Reflecting on my own journey, I see how God has had a plan for my life, even when my family structure did not seem to align with a faith-filled path. Recently in prayer I was contemplating on the goodness of God that despite the absence of having a father in the faith, my three young daughters are growing strong roots in the Church than I ever had at their age. So much so that they are now telling me about saints and their stories that I partially or even never knew of. In that time of prayer, I felt consoled by the Lord and Him urging me on to be the good soil so that the roots of their spiritual life and their fruits may develop to their fullest.

As ACODs, while our parents did not provide us with everything we needed for our own formation, we have the ability to take responsibility for our ongoing formation as adults. There are many resources we can choose from to help us. Forming Families, Forming Saints is one resource that I can warmly recommend. One does not need to be a parent to see the immediate application and benefits that this book provides.

For adult children of divorce, a fear of dating, relationships, and the thought of marriage one day can be very real. As ACODs, we have been profoundly wounded by relationships and marriage. We saw what was meant to last instead fall apart. We were robbed of our need and right to be raised by both of our parents together in the same house, to bear an image and example to us of agape love, which is the kind of love that God has for us. The sacrament of holy matrimony is good, beautiful, and holy. Marriage and family life must follow the vows, which is God’s design and plan for marriage and family life. As children of divorce or separation, we saw distortions of the truth and something beautiful and good turned ugly and undesirable.

In the history of time God hasn’t manufactured any takebacks,

And if He could permit the Fall, and choose to go on,

I choose to believe that he can make his Glory dawn—in me.

I am not bound by my past

because He has destroyed the death that sought to silence me.

The only bound I am is bound to be free; marked, as His, for eternity.

There are some unique challenges when it comes to ministering to teens from broken homes. Of course, any ongoing situations of abuse or harm must be reported to appropriate authorities—make sure your church or group has mandatory reporting and training in place to keep minors safe! However, there are many layers of the divorce wound that may not be the kind of thing you can or should report to Child Protective Services (CPS). In these cases, awareness and practical pastoral guidance for these teens is best. Below, I want to outline some of the unique challenges faced by teen children of divorce or separation (TCODs):

My adolescent life was a playground swing.

Back and forth:

Between Mom

And

Between Dad.

I never knew where to go, nor where I belonged.

I didn’t know where home was, for I couldn’t be close to them both.

I have often wondered why, in the long history of the Church, we do not hear more often about saints who lived through difficult family situations. Surely there were plenty, but it is not usually the aspect of their lives that we hear about. And so learning of St. Eugene’s life, and reading through his letters, I found myself grateful to know that I had a friend in heaven who understands my particular pain. Even someone who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Eugene, experienced similar trials and emotions that we do in the 21st century.

In life, more often than not, we do not get the apology that is due to us. And when we do, it frequently falls short of the words we need to hear. I have come to realize, for my personal situation, there are no words big enough, or deep enough, or sincere enough to compensate for what has been stolen from me.  With this realization, I finally stopped asking and waiting for the apology that does not exist. My pastor says, “It takes one to forgive.  And it takes two for reconciliation.  One can forgive without reconciliation, but one cannot have reconciliation without forgiveness.” I chose forgiveness.

However, the whole point of Lent is to do things that bring us closer to the heart of Jesus. And, if I want to be free to love someone in the vocation of marriage one day, how will I be able to do that if I am still carrying around resentful anger towards my parents? Do they deserve this reaction? Probably, but God loves them just the same as He loves me. So I embarked on a forty plus day journey of loving my parents through the eyes of Jesus Christ, whose love was so big that He died on the Cross for sins that He did not commit (cf CCC 598).

For those not married who believe they are called to marriage, you may know quite well the brokenness that keeps you in patterns that delay your readiness for the type of relationship that would lead into marriage.  In whichever category you find yourself, I submit that marriage has the potential to offer you significant healing.  For those who are married, when your marriage becomes difficult, and it will, the key is to turn toward – not from – your spouse.  The more you turn toward your spouse, with Christ, the more healing you will find.  This is because holy matrimony is a sacrament that heals, and it heals through the communion and sacrificial suffering modeled after Christ’s own sacrificial suffering to restore communion between us and God.

When I read Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” poem, I was struck with deep resonance on how profoundly I related to it.  I realized that it actually ended up setting a framework for how I could track and understand my own (rocky) process of forgiving my own father.  I came to a few realizations about the process of forgiveness – both from the poem and my own struggle with it. So, in honor of this year’s Father’s Day, a day when we can reflect on our perfect, all-providing Heavenly Father, but also a day when we can acknowledge the grief in how perhaps our earthly fathers fell short, I would like to share what I realized here.

Though I hid, self-protected and continued to wear the masks that I thought gave me some value, Jesus never stopped seeking the real me underneath.  He never abandoned me.  All the while, He was patiently working on me, preparing my very calloused and guarded heart to be broken again through the second loss of my dad.  But this break would be healing and redemptive, because it would finally let Love Himself enter in.  And He came in through another father, His father and now mine – Good St. Joseph.  I truly believe everything started with my simple prayer after that providential homily.  St. Joseph became the guardian of my healing journey and continues to be my strong and faithful pillar along the way, in both explicit and sometimes hidden ways.

Throughout Scripture, the images and language used to describe God frequently evoke two of the strongest attachment relationships that we can know as human beings—the relationship between a child and a parent, and the relationship between spouses.

If your parents divorced when you were an adult, like mine did, you may have experienced strife over paying for a wedding or a car. For me, my parents fought over who paid for what while I was in law school, including the cost of the postage stamp used to mail my monthly check!  My parents’ contention over petty things affected my image of God the Father, who cannot be outdone in generosity (see Matthew 19:29).  If my parents argued over who paid an extra few pennies to help support me, I certainly could not rely on them to provide anything, including financially.

I thought that if I just sat down and listed all the things I ‘should’ be grateful for in my life that I would then become a person filled with gratitude. I saw this exercise as the ‘fix’ for my pain and struggles. All the people I read about who had done this seemed so happy and peaceful. I wanted that for myself! My experience in life, largely shaped by my parents divorce, had taught me (incorrectly) that if I wanted something I had to get it for myself. So I went for it, only to be disappointed again and again. 

It was a few months into my freshman year of college; I was at daily Mass with my friends. At this time, I was really beginning to become aware of how much pain my parents’ divorce had caused and continued to cause me. I remember sitting in Mass, attempting to calm myself, but feeling rising panic each time the priest said the word...

Last Friday, June 16th, I was blessed to attend the wedding of a dear friend of my husband's. Like me, my husband's friend is an ACoD. When I realized earlier this week that his wedding date coincided with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, I decided that I wanted to make a special wedding card for the couple.

Sometimes I feel like I walk around in life on the verge of insanity. If someone could see into my mind, they might consider me a tad unstable. There seem to be so many voices in my head! I wonder, especially in times of crisis, how I am to move forward with all the noise. Of course, I want to believe His voice alone, but in moments of pain and agony, that seems like a near impossible task.

This poem came out of a recent time of prayer. When I was two years old, my father left my mother, my sister (3 months old), and myself. We saw him every other weekend for a few years, and then he remarried and moved around the country from job to job for most of my childhood. This poem expresses my struggle to call God “Abba” and to trust in His loving, faithful presence.

The inner critic is a very demanding, uninvited voice in your head that chastises you for being inept, bad, or deficient. It undermines your self-confidence and increases your self-doubt. ... So what can we do about our internal critic?