Before Mom met Larry, she cried a lot. She was worried that all of us kids would go off and live our own lives and she’d be all alone. (Corey’s mom, a well-educated professional, met and married a man in six weeks’ time. They were divorced one and a half years later.)
Corey, age 17
Are you ready to love again? Are you ready to risk again? And if you think you are, how would you recognize being vulnerable, like Corey’s mom, to an unhealthy relationship?
When love requires a lot, most of us rethink—at least on some level—our willingness to give. When love requires some, a few will bow out, but most stay in the game. When love requires very little, nearly everyone thinks they are ready for it.
For years I’ve jokingly referred to dating as “The Big Lie.” Each person puts their best foot forward in an attempt to be liked by the other. He will open the car door for her every time they go out; she will take the time to watch his favorite sporting event (even though she’d rather do anything other than that). He will plan creative dates and offer small gestures to show her he cares; she will overlook his annoying personal habits and make excuses for his decision to wear certain out-of-fashion clothes. He will unfriend old girlfriends from his Facebook page, and the only pictures she will post of herself are ones taken before she gained a few pounds. The Big Lie—it is the nature of the dating game.
Please understand, it’s not that these people are really trying to deceive each other. They just want the other person to like them, so they present themselves in the best manner possible. For a few months at least, this best-foot-forward approach creates a near fantasy dating experience that doesn’t require a great deal of sacrifice from dating partners. Because everyone is on their best behavior, love is natural, invigorating, energizing, and hope producing. It is easy and requires little in the way of emotional trust, vulnerability, or an intermingling of one another’s lives (things like children and parenting, extended family, traditions, values, and lifestyle choices).
Who would think they weren’t ready for that?
Here’s the point: Most people during the pre-dating and early dating stages are focused on finding the right person and then impressing the socks off them, when what they ought to focus on is being the right person. Dating starts not by looking outward, but by looking in.
This and the next chapter will help you to do just that—look carefully into the mirror so you can become the right person and assess your readiness for dating. This will create a more presentable and attractive you should you encounter someone of interest.
Death and Divorce Recovery . . . Really?
Pre-dating preparation usually begins with single parents having to recover from something: a death, a divorce (or relationship breakup), or some other significant loss. But you are deceived if you think that once you’ve “recovered,” you’ve moved past that pain forever.
Cassandra wrote to us at Smart Stepfamilies and shared how her church divorce recovery program had been helpful to her. “I think healing before remarriage is the most important thing a person can do for themselves and their children. I went through a DivorceCare class, and my current husband did a divorce recovery program at his church that helped him deal with his divorce. These programs helped us make changes that needed to be made, and have blessed our marriage, as well.”
I am a strong believer in divorce recovery and support ministries that help widowed persons move through their grief. (For example, I highly recommend the DivorceCare and GriefShare programs.) These support ministries help people learn how to manage their grief in a healthy way, give them perspective on how their marriage came to an end, and help them take responsibility for how they contributed to a dissolved marriage. Recovery programs also provide stability at a time of emotional upheaval through practical counsel, encouraging relationships with others in the group, and a godly perspective on forgiveness, healing, and managing anger.
But in spite of all the good these programs bring to our lives, I have to ask the question: Does anyone fully recover?
To recover is to get back or regain a normal position or condition.[10] Really? Is that possible after tragedy strikes? It hasn’t happened for me.
Taken
As I write, it is two days before Father’s Day, a day that I used to cherish but now dread with every fiber of my being. In February of 2009 my wife, Nan, and I went to a movie. It was a Saturday night and we just needed to get away from the kids and refresh ourselves. We went to see the movie Taken, starring Liam Neeson. The movie is about a father whose daughter is abducted—that is, taken—for the purpose of child trafficking. As any good father would do, Liam Neeson hunts down the men responsible and saves the day. After a fun, wild ride at the theater, we returned home to find our middle son, Connor, complaining of a headache. Little did we know that at that very hour Connor was being taken. We gave him an ibuprofen and sent him to bed, confident he would feel better in the morning. He didn’t.
An MRSA staph infection had contaminated his body and was systematically destroying his lungs. Over the next ten days we journeyed up and down steep mountains of hope and fear, and spiraled through narrow passages of prayer until finally descending into the valley of the shadow of death. Connor was gone from this life. Taken.
There is no recovery from this. There is only surviving and getting through. That may sound pessimistic or without faith to you, but I have talked with enough counselors and grieving parents who are decades further down the road than us to know that until heaven we will never go back to “normal.” A good, long look in the mirror has shown us that our life is forever changed and time now falls into the categories of before and after.
After: I’m learning what it is to pray for daily survival and to wait on the Lord’s provision for this moment—to be still and know that he is God.
