"DivorceCare is a divorce recovery support group where you can find help and healing for the hurt of separation and divorce."
(DivorceCare is a ministry of ©Church Initiative)
3 Pink Dots | I remember this day like it was yesterday. I took this picture with my iPhone on February 8, 2015. At the time, My boys and I lived with my parents in Cary, NC. Interesting and miraculous things have happened since this particular day. Life. God has placed on my heart to share my personal journey. Honestly, I have been VERY RELUCTANT. I am learning to obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit. While I totally get that social media is often about all the highlights of life, situations in life are not often pretty or good to us. But God is! So, I'm just doing what He is calling me to do. Here it goes...
Divorce Care. With the encouragement and suggestion from a friend I met at church, I began Divorce Care with my boys in August 2015. DC is a 13 week program that offers emotional and spiritual support for the family along with helpful information and suggested strategies toward prayerful healing. This wasn't a group that psychoanalyzed, judged, or condemned. This was a safe Christ-centered atmosphere. In my particular class, the leaders were married, but had been divorced prior and both went through and lead this program over a course of several years. They had known relational pain, seen relational pain and healed from relational pain. This unlikely couple smiled, welcomed, and thanked each participant for coming. All the while knowing where they were. They were humble people who had a heart for hurting people, people who had gone through what they had. They were pillars of strength that had fought relational battles and lived to share their stories.
First, they extended their sympathies that we were there at all. Half of the group had children in DC4K (DivorceCare4Kids). Initially, I was there because of my sons. My friend had talked up this program; she'd been through it a couple times with her kids. I wanted healing for my boys; I wanted them to have friends who could relate to what they were going through and to express it in a safe environment. Additionally, I was bound and determined not to be the bitter divorcée. I had already prayed up on not walking around with a cloud of rain over my head, nor did I want to wear the scarlet letter "D"...Nope! This was not going to be the end all say all of my story. God's got more in store. I knew if I really wanted healing for me and my boys, we had to walk through this. And boy, let me tell you, if someone told me ahead of time what I would encounter and uncover before I walked into that Divorce Care classroom, I wouldn't have believed you.
Thirteen weeks sounds like a huge commitment, but in all actuality, the knowledge you acquire is priceless. Choosing a healthy pathway for healing after divorce was a priority for me. I knew I wanted my boys and I to be covered with TRUTH. And I did not desire to succumb to distractions, or numbing self-medicated agents. That would not do. No, my boys deserve a happy Mom and I am the only one who can give that experience to them.
The stories you hear in Divorce Care are enough to make you want to suit up and go to battle for your fellow classmates. Tears and tears and lots of anger. Holy Moly. You really get a wave of everyone's emotional baggage. And to be fair, everyone has emotional baggage. It's not just people who are going through relational hardships. It takes a humble person who is self-aware to come to terms with that and to give grace to others who are ahead or behind in the journey. There are levels to grief and relational loss. We all discovered that we were not all in the same emotional boat, but we were all on the same body of water. Together. And Jesus was calling all of us out of our boats.
I'll leave it here for now. I'll be back though to share more about my personal healing journey.
Love is Life,
Karrie B
