As I’ve thought and read about the experiences of children of divorce, the important role of friends as substitute family seems to always emerge. In the American Girl doll series, the divorce doll, Julie Allbright, is one of the few dolls whose best friend, Ivy, is featured almost as prominently as Julie is. Julie finds respite in the traditions and stable domestic rituals of Ivy’s family. She finds that she is welcome there and in the absence, loss, and chaos of two parents trying to create new rituals for their separate worlds, Julie escapes to her friend’s world. We see that friends are a key element in a child of divorce’s journey of resilience. I’ve seen first-hand in church youth groups how your friends in youth group or at camp become an extended family, especially for children of divorce, who in joint custody situations are trying to make sense of two different moral and spiritual worlds while, as teenagers are developmentally wont to do, figure out where they fit in—what beliefs and expressions resonate with them, what do not, what gaps there are, what new expressions they want to try. As Elizabeth says in her book Between Two Worlds and states again in the accompanying documentary:
“After a divorce it’s no longer the parent’s job to run together the sharp edges of their two different worlds. Instead the rough edges of their different worlds run together in only one place: the inner life of the child. They feel and act like little adults.”
This last week, Pastor Jason Byassee writes of the band Mumford & Sons and their iconic “I Will Wait” video in this month’s issue of The Christian Century. I’ve written about the band before and adore them. I read with interest his reflection as our three-year-olds favorite song is this one—he will sing, echoing the insistent earnestness of the band, “I will wait FOR YOU…” At the close, he turns to me and says, “And I don’t like waiting.” As a three-year-old, he probably feels like half his life is waiting…waiting to get older, waiting for older siblings, waiting for help…waiting.
Byassee reflects on the band through the lens of friendship, friendship with the divine and friendship with others.
“One commentator pointed out the deep pathos in “I Will Wait.” Its lyrics are so simple as to be barely quotable here; the chorus repeats the title over and over again. (One critic complains that the band’s first album is so spiritually earnest that it “weeps holy water.”) But you can’t belt that line unless you’ve had someone fail to wait for you before. Unless you’ve been betrayed, left hanging, shut out—and you’re making a promise not to do that to someone else. It’s a song about friendship. And not much else is worth singing about with that kind of self-forgetful ecstasy.”
Reading his words was particularly poignant to me because I had just watched the Between Two Worlds documentary where Pastor Byassee is one of the children of divorce featured. He speaks thoughtfully about the legacy of divorce in his own life and he would be one of the outliers for whom divorce pushed him to become more connected to his faith. He has chosen more traditional expressions of faith, but in his columns for The Christian Century, where he tends to review pop culture, he resonates greatly with the “spiritual, but not religious” crowd and understands the attraction to be a “none.” His words about knowing what it is like to wait, reminded me of the powerful book by Dr. Evon Flesborg, The Switching Hour. She draws on countless interviews to show how a child of divorce is marked by years of waiting and preparing to switch back and forth between two worlds.
“I will wait for you…” A song of covenant that arises out of knowing what it’s like to wait. And who likes to wait? I close, repeating his thoughts:
“But you can’t belt that line unless you’ve had someone fail to wait for you before. Unless you’ve been betrayed, left hanging, shut out—and you’re making a promise not to do that to someone else. It’s a song about friendship. And not much else is worth singing about with that kind of self-forgetful ecstasy.”
Categories: Children of Divorce, General
OK so maybe I’m splitting grammatical hairs here but this phrase “children of divorce” is just driving me nuts! Children are not “of divorce”. You make it sound like children of the corn or something like they were somehow born of the act of divorce. I know you mean PEOPLE whose PARENTS are divorced but it comes off sounding as if people divorce their children when they divorce their spouses. Its a pretty irresponsible and inflammatory phrase. In fact it is every bit as misleading and manipulative as the phrase “third party reproduction” or “sperm donor” or “intended parent”.
It is a phrase intended to make people think that people who divorce their spouses divorce their children, betray them. It’s much to sensationalism for my taste and smacks of propaganda just like donor re pro speak
Malarkey. There are real wrongs going on in the world true injustice. People abuse other people, they manipulate them, entrap them, belittle them treat them unfairly in millions of different situations to be upset about. There are millions of of people who are in need of help to overcome odds of so many different situations that to whine about the fact that we can’t force other people to pretend like they love one another when they don’t is just ridiculous. There are things a person is entitled to and there are things they are not entitled to and controling other people’s love lives is one thing we are not entitled to even if they are our parents. Their romantic feelings for one another are really none of our business so long as they remember their obligations to their children and their community and to themselves. Honestly its probably far healthier for parents to make a decision and just do it than to waver back and forth trying to make it work over and over again the way I have endlessly unstable constant fighting teaching the child to put up with virtually anything or be a door mat. This divorce and marriage thing is like its own little demi god around here. People need to remember that human beings made marriage not whatever god they worship. If a higher power thought marriage was so important then we would not be the only ones of his/her creatures to do it and babies would not be born to unmarried parents and there would be no desire to go with other people…what is that a joke just a little something to make the difficult task of living with the same person day in and day out for ever just a little more next to nearly impossible? If it was such a darn Godly thing to do wouldn’t he/she want to make it easier so more people would be successful at it for the SAKE OF THE CHILDREN? No, its all a man made thing and its like worshiping that gold cow from the ten commandments movie or whatever. You can tell I know zero about religion. I’m no scholar but I know children are not of divorce or marriage for that matter. The allegiance both sides of the marriage debate pay to marriage and divorce as a child maker is just bizarre.
Amy Zeitlow, I found the blog very touching. It brought home the difficulty a child may feel just adjusting to going back and forth, even if the adults are reliable and responsible.