After: I realize that I didn’t mean it when I said that. I said “if the Lord wills,” but I never gave it an honest thought that my plans for life wouldn’t really come about. I was smitten with the illusion of control. If I just worked hard enough, prayed hard enough, lived right enough, things would pretty much work out. Now when I say “tomorrow I will do this or that,” I don’t have any illusion that it will really happen . . . unless the Lord wills. My illusions have been ruptured.
After: We have discovered the faithfulness of a few amazing friends who are willing to walk through darkness with us, day after day, year after year, even when we can’t be for them who we once were. We have also learned that lots of other “friends” can’t handle our pain—and won’t handle our pain. Never before had we experienced social isolation and loneliness until we entered the valley of death.
After: My definition of a bad day has been recalibrated. Watching my wife dig her fingernails into our son’s grave while screaming “I want my son back,” or helplessly standing by as one of Connor’s brothers is submerged night after night in the fear that another family member will die, now qualify as a bad day.
After: Sunday is often the worst day of the week and worship the worst hour. Songs without Connor’s voice, the memory of his casket at the front of the auditorium, the feeling of abandonment by those we thought were friends, etc., make worship a time of confusion and agony.
After: I’ve realized that the train I now travel sits on two rails: the left is sadness (deep, deep sadness) and the right wonderful memories. The left is anguish, the right hope. The left anger, the right trust. The left sorrow, the right peace in the arms of Jesus. Neither rail invalidates the other. Neither excludes the other. They coexist. I now know that faith doesn’t end grief, and the hope of heaven still allows room for asking why. I travel these two rails, side by side, on an unstoppable train . . . till Jesus comes.
My guess is that by now you’ve realized (for yourself or the person you are dating) that your life is also forever changed, that there is no full recovery from the tragedy of death or divorce, and that you, too, are riding on the same train. Yes, my tragedy and pain are different from yours, but even still, your tragic loss has changed you. You have a before and after story, too. Just look in the mirror.
After: You realized infatuation stole your discernment, and you married someone you didn’t know, someone who eventually became your enemy. And now you don’t trust your decisions.
After: You discovered that life is fragile, and not even the righteous can assume they are protected from death.
After: As friends took sides, you lost a few, and the ones who remained soon faded into their married-couple world. You ended up alone and in search of new friends.
After: A sight, sound, or smell instantly transports you back to the time when your knees buckled under the weight of betrayal. And now you doubt if anyone really keeps their promises.
After: You are lucky to stay ahead of the bills. Ambition is dead, and you are socially withdrawn and embarrassed about your life situation.
After: For a season, you cursed God to his face, felt justified in doing so, and refused to open your mouth in praise. With your anger now subsiding, you are again open to your Father but still baffled at why he would let you and your children suffer so much.
Tragedy changes us forever. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, but do not be mistaken, it changes us forever. One of the biggest mistakes I have seen countless singles make is assuming that because they or their dating partner graduated from a support ministry, there no longer exists a residue of pain in their heart. Because the intensity of pain has lifted does not mean that you have learned everything you needed to learn or have moved past your pain. Sadness, pain, and doubt will coexist with faith, at some level, throughout life. You are forever different—in both positive and negative ways:
Negative: You are more self-reliant now. Coming to depend on God and yourself was tough, but now that you’re there, leaning on another man for financial support is downright scary.
Negative: You are a more involved dad now. Not only did you learn to hold your children’s hearts, you cherish doing so. Now that you’re dating, your girlfriend is moving in on your territory. Most people assume it would be a relief for you, but you just feel threatened—and guilty that your kids are losing a part of you.
If you are a single parent who has been through a death or divorce, as you ponder how your life has changed, here are three points to chew on. First, humble yourself enough to admit that you are changed. Real recovery does not transport you back to being the person you were before the tragedy; it incorporates who you were with who you have had to become. Be open to discovering this and integrating these various parts of you.
Second, keep in mind that your kids are different, too. As I’ve written in each of my other books, children never recover from the death of a parent or parental divorce. They live the rest of their lives in the shadow of that event. Yes, they are resilient and quite capable of adapting to the new normal of their family, but no, they don’t stop wondering about what might have been, wishing that broken relationships would mend, or grieving the multitude of losses that keep accumulating since the death or divorce.
Third, dating has a way of showing you that the growth you gained from your recovery work was sufficient to being single, but not sufficient for contributing to an “us.” Just because you have done some recovery work doesn’t mean you or your children are ready for new relationships. Take one step at a time and don’t be surprised if dating reveals a hurt or pain you didn’t know existed.
Here is something worth considering: A parent who has turned a blind eye to how they or their children have been changed by the past will make repeated dating mistakes. They will run over dating partners, fall short in caring for their children, and make foolish decisions about remarriage. A buried past is usually buried alive—and easily resurrected. Better to carry the past with you, reflect, and humbly listen.
