For The Divorcing and Newly Divorced

One piece of advice I offer to any friend who has recently gone through a divorce is to turn off his emotions. If you thought your ex-spouse was the enemy, he is nothing compared to the enemy within if you cannot control it. You thought you experienced as much pain as you could bear – my friend, it’s just starting if you can’t WILL it to stop.

A divorce opens and re-opens many wounds. They cannot easily be healed during the divorce process. And once it is over, our bodies crave the healing. They want peace; they want understanding; they want joy; they want love. But while these are in need of healing, we very easily accept partial healing. Our emotions need TOTAL healing, but we easily accept physical healing, not considering the spiritual healing that is also necessary. Using our human senses, we want perceived healing, but we fail to use our spiritual senses to will, again, to GIVE healing. Our human bodies easily betray our spiritual will, and certainly our society encourages this – to take what you “deserve”, and to satisfy your every sensual craving. And our cravings after a divorce are immense. We NEED healing. And we want it now. And when something or someone provides a balm to our wounded emotions, there is simply no other way to describe it: it feels good.

But is it?

A person found dying in the desert can kill himself with too much water, joyfully drinking too quickly. A teenager who is the last of his friends to finally get a driver’s license can kill himself in his newfound joyful freedom – and inattention. And a divorced person seeking to heal his many, many wounds, can kill himself, too, through seeking to appease his natural longing for healing.

The simplest, wisest thing you can do as a newly divorced person is to will to turn off your emotions. All of them. Don’t be angry, don’t be irritated, don’t be sad. Don’t be happy, don’t be deliriously laughing, don’t be joyful. Don’t find undue peace with spiritual things. All these things are irritants or salves to your human emotions, but you need time to get your spiritual emotions healed to balance these physical ones. And spiritual growth, or healing, does not come quickly. I always recommend an arbitrary timeline of one year. Turn off your emotions for a year to allow them to heal. This doesn’t mean you should never be angry, irritated, sad, happy, joyful, or laugh, or should never pray to God. Besides being impossible to totally eliminate these emotions, it would make you impossible to be around. But what you can to is to eliminate relishing, dwelling in, and seeking to stoke these emotions – using them as a crutch to “feel” healed of your wounds. Or to somehow feel “justified” in your divorce.

As Christians, we know a divorce is a bad thing. In some cases it may be a necessary thing, but the bible says that in some cases so is cutting out our eye. It may be necessary, but it doesn’t make it a good end in itself. It is just a means, a painful one, which we are promised we will see happening throughout our lives if we follow Christ. We will know pain. But it is no more right for the early Christians to say martyrdom itself is evil than it is for us to say divorce is evil. It causes pain. And pain itself is not evil.

Seeking or accepting friends who will confirm our anger, irritation, or sadness helps heal our human egos – it’s not our fault, or it is totally justified. Seeking or accepting friends who bring us happiness, joy, or sexual release helps us forget our pains, not heal them – if I ignore them they will go away. Neither of these “healings” stokes our spiritual healing, which requires a focus which these distractions put to the deep recesses of our mind. It is very easy to forget or ignore God as we focus on healing ourselves without Him.

Speaking from personal experience, and that of friends, it can take many years to find spiritual healing if we seek or accept physical, sensual, comforts. We can eventually feel physically healed of a divorce, but most often the healing tears even deeper wounds in our spiritual being. For some, they never heal spiritually. I see the spiritually unhealed in friends who quickly bring new “daddies” or “mommies” into their children’s lives – or, worse, who introduce a new “friend” who will live with them. I see them in friends who live in bars, and are always asking me to stop for “one”’ after work. I see them in friends whose “reading” materials consist of pictures. I see them in friends who can’t seem to concentrate at work anymore, and go out for a smoke when they had never smoked before – I’m sad when they lose their jobs. I see them in friends who I never run into in church anymore. And for a few of them, they never seem to leave the church – they abandon the example of Christ as “a life too hard to follow” and think that like the holder of the oil-less lamp, the bridegroom will let them in anyway because of their good intentions. He won’t.

All these friends will tell me that they’ve gotten over their divorce and moved on. Life is good for them. They are “happy”.

All these are still my friends. I still see them. I am still there for them if they need me – anytime. But I am sad for them. Their divorce destroyed what I found to be so desirable in their friendship – they were truly, loving people. They not only accepted gifts, they gave them. Their lives were not focused on wanting things to make themselves happy; they were focused on giving to others, making them happy. Everything we do in our lives influences other people – no man is an island. The saying in our society about “I can do anything I want if I don’t hurt anyone else” is a lie, because our lives are not to be lived for ourselves and avoiding hurting anyone else, but to be lived with others and seeking to help them. For many of my friends, they helped me most by being truly loving people – their example gave me sustenance. They showed me they were truly living the life example of Christ, and I knew they were one with me. I was not alone.

Fortunately, I have many friends who are these examples for me. And it strengthens and grows me spiritually. It’s why I read the lives of the saints and spiritual writers, to find new friends like these. And I do find joy and peace in them – and in our participation in the life of Christ. And without my trying, I become an example and a source of peace for them.

If you are recently divorced, I would encourage you to decide to turn off your emotions for at least a year, and focus on a total healing of your pain. So when the cute guy smiles at you in the restaurant, when the friend wants to “comfort” you at the social gathering, and when you are alone and need “something to take away the pain”, accept the moment - but WILL to turn off the emotions. The smile doesn’t have to lead to a date; the momentary comfort does not have to lead to late night phone calls; the drink to help you sleep does not have to be a continuing “medicinal” aid. Dousing extra iodine on a wound doesn’t help it heal any faster. Time does. Covering up the wound and concentrating on other pleasures won’t help it heal at all. It needs attention, both physically and spiritually. Don’t give up. This is just one pain in your life; you will have others. But you will have joy also. Have faith. Seek to do what God made you to do, and trust the results and healing to Him. And trust in the everlasting joy and peace, and do not focus on seeking the short-term fix.

And I, my Christian friend, and your other friends are here for you, not as crutches, but as real friends. We wish you well. 2 Timothy 4:18