divorce, a story of love

My father was 19 and my mother 20 when they met on Midway Island, February 9, 1973. 

Mom was the only woman in the squadron training other Navy enlisteds on something to do with the P-3 Orion sub-hunters.

Dad was the only guy on the island who didn't drink gamble or cuss and offered to walk mom to her barracks. They ended up walking the beach and talking all night. Dad shipped out the next day.

They were married June 9, 1973. Four months to the day from when they met. Mom barely had time to sew her wedding dress.

Dad couldn't/wouldn't marry someone who wasn't a Christian, so mom studied up and was baptized at some point before the wedding.

It sounds like a fairy tale. If they had known each other for longer (or known themselves) things may have turned out differently. 

Dad was shipped out three weeks after the wedding and was gone for six months. The first three years of their marriage was spent this way.

When Mom got pregnant she was given an honorable discharge from the Navy and had my oldest brother. 

Dad's enlistment was up soon after. They had plans to use their GI bills and balance college classes with jobs and watching the baby, but on a visit to Mom's family in Nebraska Dad's fear of the unknown overwhelmed him and he took a job with an irrigation company. That job wasn't a good fit, so six months later he took a job with Burlington Northern Railroad. His electrical training in the Navy was valuable to the railroad and eventually he was able to work up to Signal Supervisor before he retired. However, in the beginning they were required to move often. Sometimes they averaged moving every 3 months, for 17 years.

During this time they added another boy. Mom wanted to try for a third baby, but it took 5 years for Dad to agree.

So six years after my brother, they had me.

From the outside they/we appeared to be and ideal family. Breadwinner, Homemaker, good strong Boys, and a little Girl. A Faithful Church-going family.

My brothers remember more than i do, but we don't talk about it. i only have snippets of memory and the stories to go by. 

My father was gone monday through friday for years because of the territory he worked on or was in charge of.

There was abuse. There was infidelity.

My mother was raised in an abusive household with a philandering gambling father and had absolutely no coping  mechanisms. Left alone in the plains of Nebraska she unwittingly repeated the pattern she had seen as a child.

Her actions are inexcusable, but in order to love her like God asks me to, I must excuse them. Learning not to repeat some of them is at least as hard.

The years have been hard. My oldest brother fell into drugs and trouble at 16, but was pulled out of it by his baby at 24. My middle brother struggled with anger in his adolescence and had a baby at 22, but is unbelievable successful now. I still get overwhelmed by anger with little warning, but i have the most amazing partner helping me grow in God.

My parents made it 39 years exactly before they decided to officially divorce. Things had been bad for a long time. I never remembered them being good.

My mother has been living as a single woman for a decade. Going to cancun with friends, going to clubs, hanging out with singles - except that she had a house-mate that paid the bills and (oh by the way) was her husband. 

Neither of them has worn a wedding ring for at least 15 years.

The reasons things went bad are complex. Both bear the responsibility for failing. Its easy to take the side of the one that never hit you and never cheated. But is that the best thing to do?

I hate the failure. I hate the fact that they won't let God win. I hate the situation, even though i have longed for it since i knew what divorce was.

it is exhausting to think about all of these things. i have more to write, but it will have to wait for another time.

8 out of 30

8) what are 5 passions you have?

• being an authentic disciple of Christ
• my marriage
• my kids
• art
• enjoying life

7 out of 30

7) what is your dream job, and why?


my dream job has always been teaching at a college or university level.


i adore the idea of choosing my own textbooks and watching the students' minds click when everything they learned in high school starts to click. 


i only have my bachelor's degree right now, so obviously i would have to get some higher education before i can make this a reality.

6 out of 30

6) what is the hardest thing you have ever experienced?


this question seems almost impossible to answer. who has not been through hard things? at the time didn't they all seem like the hardest thing you had been through?


in order to give some kind of answer, i will say my miscarriages. i lump them into one thing because they occurred within a 6 month period. the pain from the first one blurred into the second one and swallowed my life for over a year. 


up to the moment my youngest daughter was born i was convinced that i would never have another live birth.


i allowed the differences in perspective between my husband and i to become a wedge in our marriage for years. 


i have blogged extensively about this before, so i'll leave it at that.

5 out of 30

5) what are the 5 things that make you most happy right now?

