Part Three What’s the hardest part of being divorced…remarried

Part Three What’s the hardest part of being divorced….

After a few years of being single with children, two completely miserable experiences at marriage, remarriage was not on my to do list ever. I had no vision of any prince sweeping me away, taking me to his castle, or any other fairy tale fix. However, God had another plan. My friends were God’s pawns as they scripted the next sequence of events in my life. After listing me on the internet, and culling the choices, my friends picked my next husband…..Les was sent to my life from 400 miles away, and in short order (that’s a whole other story) we married and blended our four children, ages 6 to 16, into one home with one bathroom with six folks sharing it! The hardest thing about remarrying with children is that even in the most well intentioned parents with children who are not opposed to being blended, it is a difficult process.

Blended families who prepare, educate, and tippy toe into becoming a blended family do not have an easy journey. It is like a many player ballet, where each part of the choreography must be scripted carefully so that the dancers flow and well meaning ballerinas don’t collide. There is a reason seventy percent of blended family marriages end within the first two years. Even if the two cultures of the families mesh, you still have to face the realities of putting your households, finances, and expectations together. We won’t mention that also means clothing tastes, food choices, and family households together. You may still face conflicting holiday schedules, visitation, financial structure stresses, and extended family expectations or judgments. We won’t even mention that extended families and relatives can so stir the pot of discontent. The title “Stepmother or Step Father” brings no warmth to most friends or families’ hearts or images of kind, nurturing care takers. There is a sense of mistrust and concern for children who enter into relationships with new step parents and step siblings by outside family and friends. Children are stressed even if they adore the new step parent, because there are all kinds of mind twists that go with loyalty to one’s original parents. We won’t even go into what happens when the children dislike, or are angry about a remarriage. Whether their other parents are absentee, present weekly, or visit sporadically, your children have to navigate many relationships with many people in their lives, and at times mourn others in their lives they wish would visit or call. They are the ones who bear the brunt of divorce for years and years past the event.

So when a young mom considering divorce asks me “What is the hardest thing?” I think for me personally, and my husband has also agreed though we’re truly thankful for each other and our blended life together. The hardest thing indeed may be the knowledge that the stress, pain, and hardship your child or children faces due to divorce is something you never wanted them to have to experience, but it happened and it affects who they are. Only God, the true healer of hearts, can heal that pain and make their and your hearts whole again. God is good, and even in times of devestation and tragedy in our lives, He takes those times and uses them for good. I thank God each and every day for the restoration of my family and the relationships I have with the children’s other families.

P.S. Ron Deal of http://www.successfulstepfamilies.com/ is an amazing Christian resource for parents who are indeed preparing, living, or contemplating becoming a blended family. He also has great resources for single parents. (This is not a paid endorsement, I simply know first hand how Ron’s instruction have helped