Everyone knows that when families are torn apart by divorce, children are often greatly affected by the split. Children of divorce are affected  psychologically as they struggle to determine their role after their parents have ended their relationship. Some psychologists believe that the unrest that children of divorce feel comes from losing the stability that they had in a loving two-parent environment.

When children are a part of a family, they have a solid foundation of love that is always expected to be a comfort to them. A change in the family dynamic leaves these children feeling as if they do not have a steady foundation to fall back on.

“A Frightening Analogy

I had seen these scenes dozens of times before they solidified as a frightening analogy for my own family’s story. Just months before my own wedding, I sat with my mom in the living room of the home I had grown up in, as she explained that divorce was the next exit on the highway of our family’s history. It had been several weeks since she had told me that her and my father’s marriage was in serious trouble. Now, she told me more: They had gotten married way too young, noting that if she could do it all over again, she would have chosen another route for her life, someone other than my father to share life with.

I couldn’t help feeling a shadow come over me. I looked at our family portrait hanging on the wall across from us, and wondered if I might be disappearing. I glanced at my hand, wondering if I was becoming translucent like Marty did. My parents’ impending divorce made me feel thin, as if now that my parents’ marriage was disappearing, the divorce was becoming our shared identity, and I too was disappearing.

I existed only because my mother and father had become one, creating me out of the abundance of their covenant community. Now, standing amid the debris and shock of the collision that ended their marriage, all this felt up for grabs. If I was through their union, who could I be in their division? If Iwas because of their coming together, who would I be if they nullified the community that gave me life? Could I be at all?”

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