When my husband and I bought our apartment and renovated it (it needed a gut renovation) it was one of the most stressful and exhausting things I have ever done.
The issue was made worse by the fact that *right before the renovation*, someone in our family had a severe health crisis that could have caused them permanent physical and mental impairment.
I was going through all of this in a new country, where I knew few people, and the expat community is, by and large, a den of vipers and snipers.
I wish someone had been like, "Hey, what you're going through is stressful, but not uncommon."
It is very timely reading this, since I was going to preach on divorce the very next week. You gave me lots to think about.
One thing I have long wondered is, how much do the culture, traditions, and values of one's family of origin contribute, to the incidence of divorce, whether high or low? Having studied my family's genealogy, I could not find a divorce on my father's side going back centuries, and just one separation on my mother's side. I wonder how much this kind of history "becomes a part of you?"
Personally, "the D-word" is not spoken or considered in our marriage. It "feels like" this is just not any part of what we are. I don't mean to be prideful about it. In theory anything could happen, I suppose. But culturally, and in the values I grew up in, it's simply not done, or even considered.
And, I don't think it's just our family. It seems also that there are ethnic groups in the USA who seem to just not divorce. I think about the many south Indians (from India) I have known, and divorce is not even named among them. They just don't think that way.
It has a lot to do with the family you're raised in, for sure.
I struggle to think of one single divorce in our entire family. Yet, as an exercise, I just wrote out a list of divorces in my wife’s immediate family, got to 11, and decided to stop counting.
There are multiple generations of broken families in her family tree. Several people have been divorced more than once. All questions about morality aside, just the simple fact that it is so present and visible in the family gatherings and conversations changes things.
Part of what it means is that “divorce” is a word used very often, spoken out loud, in a matter-of-fact way, by everyone, without shame. It’s just a reality and a simple statement of fact. “So and so is divorced.”
That makes it a very real option in everyone’s mind. It’s always there. Always looming in the background.
The single biggest factor, more than anything else, is a lack of steady, faithful, dependable men. That is almost 100% the root cause of all of this. But that’s a different discussion for another time.
I loved this! Well done
Praying for you, your wife, your children, and your marriage.
This post is great.
When my husband and I bought our apartment and renovated it (it needed a gut renovation) it was one of the most stressful and exhausting things I have ever done.
The issue was made worse by the fact that *right before the renovation*, someone in our family had a severe health crisis that could have caused them permanent physical and mental impairment.
I was going through all of this in a new country, where I knew few people, and the expat community is, by and large, a den of vipers and snipers.
I wish someone had been like, "Hey, what you're going through is stressful, but not uncommon."
It is very timely reading this, since I was going to preach on divorce the very next week. You gave me lots to think about.
One thing I have long wondered is, how much do the culture, traditions, and values of one's family of origin contribute, to the incidence of divorce, whether high or low? Having studied my family's genealogy, I could not find a divorce on my father's side going back centuries, and just one separation on my mother's side. I wonder how much this kind of history "becomes a part of you?"
Personally, "the D-word" is not spoken or considered in our marriage. It "feels like" this is just not any part of what we are. I don't mean to be prideful about it. In theory anything could happen, I suppose. But culturally, and in the values I grew up in, it's simply not done, or even considered.
And, I don't think it's just our family. It seems also that there are ethnic groups in the USA who seem to just not divorce. I think about the many south Indians (from India) I have known, and divorce is not even named among them. They just don't think that way.
It has a lot to do with the family you're raised in, for sure.
I struggle to think of one single divorce in our entire family. Yet, as an exercise, I just wrote out a list of divorces in my wife’s immediate family, got to 11, and decided to stop counting.
There are multiple generations of broken families in her family tree. Several people have been divorced more than once. All questions about morality aside, just the simple fact that it is so present and visible in the family gatherings and conversations changes things.
Part of what it means is that “divorce” is a word used very often, spoken out loud, in a matter-of-fact way, by everyone, without shame. It’s just a reality and a simple statement of fact. “So and so is divorced.”
That makes it a very real option in everyone’s mind. It’s always there. Always looming in the background.
The single biggest factor, more than anything else, is a lack of steady, faithful, dependable men. That is almost 100% the root cause of all of this. But that’s a different discussion for another time.