My parents divorced when I was 11, and we became an officially divided family when I was 12. On a natural level, this age is one of the most formative years and therefore one of the most traumatic to introduce a rupture in the family. Also, it occurred to me that when a father and mother divorce, they leave their children like orphans, in a way. While respecting the unique different wounds between actual orphans and children of divorce, we are nonetheless similar to orphans because our parents’ presence together as husband and wife no longer exists, and we are left physically alone more often due to there now only being one parent in the home. More importantly, however, their divorce often leaves us as spiritual orphans.

“Even though father and mother forsake you, I will take you in” (Ps 27:10). Scripture was the first place I ever discovered that I had become a spiritual orphan, but it made sense of my life experience. Although my mother and father were still present in my life, their hearts grew distant from mine as they separated themselves from truth and lived in vengeance, division, unforgiveness, and unfaithfulness toward one another.

As a teenager and young adult, I suffered deep confusion within my heart as I witnessed them behave contrary to what Christ teaches. Since I was not yet formed as a Catholic, I repeated their behavior in all of my relationships. I was divisive, unforgiving, vengeful, and unfaithful with friends, coworkers, classmates, roommates, and boyfriends.

This is the poverty St. Theresa of Calcutta speaks about: “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty… Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.” So, because the love between my mother and father was no longer being lived out, and there was no home any longer in which to do so, I felt I was left with empty shells for parents and without a true home, leaving me feeling like an orphan. I desperately needed parental figures to guide me and it was in this emptiness of soul that I turned to the Church as my mother and God as my father.

After living decades of despair without ever knowing how to articulate this feeling, I discovered God’s promise, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you,” (Jn 14:18) and I read that he instituted a “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father…to care for orphans and widows in their affliction” (Js 1:27). I sought this “Him” who cared for orphans and widows. The Church became my orphanage, as in the story of the good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan “was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds, and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him” (Lk 10:33-34). St. John Chrysostom suggests that this “inn” is the Church, and it was here that the Lord took me in.

I had to fall to my knees so I could be brought to the Church to be healed. As Saint Augustine teaches, “God gives where He finds empty hands.” I brought to the Lord my heart broken from my parents’ divorce and he gave me a new truth about marriage, which I had never known, and He led me even further to understand the supernatural marriage He desired with not only me, but all of humanity.

Although my parents divorced one another, leaving me in an exile similar to the exile of the descendants of the Israelites after the northern and southern Kingdoms divorced, the Lord desires something different for His marriage to us, his deep union with us. “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!” (Is 43:18-19) So, I gave the Lord my parents’ divorce, my anger, my hurt, and He gave me a new heart. “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them” (Ez 36:26-27).

My heart had become so hardened to love, marriage, and trusting others. I discovered I couldn’t trust women because I lost the trust of my mother, and I couldn’t trust men because I lost trust of my father, so that pretty much eliminated the ability to form relationships with any human being on this entire planet. I also didn’t trust love or marriage because I only knew fighting and divorce.

So, God intervened by leading me to Himself and to His Church, who is His bride, to pierce my heart of stone with His love for me and to teach me to love and trust again. It had to start with Him first. What I learned from this piercing of the heart is that although psychological statistics suggested to me that I am beyond hope because of my parents’ divorce, the Lord desired to heal, teach and restore me through marriage, both naturally and supernaturally. Given that sacramental marriage is a sign of the marriage of Christ to His Church (Eph. 5: 21-34), in learning about the beauty of one, I couldn’t help but see the beauty in the other.

I found myself meditating on scripture as a nuptial love story while also learning about sacramental marriage through the Church’s apostolates, including learning about the Theology of the Body. All of these experiences were in stark contrast to what I experienced before, during, and after my parents’ divorce.

God says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rv 21:5). While I felt abandoned in the aftermath of my parents’ divorce, like Christ on the Cross who prayed, “My God, my God why have you abandoned me” (Ps 22),  the resurrection was beginning to occur in my heart. Now I know that when my heart is empty again, it is about to be filled, and when it is broken again, it is about to be healed.

Also, God gave me two beautiful spiritual parents: Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross. I turned to them in my abandonment and they taught me contemplation of scripture in the silence, like our Holy Father Elijah practiced. I learned about God’s love for me from their exhortations on contemplative prayer and supernatural marriage. St. Teresa taught me that “prayer and comfortable living are incompatible,” and St. John taught me, “Where there is no love, put love and you will draw out love.”

Instead of seeking to dispose of this cross as a child of divorce and seeking comfort, I followed their holiness and put the love of Christ where there was no love, no more marriage between my parents, and found an even greater love, one that healed and restored me. I learned that although my parents did not lay down their lives for one another or for their children by remaining married, I was called to do so in my life.

In all of this newfound beauty and darkness, like flowers that germinate in the darkness, the Lord spoke to me: “I will lead the blind on a way they do not know; by paths they do not know I will guide them. I will turn darkness into light before them, and make crooked ways straight. These are my promises: I made them, I will not forsake them” (Is 42:16). So here was the original promise of God’s fidelity again! Even though I felt forsaken by my parents, God would not forsake me. “Do not fear: I am with you; do not be anxious: I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

Even though my parents divorced, God will never divorce me! So, I rest in Him each time pain surfaces from my parents’ divorce. The Church is now my spiritual home on earth because my parents’ home no longer exists, and although there is no unity now between my parents, I await my heavenly homeland where I hope to be united for eternity with God and His entire human family. Hopefully there, too, my parents will be united again forever, where “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain” (Rv 21: 4).

I came to the Church as an orphan, and I am now a daughter destined to be resurrected for eternal bliss with God the Father through my home, the holy Mother Church. Just like the young girl who was twelve when Christ raised her up in the Gospel of Mark (Mk 5:38-43), Christ is doing the same with my 12-year-old self, and all that happened afterwards. Truly, the wounds of my parents’ divorce drew me to the wounds of Christ and by His wounds I have been healed (see Is 53:5).

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Hidden Daughter of Carmel (author’s pseudonym) was received into Holy Mother Church in 2009 after a series of mystical experiences with Christ which enabled her to believe in the Catholic faith before even being formally catechized. Prompted by the Holy Spirit in 2019, she searched the internet for Catholic resources for children of divorce, found Life-Giving Wounds and joined their online support group that was established during the covid pandemic. She is deeply involved in Carmelite spirituality, living her contemplative faith through the vocation of marriage and motherhood and striving to bring Christ into the cloister of her home, which she nourishes as a domestic Church through frequent reception of the Eucharist and the Church’s Sacraments.