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“Dear Katie”
It happened just a couple of weeks ago in our Sunday church school. There was a perfect Bible lesson for kids on the hand of God in life’s natural, but oftimes surprising twists and turns. The story was that of Joseph and his brothers. The perfect lesson on sibling rivalry, parental favoritism, jealous acts with extreme consequences, the longing for connecting—or reconnecting--with family, and conflicting emotions….and reconciliation between people who has split up for a long time and had the chance to get back together. You know, the kinds of things children experience with children. Like grown-ups don’t?
The teachers had come prepared for just such a perfect lesson on forgiving friends and siblings. But then. But then, life happened. The lesson plans went out the window and both grown-up teachers in the classroom felt their jaws drop, their pulses stop, and their mouths fall silent when one child in the class blurted out her response to Joseph’s climatic forgiveness of his brothers. She said, as I heard it (second –hand, of course) that she would never forgive her parents if her parents got a divorce. Which, of course, directed the classroom discussion to divorce. Needless to say, the teachers—resourceful to a T—ditched the lesson plan, grabbed their pants and started flying by a Holy Spirit…with the kids leading the way.
There are, of course, a couple of things about this church school experience.
The first thing is that kids just being kids can—and do—leap tall lesson plans in a single bound. They can—and do—turn our grown-up educational objectives upside-down and inside-out faster than speeding bullet. It’s the mark of a master teacher to be prepared for kids to speak straight about their feelings that take their lives and ours along with them in surprising directions for which we are not—and maybe never can be—fully prepared. “I would never forgive my parents if they got a divorce.”
The second is that kids have a way of exploding our grown-up
myths about marriage and family life in
Sometimes children do this by saying what their friends would say if only their friends could say it; so, because they can’t or just don’t, children sometimes say it for one another. “Teacher, John can’t talk about the hard words he’s been hearing and mean behavior he’s been seeing happen in his life, but can we all talk about it for a moment? Maybe that’ll help him feel not so alone.”
Or maybe children say what they say because there’s some wild thing inside them that fears their parents might get a divorce. Not that anything in their lives necessarily points in this direction, but they fear something might. After all, kids do talk to and listen to other kids and what’s happening in their lives!
Even in
And so, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, what do you communicate to a child who says she or he will never forgive his or her parents for getting a divorce?
A first thing to remind them that forgiveness takes time and that time is friendly. Just look at or listen to parents who are considering—or in the midst of--separation or divorce. Forgiving a spouse to whom you once pledged your life to “for richer for poorer, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health” but who has broken your heart more deeply than your mind ever able to reason through is really tough. It takes a long, long time to forgive words or actions that you can never condone or forget. And it takes a lot of hard work for moms and dads to forgive one another. And however long a time it takes divorced parents to forgive one another, it takes no less time for children to forgive their parents, even if the children feel relieved when the divorce confirms what they knew for a long time before it became legal and official and public.
Forgiveness takes time. It rarely happens all at once. Nor is this journey to forgiveness smooth or straight. In the meantime, feelings are feelings; emotions are emotions. They are neither good nor bad. They just are what they are. And so, when children are angry at their parents, they are angry at their parents. And, beneath the anger, when children are hurt by their parents, they are hurt by their parents. Their feelings are their feelings. And God bless those children who say what they feel—straight up and straight out—especially if they say it to their parents who simply listen to their children, accept their feelings for what they are and their children for who they are, and wait for a time to hug them again.
But what a parent or grandparent can communicate to children is the simple fact that, because they are angry or hurt or frustrated today, that doesn’t mean that’s the way they will feel all the time. Divorced parents come to understand that for themselves; and they can communicate that to their children as well. Fortunately, God gives us today as today and tomorrow as a new day after today. And time, through a sequence of tomorrows, does heal. Time is, in a longer run than today, friendly and, yes, loving. That’s the way God has set up this game of living. Today might not be a day for hugs; but there’s tomorrow. And the time for hugs will come again. It will come.
