that concluded with the girls filling out commitment cards. They could commit to anything they wanted - anything from a commitment to following Christ to a commitment to clean their rooms. The choice was theirs. After the girls filled out their commitment cards, we as counselors spent a few minutes of one-on-one time with them discussing their commitments.

I don't remember what this girl's commitment was, but I remember her story. I remember it because her story was so incredibly similar to my story. With slow, quiet tears gliding down her cheeks, she told me about her mom and stepdad divorcing. She shared with me that all she remembered was life living with her mom and stepdad. She told me how close she was to her stepdad. She told me about slamming her bedroom door, curling into a ball on the floor, and crying her eyes out. She told me about feeling helpless, about screaming out and wanting to fix things. She felt her whole world was crumbling around her, and she didn't know how to deal with it.

With each word she spoke, I had flashbacks to my own life. I had never heard a story so similar to my own, and I knew God had placed this girl in my life for a reason. She needed to know someone understood her pain, a pain most of the people in her life couldn't relate to. I shared my story with her, and her eyes sparkled behind her tears. I hugged her, prayed with her, and encouraged her as much as I could in the time we had together.

Paul encouraged the Romans when he wrote to them. He told them all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). That verse came alive to me that night. I saw God working together everything for my good, for the good of the sweet girl in my cabin riddled with pain from divorce. Perhaps for the first time in my life, as I helped someone start processing her pain, I began to feel a peace about my own pain.

I only had a few minutes with the girl in my cabin. I wish there had been more time to try to encourage her, but I trust God gave us the time we needed.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've felt God nudging me. He has laid on my heart the hurting divorced kids out there. I'm praying about possible ministry opportunities He may have for me. God has blessed me through the hurting, and I want to be a blessing for others through their hurting.

Are there divorced kids in your life? Pray about how God would have you encourage them. As I continue this series, I'm going to try to share some ways I think you can help them, whether they're your own kids or someone else's.

Thoughts on Divorce: Part 1

I've never been divorced, and, by God's grace, I never will. I know a lot about divorce, however, just from a different perspective - the perspective of the child.

My parents divorced when I was a baby. That divorce laid the groundwork for life as I knew it from that point onward. I never knew life any different from having two families. In fact, the lives of my friends who only had one set of parents were always intriguing to me.

My mom and my stepdad divorced when I was 16. That was the divorce that rocked my world.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking a lot about how divorce affects the children of the divorced couple. I'm not a professional with any kind of degree in counseling or the like, but I'd like to share my insights.

Why do I want to share my insights? Do my readers really care what I have to say? Am I going to be one of those people who uses a public blog to vent and hurt others?

My intention is not in the least to hurt others, or even to vent. I pray that I will be very careful and guarded with my words. The purpose of this series will not be to say negative things about my parents. I love ALL of them VERY much! They all did the best they could with what they had.

I want to share my insights because I think believers are missing opportunities to minister to the children of divorce. Part 2 of my series (which I may post in a few minutes) will be a story of an experience I had with another divorced kid, a moment where God spoke to me and confirmed that I could use my experiences to be a blessing and encouragement to others. If I can help even just one person be a blessing and encouragement to just one hurting divorced kid, it will have been worth writing these blog posts.

Our Fine China

When Joseph and I were registering for wedding gifts, we decided not to register for fine china. The main reason is because it can be very expensive. If someone wanted to spend $100 on us, we would prefer that person be able to purchase an entire set of dishes from Target, not just one dinner plate from the fine china section of a department store.

For our wedding reception, we purchased china tea cups, saucers, and dessert plates from thrift stores. As we were shopping, we found a china pattern that we liked, and we decided to start purchasing pieces of that pattern as we found them. We committed not to spend more than $1.00 (vs. $100!) per piece, excluding serving pieces (do I hear $2.00?).

Since then, we've done just that. We've purchased pieces of our pattern as we've come across them in various thrift stores.

The thing is, I've had a hard time remembering the name of our pattern. I just had a good idea of what it looked like (white, silver trim, white "lacy" overlay around the edges). It was simple and classy. After purchasing the wrong pattern once, I had the idea to jot the name of the pattern down in a notebook I keep in my purse. Only, I never did that.

Fast forward to today. I was out doing a little thrifting, and I came across a dinner plate in "our pattern". It was $1.00, so I snagged it up. I also committed to jotting down the name of the pattern in my notebook when I got home, as well as tallying up the pieces I had so I wouldn't over-buy in the future.

