Radiant Light
When I was eight years old, my parents stopped living together, though I can’t say with any surety that I remember them sleeping in the same room ever. I have these disjointed memories of family luau celebrations in Jamaica mixed with shouting matches behind locked doors. My sister and I joke that I must have blocked out 85% of our childhood somehow because her recollection of events is far more detailed and dramatic than mine. She often has to retell me stories of our past that feel familiar to me, yet also feel like they belong to the life of someone else. Though the bruises of my parents’ marital breakdown run deep for my sister like roots of a great tree, the wounds of the past are brittle leaves that molt year after year for me. They’re still there, nevertheless.
Despite the obvious evidence that their marriage was imperfect, I don’t recall feeling the weight of their discontent. I only remember what it felt like when my Dad got an apartment across town and suddenly I was terrified of going to bed at night. Which feels weird, because my Dad was never my safety or my source of comfort so it feels odd to acknowledge how severe it felt when he was physically out of my daily life.
A random night comes to mind, a story told to me by my mother once. She said I came to her room several hours after bedtime, asking if I could go see my Dad. She replied kindly that it was late, and that I was going to see him soon enough for his weekend visit and that I should go back to bed. I didn’t relent; in fact, she says that I became inconsolable, begging her through tears to call him and ask if he would come and get me. I sobbed and screeched repeatedly, “I want to see my Dad!” To this day I don’t remember if he answered that call and came to my rescue. I only remember the desperation I felt in that moment for the attention of my then absent father.
Divorced from my mom meant exponentially separated from a relationship with his daughters. I don’t know if by circumstance or choice, probably a little of both. He died when I was 22, still feeling as far away from me as he did on the night he moved to the apartment across town.
I have been terrified my whole life that history would repeat itself in my own marriage. I’ve often made Reagan feel inadequate with my insecurities borne of my parents disastrous example. That fear was realized, not in my own marriage, but in that of my sister’s and it was way harder to witness than I could have possibly anticipated. When the only result on the horizon for them was divorce, I pleaded with both the Holy Spirit and my brother in law to stop it. My brother in law sat across the desk from me in my office at the time, unknowingly crushing me with the words he shared. I was attacked by instant panic, unable to hold back the tears as they tiptoed down my cheeks. When I thought about what my niece and nephews were about to endure, I was transported back in time to the trauma of my own divorce experience and immediately grieved for them. My niece, Sophie, was a particular source of worry for me. I’m not sure why–could’ve been the blessing of being in the delivery room when she entered this world or the fact that she seemed to be comprised of equal parts her Mom and Me–no matter why, her little soul was tied to mine in some particular way and I felt like I knew exactly what the news would do to her: it would devastate her to her very core.
“Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces will never be ashamed.”
Psalms 34:5
When the world devastates us, God tells us to look to Him and he will carry us. I saw this first hand in the life of my niece back then. See, she did something that I neglected to do when I trudged through the muddy waters of divorce. She turned her face to the sky, leaned into the arms of her heavenly Father, and let him carry her through what I know had to be the most painful experience of her life thus far. And amidst the most unsettling moments of her young life, she literally radiated with joy. I witnessed a faith rise up in her like I have never seen before, all while her little heart was breaking. It’s a fascinating, heart wrenching and beautiful thing to witness. That’s not to say that she didn’t suffer. And that her hurt wasn’t written all over her life–it was.
I was invited to attend a school talent show where she was a participant. It was mere months after her Dad moved across town, now situated a balcony away from her Mom and me in the auditorium. Sophie walked out onto the stage, gripped a microphone in her hand and addressed the audience in song with these words:
excerpt from “Unsteady” by X Ambassadors
Mama, come here. Approach, appear
And Daddy, I'm alone ‘cause this house don't feel like home
If you love me, don't let go
Hold, hold on, hold onto me 'cause I'm a little unsteady, a little unsteady
Hold, hold on, hold onto me ‘cause I'm a little unsteady, a little unsteady
Mother, I know that you're tired of being alone
Dad, I know you're trying to fight when you feel like flying
But If you love me, don't let go
Hold, hold on, hold onto me 'cause I'm a little unsteady, a little unsteady
Hold, hold on, hold onto me ‘cause I'm a little unsteady, a little unsteady
Before the third note I was weeping. Her pain was on display for the world to see and yet the two people who she wanted to reach with her pleas were never going to be able to give her the reparation that she longed for. What a weight for a little girl to carry.
I saw that weight nearly bury her at times, my sister too. But there was also a blooming happening, a restoration brewing in Sophie’s life that I’m not even sure she could see for herself at the time. I was the lucky voyeur. When I asked her to share with me what she remembers of that time, she shared the following:
The night my parents told us they were getting divorced, I remember being angry, heartbroken, and overwhelmed, but also not shocked because I felt like it was coming. For weeks it seemed I was just waiting for that shoe to drop. I remember that I went straight to my room and just cried in my chair thinking the world was crumbling all around me. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to make it to the other side of what was happening.
I wanted to ask them both for more information. I was curious because I wanted to know the full story; I thought getting to know the “why” and “how” would somehow help me understand better, feel better. I was so sad because it felt like they didn’t choose their marriage and our family.
Looking back now, God has taught me there was beauty in the brokenness and the pain. That had to happen, if for no other reason, for me to be the woman I am today. One thing I can see in hindsight is that the experience sparked my salvation and relationship with Jesus. If I could go back in time I would whisper to 14 year old Sophie that she’ll be ok and I promise it’s all worth it.
Beth Moore said in a study once, “Christian joy is not a denial of reality nor dismissal of facts,” and in the margin of that study I had written, “it’s possible to have a posture of thanksgiving for all that we have in spite of hardship or intense sorrow.” I believe that it’s not just possible, it’s absolutely imperative that we seek gratitude often, especially in the times when we feel like there’s nothing to be grateful for. I can’t imagine another survival instinct more effective than that.
It’s what I saw in Sophie in the months and years following her parents’ split-she wore this cloak of sadness and simultaneously a halo of joy. I attributed it to two things: her seeking community in a place where a relationship with Christ was encouraged and her willingness to invite Jesus into her life as the one she could rely on- a relationship she could be grateful for. For comfort, wisdom, and a hand to hold as she walked through the most difficult moments of her young life.
She says she definitely couldn’t see it at the time, but it certainly held her together and inevitably shaped the way she approached her own marriage in the future.
I learned marriage wasn’t two people, that it was 3, and Jesus was the most important person in the marriage.I just knew that when I was looking for the person God intended for me to marry, that it would be someone ready for the long haul. Ready to tough whatever storm life threw at us and ready to lean into Jesus to get us though it.
She holds on tight to her relationship with Jesus now, as she did then. And she’s found someone willing to do the same, which is beautiful and honestly, VERY comforting to Aunt Kiki. She says now that she can see how it was all “worth it”, pieces of her broken and put back together by a relationship with the Lord.
I believe we(children of divorce) don’t end up as broken pieces put back together since we’re never really the same after. I like the way Jennie Allen describes our lives compiled of thoughts and feelings like threads, that can get tangled in knots by the traumas we experience. The hope she offers is that a relationship with Christ can take those tangled threads, “untangle them and weave them into something new, something potentially epic.”
Here’s to the possibility of something utterly epic, sweet Sophie. For you, for Jonathan and for your lives together.