A second thing to communicate to children of divorce is the fact that parents may choose to divorce one another, but that does NOT mean they divorce their children. Quite the contrary, moms and dads who, try as they might, simply cannot reconcile themselves with each other do often find their affection for their children not only undiminished but deeper and stronger than ever. Sure, there are dads who dismiss their children and moms who abandon them; but even there, affection for their children often continues to tug and pull across years and miles. They think about their children, wonder and worry about them, even if in self-chosen exile from them. And in many cases, moms and dads continue to work harder to continue communicating with their children than they ever did with their former spouses. But there’s the simple fact that children are not responsible for their parents’ divorces—EVER. That responsibility lay with the parents—and the parents’ alone. But again, this awareness rarely comes all-of-a-sudden like. It comes to both children and parents of divorce--with time. And time, sometimes years or decades later, does heal. And life goes on—wounded, of course, but loving.
Because that’s the way God has set up the rules of this game of life. Love is the name of the game. And because we fail in love doesn’t mean God fails in love.
In the Bible, Jeremiah is often—and wrongly, I believe—pictured as the prophet of pure gloom and doom, of punishment and wrath and destruction. And while there’s no doubt the Lord does put such truths into Jeremiah’s mouth for his wayward and corrupt people, gloom and doom is not the whole truth of the Lord’s relationship with His people. Beyond hurt, there is hope. Beyond anger, there is everlasting love.
“The days are surely coming,” Jeremiah prophesies this morning,
“In those days they shall no longer
say: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on
edge’….The days are surely coming, says the Lord when I will make a new
covenant. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
(Jeremiah 31.27, 29, 31-33)
Did you catch in the prophecy Jeremiah’s mention of the
parents eating sour grapes, setting their children’s teeth on edge, and most
especially the Lord’s reference to himself as the “husband” of
And so the breaking of the first covenant prompts not a sentence of eternal punishment, but a new covenant. Written not on stones, but on hearts. “I will be their God, and they shall be my people…for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31.33, 34)
And a third thing to communicate to children of divorce as that, as forgiveness slowly, haltingly, in fits and starts, but eventually comes, so, too, comes trust. One of the most remarkable things about Jesus is how realistic he was. In the New Testament lesson this morning, he tells his disciples that, in spite of their belief, the hour was coming when they would betray him, deny him, and desert him. He knew the weakness of his disciples; he knew their failure; he knew that they would let him down in the moment of his direst need; and yet he still loved them. And what is even more extraordinary—he still trusted them. He knew his closest friends in life at their worst and still loved and trusted them. It is quite possible to forgive someone and, at the same time, to make it clear that we are never prepared to trust that person again. But Jesus said, “I know that in your weakness you will desert me; nevertheless, I know that you will still be conquerors.” To our knowledge, never in all the world were forgiveness and trust so combined. At one at the same time, Jesus shows us the way to forgive and to trust once again those who were guilty of failure.
To children of divorce, over time and by the grace of God and their hard work, divorced parents do come to trust once again—if only in relationship to their children. Even this trust—with respect to their children—does not come easy. It is by the grace of God. And it is very, very hard work. And while trust does not come right away, over time it does come. And while children and parents alike may continue for some time to feel the sting of their own weakness and guilt, betrayal and distrust, trust does come.
To end this sermon, I leave with you the words of one of the wisest women I have heard talking to children whose parents have gone through a divorce--Euphegenia Doubtfire
At the end of one of her children’s television programs she
reads a letter Mr. Sprinkles, the mailman, has just delivered to her from Katie
in
“Dear Mrs. Doubtfire (Katie writes),
Two months ago my mom and dad decided to separate. Now they live in different houses. My brother Andrew says we aren’t to be a family anymore. Is this true? Did I lose my family? Is there anything I could do to get my parents back together?
Sincerely,
Katie McCormick
O, my dear Katie (Mrs. Doubtfire replies). You know some parents when they’re angry, they get along much better when they don’t live together. They don’t fight all the time and they can become better people and much better mommies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don’t, dear. And if they don’t, don’t blame yourself. Just because they don’t love each other anymore doesn’t mean that they don’t love you.
There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy and some families have one daddy or two families. Some children live with their uncle or aunt. And some live in different houses and in different neighborhoods in different areas of the country, and they may not see each other for days, weeks, months or even years at a time.
But if there’s love, dear, those are the ties that bind. And you have a family in your heart…forever.
All my love to you, popette. You’re going to be all right.
Bye, bye.”
“If there’s love, dear, those are the ties that bind….You’re going to be all right.”
Amen.