Three days in a row this week, I received pitches in my e-mail for something divorce related. When almost half of marriages end in divorce or separation, it seems reasonable to expect that divorce is a popular and common subject. My parents are divorced, my grandparents are divorced, and my husband was divorced twice before he met me. I don’t say that with shame or pride, it just it what it is.

As a society, it seems like everyone loves to gossip about everyone else’s divorce so it shouldn’t surprise me that I woke up this morning to a bunch of boasting, judgmental posts about how Rachel Hollis, author of that Girl, Wash Your Face book that everyone but me seems to have read last year, is getting a divorce. Despite not having read her books, this whole subject spurred on a lot of thoughts I felt the need to share.

 

You Don’t Know Everything

I think it best to start here because I don’t even know this woman’s online persona and even if I did, I certainly don’t know her actual life. So instead of this post being about her life, which feels incredibly rude to begin with, I’m going to make it about mine. This subject needs to be discussed and my own life is the one I do know quite well and am comfortable sharing (to an extent).

 

Nobody’s Perfect

We say this so often that it’s become a cliché, but do we actually know and respect this fact? I think we forget when we’re glossing over someone’s glowing Instagram feed. We’ve talked about this here before. When I’m yelling at the kids, there is rarely a picture for that! (Sometimes I do share similar pictures though!) You are likely viewing my favorite part of my day, a memorable moment I want to share.

I don’t know where we got the idea that it’s someone else’s responsibility to remind us that they’re human. I could use my feed for mishaps and temper tantrums, but I don’t want that reminder and why do you feel that I owe it to you to share that? You should be able to infer that that’s what real life looks like!

Last year, my sister tried to murder my mom and stepdad. My simple same-day surgery was botched and I was left with permanent problems. You won’t find mention of those things in any of my public posts because I can share with you to a point but at some point, my private struggles are MINE. My husband is also very, very private. (Also, I find it interesting that the same people who will be upset that you are not sharing your ‘ugly’ are the same people that would be quick to judge if you were airing your dirty laundry on Facebook!)

He also wants me to mention that the bad things seem to be the ones everyone else doesn’t want to forgive. So once you’re through your trenches and moving on to bigger and better things, the people around you want to dredge everything up again.

 

The Scarlet Letter of Divorce

This time last year, my husband and I were going through a very significant tough time. I actually spent most of the year in a deep depression and started to become self-destructive. We chose to focus positively on the future and work amicably on our struggles. My social media feed remained optimistic, as I worked toward that optimism inside of myself too. An acquaintance shared their frustration over this. They saw us in person a few times, happy and laughing, and shared how uncomfortable they felt because they were “waiting for the other shoe to drop”.

We were supposed to have that scarlet letter of what must be an impending divorce. We should have looked as worn as we must have been on the inside. Dealing with our struggles quietly made others uncomfortable and uncertain of anything other than the fact that we must be pretending. So it should be no surprise to me that we as a society want to make divorced people feel that way, like they can’t possibly have any insight into life because they obviously made some kind of mistake somewhere. Which leads me to my next point…

 

Struggles Lead to Wisdom

Don’t we all unanimously believe that mistakes often become lessons learned? So why is it that when someone shares with us wisdom that they’ve learned from a blunder of their own, we brush them off? If we keep invalidating the experiences of other people based on their struggles, we’re all doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

As an example, my husband and I went through big struggles in the beginning of our marriage too and you know what that led to? Finding Jesus! I genuinely feel that our marriage experience has brought a lot of great wisdom and is also a wonderful testimony on top of it. I wouldn’t take back those struggles for anything in the world because they brought me to Christ!

 

Christians Sin

What? No way! Yep, even with The Bible right there next to them, sometimes people sin. Jesus died for our sin: past, present, and future. Sometimes people just lose their way, be it for a split second or seven years. It doesn’t mean they can’t get back to where they need to be, that’s the beauty of forgiveness. We really like to discredit people as Christians the minute that their struggles are made public, like we haven’t had our share. Can’t possibly be a Christian if you’re divorced, some truly believe!

 

In the end, I will tout that my husband and I have a good marriage and I wholeheartedly believe it. I love our communication and our adventures. We rarely argue and we are a fantastic team. If you heard every step of our struggles, you might not. But if you choose to discount any of our advice because of our past, it may be you who misses out. If you choose to judge us based on what we’ve lived through, that is entirely up to you.

Know that I am never “faking” or “pretending” with the things I share and if you do ask me because you genuinely want to learn from our mistakes, I will share. All I have ever hoped for is that I might help other people and I hope that this stream of thoughts has helped you a little bit. If nothing else, that it has helped you learn how to give the benefit of the doubt to people going through struggles.

One last note to my fellow Christians: What you can do is pray for people going through their junk and reserve your judgment, as that does no one any good.