From Crossroads

SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK STAR?
On Parents Splitting Up: Take 2
by Tim Shutes

Stunned. There's no better word to describe how I felt. I was fresh out of college, an idealistic, bright, young, know-it-all youth pastor only weeks into my new job when the unthinkable happened.

It was Valentine's Day, three weeks before my 24th birthday, when my mom told me she was leaving my dad. They say I'm lucky because I wasn't a kid when it happened. In many ways they're right. God spared my sister and me a lot of psychological baggage, but I can't say it was any easier because I was older. It was just--different.
Therapists say, "Don't get caught in the middle." Well, I got caught in the middle. My sister was in school in South Carolina. I was 10 minutes from home. Suddenly I was the stable one, and instead of focusing on my brand new ministry, I was pulling overtime as a marriage counselor for my parents. I found myself going back and forth between desperately sharing my father's grief and uttering cold clichés to my mother in hope that something would stick and make everything better.

I thought life was supposed to be different. People aren't supposed to get divorced after 26 years of marriage, especially not Christians, especially not my parents. My dad was an emotional wreck, and my mom seemed like a different person altogether. I pleaded with God to rescue their marriage. In my idealistic world God always brought couples back together. How could a God who hates divorce not make that happen for my parents?

The truth is that if my parents had gotten back together right away, it would have short-circuited all the ways my family--me included--grew because of this painful situation. You see, living in the daily tragedy of divorce does something to a person--it first makes them numb, and then it reveals issues and sins that have been hidden for a long time. That's where I found God working on me and the rest of my family. Even in the midst of something God hates, God was present and working to bring about something good.

God says, "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water" (Jeremiah 2:13). My parents' relationship was a broken cistern that I kept trying to fill and refill, only to watch it run dry. They had been my source of security, my source of stability. But they were--and are--broken people like all of us. They simply couldn't be everything I wanted them to be.
It took me a long time to realize that I can't change my parents. I can only change myself. And because of God's goodness, I have indeed changed. God shattered my cookie-cutter faith and replaced it with a world-worn, real-life version that I would never trade. Because of this trial I am not afraid of uncertainty and change anymore. The situation forced me to confront my fears and hurts, and I am a stronger man because of it. So many people forsake God when tragedy hits. But I would have never made it without God. C.S. Lewis wrote, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains" (Lewis, 93). I believe that's true. I have come to realize that as much as my heart breaks for my parents, God's heart breaks even more. God has comforted me with his tears, counseled me through his Word, and fortified me through this fiery trial.

I still have much brokenness, but I would never trade these wounds. They are reminders of how God is faithfully restoring my soul.**

Taken from "Crossroads," by Stephanie Smith and Suzy Weibel, copyright 2008 Youth Specialties/Zondervan. Used by permission.