1. my kids
2. my relationship with my husband
3. my friends
4. my dog
5. my church

4 out of 30

4) list 10 things you would tell your 16 year old self if you could

1. the world will not come crashing down if you fail.
2. yelling and at and arguing with people does not prove that you are tough, strong, or brave.
3. you are not the only virgin in high school.
4. you are good enough to be friends with the popular people.
5. you are good enough to try out for a solo.
6. your brothers will be alright.
7. college will be even better than you imagine.
8. drinking will not make things better, and it will be boring before you can do it legally.
9. in a few years (, days, minutes...) you're going to be really glad you didn't do anything with those boys. they aren't worth your heart or self-respect.
10. difficult times are just an opportunity to re-align your priorities and make sure you are on your right path.

3 out of 30

3) describe your relationship with your parents

well, this is a bit of a complicated topic and will require some historical info. my relationship with my parents today is much different than when i was a little girl. (that's not unusual, i know.)

from as early as i remember i have felt loved by my parents. i know they did their best raising me, and i have a greater amount of respect for them now that i am a parent myself.

that being said, we have not enjoyed much of a happy relationship. my father and i are close now, but it has taken years of hard work on both our parts to get to this point.

my mother and i struggle. i mentioned in my last post that my mother is an un-medicated bi-polar. she was diagnosed as manic depressive (the old school term for it) when i was ten, and then was on meds until i graduated high school.

when i was little i understood that i was very important to my family. my mother always talked about how she had longed for a third child for years before my father acquiesced. she made it clear that what i did throughout the day either made her day, or crushed her.
when i was 5 she threatened to commit suicide. my father took the only sick day of his 34 year railroad career. at the end of the situation she told me that the only reason she was not going to kill herself was because of me.

it is probable that these types of situations are why i was baptized at 6 years old, with a complete understanding (albeit at a six year old's level) of what i was doing and why.

i had no idea how to process this type of pressure. as i got older everything i did was to keep the peace and keep her happy. i mediated conversations, situations, and my fathers intentions. i was home schooled for 3 years and when my older brothers got home from school i would meet them outside and tell them what kind of day mom was having so they would know how to act around her. i took it upon myself to put a pill in her coffee or tea when i noticed that she skipped one.
she did not beat me like she did my brothers. there were only a handful of times when she lost it with me; one time throwing a pair of roller skates at me, another spanking me with a paddle until i wet my pants, smacking me when i flinched.
she hated my father, and even though they are still married, she still does. she talked to me constantly about their relationship and how horrible he was. by the time i was ten i thought he was a stupid, insensitive, jerk.

my brothers and i learned that anger is resolved through violence, and so we fought ferociously despite the 6 year age difference. i rarely told on them though, because watching them be punished was much worse than being beaten up by them.

10 years ago i met my husband and my world began to change. hundreds of conversations lasting well into the night led to (our marriage, but also...) a change in my view of my parents. i began to see that my mother did not have appropriate boundaries with me as a child. i should not have been responsible for her emotional state or weather or not she killed herself. sometimes i think God sent him to me specifically to end the generational cycle of abuse.

i love my mother, God loves my mother, God uses her to work in other people's lives. BUT, the more i grow as a mother and as a Christian, the less we are able to co-exist happily. she desperately wants me to be with her everyday and oversteps her bounds with my children at every opportunity. honestly, sometimes i am afraid she will try to run away with them. i absolutely HAVE TO have boundaries for the sake of my children. she perceives boundaries as messages of hate and disdain. she constantly accuses me of manipulating her, lying, and hating her.

i don't like having to talk to my kids or my nieces about what their grandma meant when she said she was going to go home and kill herself. i do not want them to have to deal with the emotions that come from that threat. but i also don't want to continue apologising for her. at some point (even though she is mentally ill) i want her to take responsibility for her actions and get help.

taking personal responsibility is very important to me, now. one of the most important turning points in my relationship with my father was when he apologized to me. he apologized for not having the guts to step in when he knew things were not good at home. he is a wonderful grandpa and we talk every few days about anything and everything.

writing this post has been exhausting. i spend most of my time consumed with my own blessings (lovely little girls and wonderful husband) and very little time thinking about the negatives in my childhood; until i'm confronted with it through because of a bad day, a neighbor or someone at the store hitting their kid. then it comes crashing down on me like a stack of bricks.