God’s Mirror
There’s another mirror that I want to encourage you to look into. It’s the mirror in which you see yourself as God sees you.
You are his chosen child, beloved and cherished. No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, he loves you. I share this because many of the divorced persons I’ve worked with over the years have struggled with tremendous guilt and spiritual shame. Even if the divorce wasn’t their decision, they feel unworthy, perhaps even second class.
There are two things to think about, I tell them. First, remember that God is really good at forgiveness. He’s been doing it a long time and he took great pain in making a way for grace to be available to—yes, even divorced people (tongue in cheek)! So let him forgive you; embrace his grace.
Second, remind yourself that while you can’t earn his grace, God does call you to obedience. The reason he wants you to be obedient, by the way, is not because “I said so.” We parents sometimes give this response to our children when we don’t know what else to say. It’s as if we are saying, “I and the rule are one, so do it.” No, God invites our obedience because he knows the good he has in store for us when we live a certain way. His statutes are meant to provide for us, protect us, and mature us. There’s a gift in the command—we just have to trust that his loving heart is working on our behalf through the precept.
Pursuing Spiritual Blessing
If you were to fall in love with someone and marry them, would you have the blessing of God? Would you have the blessing of your local church family? Both of these questions are of the utmost importance for the divorced person. If you have been widowed, Scripture is clear that you are free to marry. Paul actually encourages widows to remain single so their dedication to the Lord can be undeterred; however, if remaining single with sexual purity isn’t your gifting, Paul says, as long as you marry a believer, you are free to remarry (see 1 Corinthians 7:8–9, 39). But if you are divorced, questions about your freedom to marry with God’s blessing and approval are critical.
Pursue the Smile of God. Every bride wants her father to give her away with his blessing. What every Christian couple hopes is for God to in effect do the same, that is, to “give them away” to each other with his blessing. Starting the journey of marriage with God’s smile on you is to begin on the right foot. Everyone wants that. To take the first step while hiding in shame casts a shadow on the legitimacy of the marriage. No one wants that. Therefore, it is important to seek God’s will for your life as it relates to marriage. I believe the high calling of Scripture for divorced persons is to reconcile their original marriages if at all possible.[11] God created marriage in part to reflect the oneness of the Trinity and be a testimony to the world of selfless love. When a marriage dissolves, unity is broken and the testimony lost. But how much more is God glorified when a divorced couple reconciles their marriage and transforms it into a God-honoring, mutually serving in love kind of marriage!
Now, having said that restoration of a separated or dissolved marriage is near to the heart of God, I want to acknowledge that this won’t be likely in many situations and wouldn’t be prudent in others. For example, returning to an unbelieving partner or restoring an abusive marriage would not bring glory to God unless there was radical repentance. The fundamental nature of such a marriage would have to be drastically different in order for a reconciliation to reflect God’s purposes in marriage.[12] In addition, if your ex has remarried already, reconciliation is not possible (in fact, Scripture teaches against them divorcing their new spouse to return to you; see Deuteronomy 24:1–4).
There are many other Scriptures and scenarios we could examine, but my point is this: Don’t move on to another marital partner without first giving serious consideration to the calling of reconciliation. Instead, explore with a trusted spiritual advisor, pastor, or ministry (e.g., www.reconcilinggodsway.org) the choices or actions you may have available to you as it relates to your former spouse[13] and what the Bible teaches about this matter.[14]
Slow Your Gaze
The next chapter will explore a number of other aspects of your readiness to date, but slow down, don’t turn the page just yet. This chapter started your examination of self with what I consider to be the two most important facets of readiness: (1) the impact loss has had on you, and (2) your willingness to surrender to God’s direction regarding divorce and remarriage. Both of these are vital and should not be quickly passed by. If you are divorced and already in a dating relationship with someone you really like, you may have skipped the last section. You don’t want anyone suggesting you might need to reconsider the relationship for spiritual reasons (and if you do feel that irritation right now, it might be your conscience telling you to do just that). Or perhaps you are running so fast from your past, you have never taken the time to reflect on how it has changed you or your children. You must stop. Slow your gaze in front of the mirror and take a good long look at yourself. You won’t be able to outrun these two facets of your life.
Let me put it another way—you can pay now or pay later. For over a decade I have specialized in stepfamily therapy and working with remarried couples, and one thing experience has taught me is that people who ignore these components of their life often pay a price for them later when they have a new marriage, new family, and much more on the line. Had they dealt with it before dating, they might not have even married who they married. Now they and their kids are paying the price. Pray through these aspects of your life. Ask for insight and be open to what the mirror—and the Holy Spirit—shows you.
Discussion Questions
• If you are dating someone who has also experienced loss, do you know how they are different? If not, listen to their story and find out.