Corpus Christi Blog

Stories of Hope

11-11-2018Weekly ReflectionLeila Miller

From a woman whose Catholic friends encouraged divorce — a strong word of caution to well-meaning friends:

I’ll save you the full background of my marriage, but it was difficult from the start. I was pregnant when we married, and we struggled in silence during the first few years. Then, one day, my husband finally confessed to me that he had been unfaithful before we got married and had been keeping it a secret for several years. I was devasted. I had recently reverted to Catholicism and took to my private Facebook group of faithful Catholic women to seek advice and comfort. When I shared my story, to my great shock and dismay, I was told by most of them that I needed to leave my marriage. I was told everything from “get a safety plan in place” to “set up a private bank account and start saving.”

At first, I tried to be polite and simply thanked them for their “suggestions,” but I wasn’t interested in leaving my marriage. I was told repeatedly that my marriage wasn’t valid anyway and that I didn’t have to put up with this “emotional abuse” on his part. The funny thing, though, is that the more people told me my marriage was bad, the worse I treated my husband and undermined our marriage. I began to believe that my marriage wasn’t real or precious. Pretty much everyone I shared my story with had nothing helpful to say, and they told me that divorce would be best—or at least inevitable. I had to start defending my husband, which was hard for me because I felt so wronged by him, but he needed me to defend him, even at the same time that I tore him down.

It wasn’t until months later that I realized just how much this “venting” in and of itself was destroying my marriage! I vowed to stop saying negative things about my husband. And I also realized that if I was going to save my marriage, I would be doing it alone. So, I did. I started by telling my husband that under no circumstances, aside from immediate danger, would I ever consider divorcing him. Then, I went about setting up firm boundaries with my husband. If he crossed them, there would be appropriate consequences (but that consequence would never be divorce). Through this process I realized how I had enabled his bad behavior and how we had been destroying each other.

As I changed, so did he. I cut off relationships with friends who had been unhelpful to my marriage. I also enlisted the help of people who had been supportive and who could hold us accountable for our actions. I prayed and focused my mind on the good things in life. And everything changed. My husband transformed from a selfish liar to a man who put his family first.

Are we perfect today? No, but guess what? We are stable. Our fights don’t explode anymore. We find ways to enjoy each other’s company. We take care of each other. I can tell you that it was not easy or fun. That was a dark, dark time in my life that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But the beauty of the storm is the rainbow afterwards. Had I taken the bad advice and given up without giving it my all, a family would have been destroyed like so many others are.

It’s also important to note that that horrible year of marriage, and all of those trials we were put through, started after my husband’s first night of inquiry at RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults). I was told that the year of his conversion would be the hardest year of our lives, but I had no idea how true that was. Spiritual warfare is real.

If you’re in a difficult marriage, divorce isn’t the answer, growth is. And we all need to stop perpetuating the victim mentality that was forced upon me when I shared my story. Neither I nor my husband was a victim of the other in our marriage; we were both broken people in need of the other to heal. My husband has taught me many lessons I didn’t even know I had to learn, and I, in turn, have helped him grow to be a person of integrity. He tells me frequently that I’m his moral compass, and he doesn't know what he would do without my influence in his life. The goal of marriage is to get one’s spouse to Heaven, and now we keep that goal as our guiding principle.

From a daughter who was an adult when her parents separated, and how her parents narrowly avoided divorce and became an example to their children:

We are always our parents’ children, no matter our age. I was 27 when my parents’ separation took place, and, despite my solid foundation of happy and stable family life, it just about wrecked me.

When my parents announced their separation, I felt like the loving and safe home in which I grew up was a ruse. Being the only child of four still living at home, I was the only one at the dinner table with my parents when that conversation happened. Walking away from that dinner table, I felt completely alone for the first time in my life. What was once a place of gathering, laughter, and jokes felt like it had become a headstone for the happiness and stability I knew. Phone conversations with my siblings followed eventually, and feelings of disbelief, anger, hurt, and fear were discussed repeatedly. The feelings were raw, exhausting, and unavoidable. We were all adults, so just thinking about how a young child would emotionally handle a divorce, with no way to articulate the depth of his or her feelings—perhaps expressed only as “I’m sad”—breaks my heart into a thousand pieces.

Given the very close relationship between my mother and me, It was especially hard on me when she moved out of the house. However, I understood that she did not want to be distracted or disrupted by my father coming to the house to tend to maintenance issues (mowing the lawn, fixing various things, etc.), which would have happened if had he moved out instead. Any feelings of bitterness I might have had toward them were muted by witnessing the pain that each was enduring; it was hard on them, they knew it was hard on their children, and I didn’t see the benefit of rubbing their noses in it. To their credit, they were fighting for their marriage—receiving counseling, communicating openly and effectively, and trying to fix what had become fractured.

It was providential that I began weekly Eucharistic adoration just the week before my parents announced their separation. I can never overstate the role that my faith and my weekly appointment with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament played in healing me endure and heal from what was only a chapter in my life.

I hope my parents recognize the profound example they provided their children. They faced down a perilous outcome that so many other families do not survive—and they survived. They showed us that they took their wedding vows with proper gravity and reverence. They knew they wanted to be together, but, because some of their issues were decades in the making, each did not initially have the confidence that the other could meet him/her on the other side of the forest.

I cannot stress enough the power of prayer in saving my parents’ marriage. They had so much prayer covering them during this treacherous time, likely more than I will ever know, but for which I continue to be thankful. I know down to my bones that we receive supernatural graces in the sacraments, and, with that grace, their own prayers, and the prayers of others, they made their way back to each other and defeated the death that is divorce—just in time to celebrate their 35th anniversary.

From a daughter grateful for her mother’s steadfastness and her father’s return:

It really didn't hit me, the importance of an intact family, until my father’s final days. He died in the hospital, where my mother had summoned my sister and me to come and spend those last hours with him. Though by then my father could not speak, it proved a holy and beautiful time. My sister—my only sibling—and I were holding his hand the moment of his passing, and, just then, a tear formed in his eye. I sensed him saying, “I love you.” Despite my dad’s imperfections, it all came down to this. I will never forget the feeling of gratitude that came over me in realizing that, despite all we’d gone through together, his life had ended with our family intact. My father had spent many of his years in a long battle with alcoholism and away from the Church. I feared he and my mother would divorce. There were times, I’m sure, that I thought maybe they should. Instead, my mother, with prayers of hope in her heart, hung on. In time, Dad went through treatment, began living a sober life, and, shortly after his brother died, he returned to the Church after a 35-year absence. Knowing he had returned to God brought an unfathomable peace. But the peace had also come in knowing that my mother had never left, despite such brokenness and even entire seasons when he neglected his responsibility as a husband and father.

Following Dad’s death, I was overcome with gratitude that he had died in God’s gentle and merciful embrace. But there was something else, too. I felt such a closeness with my family. Everything was so beautiful about being together, just the four of us in that little room with no complications from additional family members that divorce and possible remarriage would have brought. We were intact and as whole as we could be, despite what the world would have dictated, and it felt good. It felt right. It felt uncomplicated and holy, and there was an overwhelming sense of thankfulness to God that our original family was there in that little circle of love, together to the very end. It was the way God had wanted it, I was certain. Despite our loss, we were at peace.

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