My Introduction to a Broken Family

When I grew up in a small town in Southern Arkansas, I only knew of one family that was a step family. I learned quickly that it wasn’t a good thing from my perspective as a girl the child’s age. The broken marriage had cost the family their home, their car when Dad left in it, they had moved into the only rent house in town, which happened to be front and center next to the car wash…..which happened to be within walking distance to our home.
It was a very shameful thing in those days for your parents to have divorced. The D word was ultimate failure in public. In this child’s case in a small town where everyone knew what time your lights turned off (not to mention if the power company turned them off) and every choice was discussed….the child I knew never had a chance.
What I remember of her situation is this: Because they lived in the trailer which was code word for “they can’t afford anything decent” you see everyone had seen the signs, “For Rent: $25 a week cash or work for it until I kick you out” and everyone knew that the owner was willing to hire women in his pit stop truck stop. Long hours, horrible conditions and no decent woman ever worked there. Women worked long hours there, wore really strong perfume, and often left with a man other than their husband or boyfriend. Yet her mom had to, her step dad you see was of the non employed kind. We thought that was so because he didn’t know where to find a job, but truth was, he wasn’t looking for one. There was an eternal optimism between our girls and I that we could “help” the man find a job and were always telling him helpful advice like “Mr. Austin is hiring down at the store” but the only time her step dad went to the store was to buy pop, except Mr. Austin put his pop in a brown paper sack and he never ever showed us what kind. If we bothered him too long, he’d leave his lawn chair and light up a cigarette and go inside the trailer.
My neighbor had a flair for the dramatic, perhaps because she survived such a rough childhood by fantasizing all the time about going to Hollywood. She would take hair scarves and wrap her red hair in the fashion of Hollywood. It was her armour, her way of making us all go away and taking herself somewhere else where the pain couldn’t touch her. After all, Gilligan’s Island had shown us that Ginger had quite the life and Ellie Mae got to have it all: monkeys AND glamour. She had a way of looking past the horizon and you knew she truly wanted to live there, anywhere, but where she was.
I remember being extremely shocked when I went home with my friend one day as her mother slapped her face harshly because she hadn’t cleaned the kitchen and put out the meat to thaw before school. It came without warning and I just couldn’t quite take the whole picture in, we had simply walked in the door, a door which at my house would have meant a snack and a hug from someone. I had never in my life seen someone slapped by their mother, and certainly never in a way that caused a handprint on her face. I wept bitter tears as I walked home thinking “why can’t mother’s just love their babies” I was seven at the time.
Things did not improve for my neighbor child. As we got older, the dysfunctional aspects of her family grew too. She and her brother had each other, but that was about all they had. Their natural dad never came back and he never sent for them or provided for them. Their mother eventually drank too, and after twenty years of working in the truck stop, well, her ability to think there was a brighter tomorrow was very damaged.
What was more shocking to me as an adult now is that the adult school of thinking at the time was “protect your children’s hearts and minds from knowing such as this” which meant event the child wasn’t reached out to either. This was supposedly the Bible Belt, a strong community of believers, yet she was as a leper. She wasn’t churched, she didn’t have appropriate clothes in a day that clothes that were clean and just so mattered whether they were new or not. She went without alot. These were the days before school lunch programs and in our school, if you were hungry they gave you a peanut butter sandwich on sourdough bread. She ate one daily…while longingly looking at the soup and cinnamon roll she wouldn’t be given.
That memory haunts me. My unkindness haunts me. As though we girls in that class somehow thought it was okay to ignore one so in need….to not share….to not love her with God’s love. Oh we were aided by the adults in our world, they were clearly saying she was “untouchable” but what if we had?
Children of divorce whether small or adult need the ability to know that they are loved. I have a step mother in my forties. My mother died in 2005. Even as a step mom and mom myself, when Virginia came there were concerns that we would forever lose my Dad as our father when she married him. In some ways I have lost my father. He is her husband now. But because I am so aware of her gift of inclusion of our children and grandchildren, we praise this woman who now chooses to love us too. Who has lovingly taken care of our father through many hard times and as he faced serious health issues. I am thankful she is in my life, and his!
My own family entered Julie’s world in the late 1990’s. I became that single mom of two children. Because of Julie I was determined to keep our relationship with the children’s grandparents and Dad at the least neutral. Children need their father, and extended family. It wasn’t easy to forge a new bridge to them after we divorced…but the children and I needed to allow their love and their care of our children. My grandparents were my world growing up, why should I deny them theirs. As a single mom, life was hard, even with college degrees. The debts from the divorce and custody still haunt my mind monthly as I continue to pay them off ten years later. People were kinder to me, praying for me, sometimes putting gas in my car in the early days, or inviting us to come to family meals. Older folks at church invited us to sit with them and helped with my then 2 and 5 year old. Sometimes my minister said on Wednesday nights, “Why don’t you leave early and get your groceries, and slipped me a $20 to buy them with” as the nursery still had my children at the end of a long teaching day after commuting home and hustling to church…those moments were oxygen. Oxygen that I so needed to breathe in…to know that my Father in heaven had provided for me, when my husband had left me….my family had criticized me….my friends had abandoned me….my children needed me.
We all need grace and mercy. We all need love. We all need God. What can we do to be God for someone today until they meet him through your face or hands?

God is good!