When I arrived home, I pulled out my notebook and our china plates. If you'll recall, I knew I had purchased some that weren't the same pattern, so I was expecting two patterns. It turns out we had SIX different patterns! SIX! haha! Oh, well! They're all so similar that I'm not too worried about it.

I now have them cataloged in the notebook I keep in my purse. It starts out "assortment of the following" and then lists the SIX patterns! haha! I'm still giggling a little, because I guess my memory and eye for the pattern aren't as good as I thought they were!

Dream Home

I told Joseph yesterday that I have an idea of what I would like our next house to be. I'd like an old farm house with a good bit of land (not a working farm or anything crazy like that) and a barn that we could convert into a studio for our photography. If we landscaped well, we would have a great location for outdoor photos. We would have our own barn, so we wouldn't have to drive down road after road looking at barn after barn wishing we had access to use them for photos. Inside the barn, in addition to the studio, we could create a playroom so our kids could be right there during photo shoots. I think it could work. Now to save up the money and find the perfect house ... :O)

A Little Less Ugly in the World

We had one of those moments today where we both said, "Why didn't we do this a long time ago?" and "We should have done this the first week we had the house."

We had three ugly trees in front of our house, as in flower bed style. All three of them looked like Christmas trees. One was as tall of the house, and the other two were probably 3-4 feet tall and flanked our front steps. We've disliked the trees from the first time we saw the house.

We borrowed a trailer from Joseph's parents today so we could clear some limbs/branches/piles of ugliness from our backyard. Doing that was a big improvement to our yard. After we loaded the trailer with limbs, Joseph mowed the grass - another big improvement to our yard! He was preparing to return the trailer to his parents, and I suggested that we saw down the ugly trees and throw them on the pile in the trailer. Joseph agreed that it was a fantastic idea!

This is a shot of the tall tree.

Joseph sawing the tree

Joseph sawing the lower branches

These are the two smaller trees (I like to leave the front door open so people feel welcomed ... and, you know, I was raised in a barn.)

This is the side of the house minus the tall tree. I think I actually like the drain pipe better than the tree. It's OK if you disagree.

This is the front of the house without the smaller trees. I will admit it looks a little naked now, but we can put something prettier where the Christmas trees were.

The trailer all ready to head back to Piedmont. Buh-bye, ugliness!

Can you believe it only took us about 15 minutes to saw down the Christmas trees? I think that's when we really wondered why we didn't tackle the trees sooner. We both assumed it would take longer. We do still have to dig up the roots, but I think our house already looks better! A little black paint on the shutters, a new front door, and some pretty flowers in the flower beds, and we might actually have a little curb appeal.

Linen Closet

I decided to work on the linen closet first, because it would help me with the laundry closet and the guest room.

I started by pulling out all of the towels and putting them on our bed. I thought if I put them on the bed, I'd be motivated to finish.


I told you it was a lot of towels! We have a king size bed, and it was covered!



Another angle - I counted, and we have almost 50 bath towels (not counting hand towels, washcloths, or beach towels). That's just a few too many for two people.

I decided to box up the bright and pretty ones, because those are my favorites, and I think those will make me the happiest when we un-box them. I kept out the brown ones that we chose to go with our hall bathroom and all of our old towels that we had before we got married.

The closet looks a lot better. We have a manageable number of towels in there now. I also pulled out a few sets of sheets to donate to Goodwill. We have enough for when guests come, and we don't need more than that! There is also room again for extra blankets on the top shelf. I managed to clean out three stacks of towels and some blankets that were in the guest room.

I added a shoe organizer to the back of the door. It's loaded with an assortment of things that were previously in the laundry closet. By using the space behind the linen closet door, I'll have room for more stuff in the laundry closet.

3 Projects

I have three projects on my to do list that I would like to finish over the course of the next couple of weeks. 1) I'd like to clean out our laundry closet so that only laundry supplies are left, along with empty shelves that I can use to store stockpile groceries and toiletries as I find good deals on them. 2) Our linen closet is a little out of control, partly because we have so many towels (there are 3 stacks of towels in the guest room). I'd like to put some of the towels in storage and straighten up everything on the shelves. 3) I'd like to make the guest room a place where guests feel comfortable and welcome. At one point, we had the guest room cleaned out enough that someone could sleep in it. Then we started using it as a dumping ground for anything that didn't have a permanent home. The following pictures show you the chaos. :O)