“What is it you really want here?”
It had been a long day. Twelve hours in an attorney’s office sort of long day. It was a Friday night, and it was so late that even the traffic down below us in downtown Atlanta had started to thin out.
An impasse had been reached.
This was our second attempt at mediation. We’d been in separation limbo for almost 18-months and it was time to get this thing settled. And it wasn’t going to get settled if something – or someone – didn’t give.
She’d asked the question many times before, as attorneys do when navigating clients through a series of decisions they’d never dreamed of making. That night she asked it knowing the implications of my answer may leave me in a spot that felt unfair. But, she asked it knowing that it was what I needed to hear if we had any hope of reaching an agreement.
And so I was left to make what felt like decision number 5,643 along this path to formally and legally ending the relationship I never imagined I’d choose to end.
That’s one of the things about divorce that I didn’t expect. Naively, I thought it was just one big decision – do I file or not? But, that’s just the first of many decisions. Each decision can be heavy and life altering. Untangling parts of – but not all of – a family, it turns out, is complicated. And it requires a lot of thought and intentionality.
Each decision has the potential to set off a series of dominoes and you may not be able to anticipate in that moment just how far the breadth of that impact may be down the line.
So, how do you go about making a series of really important decisions one after the other, significantly impacting you and your children, and not lose yourself along the way?
While I’m no expert and have certainly not gotten it right at every turn, unfortunately I’ve had over six years experience navigating the hardness of life as – and after – a family navigates moving from one to two households. And in that time, I stumbled into a practice that I didn’t even know I was relying on. Until I did.
Name the outcome.
In the early days of our family’s fracturing, I remember journaling, praying, and asking my closest friends how to do this awful thing in as Christ-like a way. Even on those days when it felt like I’d walked into a space that seemed so far from the Lord, my heart kept going back to a deep desire to know that at the end of this season of life, I’d look back and know that I honored Christ in the day-to-day decisions I made.
I was, and still am, convinced that the call to walk like Jesus includes walking like him in spaces that are hard, awful, and heavy with hurt.
“Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”
1 John 2:6
So, organically, that became the mantra I’d asked myself as I navigated those early, awful months: how would Jesus behave during a divorce?
The answer came to me over the course of weeks and months. And it solidified into what I’d almost call a mission statement for how I wanted to handle my approach to parenting post-divorce.
As I ask myself how Jesus would co-parent, my mission has become to give my children an opportunity to have a healthy relationship with everyone in our family.
Six years ago early on in this journey, I’d have thought that was a horribly low bar. If you’ve experienced the challenge of divorce, you know just how high that bar actually is.
Put in real life that means facilitating their relationships with people I no longer have a relationship with. It may mean allowing them opportunities on “my parenting time” (a phrase I despise and even hesitate to put into writing, by the way) that can further important connections. And it means allowing them to openly love people in our lives who adore them, but who have hurt me deeply.
And that’s the hard part about co-parenting. It seems that to do it well, you have to let go of some old scorecards and put yourself in the backseat of family life at times. But, putting yourself last and putting love of other people first seems to be in the bullseye of the gospel of Jesus.
He would put his kids ahead of everything else. He would give more than he had to. And he’d behave with respect even when it wasn’t being reciprocated.
Friend, as you are navigating whatever season you are in during divorce or co-parenting, ask yourself, “What do I really want?” You may be in a stage of this process where you legitimately need to think through the financial and parenting-time implications of this question. But, don’t camp out there. Answer those questions with much prayer, consideration, and Godly, unemotional counsel.
And then move forward by asking yourself another version of that question.
What is it that you want for your children?
If I had to guess what you want for them is ultimately what you want for you, too. Keep your eyes and heart on Jesus, ask yourself how he’d act in your situation, and I know you’ll find your way to what your family needs.
