My Parent’s Divorce Caused Me to Lose My Identity
Hello, my name is Mark and I was born and raised in Northern Virginia. While growing up in a Christian home, but not a totally sold-out for Jesus type of Christian home, I was taught two major lessons:
(1) That sex is intended for marriage.
(2) That marriage is meant to be never ending and that divorce is simply not an option.
More or less I completely built my foundation and identity on these two principles. Then it happened.
While a junior in High School both of those two lessons had been violated. My parent’s divorce completely rocked my world. The result of their divorce shook the foundation upon which I stood. That foundation was those two principles, and not Jesus Christ. I didn’t know up from down. How did I respond? Well, as a 17 year-old I ended up throwing two huge parties that were both visited by 5 or more police cars. One party had 100 people and the other close to 200. Keep in mind that these were held in my Dad’s one-level (with a basement) rambler house. It was an act of rebellion.
I also missed about 40 days of school during my junior year and my grades plummeted. I just didn’t care. Part of it was rebellion, most of it was I didn’t know who I was anymore.
This seemingly fun, yet destructive behavior, continued throughout college and involved drinking, smoking, etc.
Why did my parent’s divorce impact my life to such a great degree? I wasn’t a 5 year old child dependent on my parents for everything, I was a young adult at age 17. Some would argue that my parent’s job of raising me was complete and I wouldn’t completely disagree with that argument. The reason that it rocked my world to such a negative degree was that I was placing all of my hope, trust, love, identity, pride and belief in my parents. How can any two human beings be expected to be a perfect example for their children on how to live? They can’t, and that was something my parent’s divorce helped me to understand… albeit 5 years after the fact.
My parent’s did an excellent job at raising three men. However, they did not do a perfect job… as no human can. I learned that placing my complete trust and faith in a fellow human is being shortsighted. Once I realized this, about a year or so after college, I understood that the only being I could turn to and completely trust was God through His Son Jesus Christ.
I am so very grateful that God gave me excellent parents and the blessings He has given our family even through the many trials we have encountered. Of course I wish my parent’s marriage would have been successful, but who is to say I would have ever learned this valuable lesson if I hadn’t experienced the imperfect nature of humans?
My faith and hope is now in Jesus Christ and through various apologetic studies as well as witnessing God’s creation I can testify that the hope and love and trust that I now have rests in Jesus Christ. Do I trust and love people? Of course, but my complete and full trust is in Christ alone.
He has allowed me to love others more freely and heal from being a child of divorce. I also believe He allowed me to experience that so I could write this very story and start EI4G and TheHopeWithin.org ministry. I pray that this story will somehow open your eyes to the fact that Christ is the only one that complete trust can be placed in. Please contact me by clicking on the link below. I would love to talk with you.
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