Why This Blog?

Once a week, I mentor a group of 5th grade authors. During our first meeting, one girl was completely comfortable explaining she has two homes.

Another other girl skirted the issue, “The phone number at Mom’s is…this is my Dad’s cell…”, instead of coming right out and saying “My parents are divorced. That's why I have 57 different phone numbers I can't keep track of.”

She slouched. She shrank like six inches. She turned sideways and peered up through her bangs. I asked, “Are your parents divorced?” She nodded sheepishly.

I had never before met this girl. We were sitting in an antiseptic public school room. More than anything at that moment I wanted to wrap her in my arms and say that everything would be OK, that she was loved, that she was beautiful and intelligent and that she should hold her head high. If I did that it would be my last day in any classroom.

Instead to my surprise, I raised my arms in the air touchdown style and cheered, “So am I!”, as if we had just discovered we shared a birthday or that we both loved eating half-melted chocolate ice cream with a plastic spoon.

I have never been a cheerleader. Mostly because I was too uncoordinated to make the squad. But in that moment, I became one.

I thought about my own children. How did they handle similar situations? Possibly they hung their heads and spoke hesitantly of our divorce. I hope not. Maybe like the first girl, they spoke confidently. Maybe they are totally fine with it. But the thing is, I don’t know for sure.

And then I realized that even when I was asked to explain it, sometimes I was totally fine with it and other times, not so much.

So I started this blog because I wanted a space for divorced Moms to be able to support one another and to discuss the most important thing: Faith in Christ. In the past ten years I've written nothing but thank you notes that weren't prompt enough and one embarrassing Christmas letter. When my writing instructor said “You should start a blog,” I thought, “Yeah, right” but subconsciously began pondering it in a noncommittal, vague sort of way. “Never underestimate the power of community,” she had said.

Thanks, beautiful church ladies, for spending some of your precious time in this community today. I know you don’t have much to spare.

As Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 3:16, “May the Lord…give you peace at all times and in every way.”