Program: FamilyLife Today

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, September 19th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Today we'll pull back the curtain and get a look inside the heart of a young man whose family is going through a divorce.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. We're talking this week about what happens when an earthquake hits a home; when a tremor is felt, and we've already heard about the initial impact, and we want to spend some time looking at the aftershock.

Dennis: You know, it's almost with a disclaimer you want to visit the death of a family that's caused by divorce so that you can learn from it, and you can pick up the pieces and move forward, but that's where a huge percentage of our population lives today, and so that's why we're talking openly and honestly about this. That's also why we invited Bill Butterworth and his son, Jesse, to join us on FamilyLife Today. Jesse, Bill, welcome back to the broadcast.

Bill: Thanks.

Jesse: Thank you.

Dennis: Both Bill and Jesse are authors, they're communicators. Jesse, however, is better than his dad. He's a singer, songwriter, worship leader. I've not heard Bill sing, and I'm not going to ask him to sing. Is that a good choice, Jesse?

[laughter]

Jesse: I would say so, yes.

Dennis: It's a good choice. Bill lives in Newport Beach and Jesse in East Seattle with his wife and son and together they have gone through the process of watching their family go through a divorce.

Bob: And I have to say I think it's remarkable for both of you to be here and to go through this process with us, and yet I think of 2 Corinthians where Paul exhorts those who have been comforted by God to comfort others with the comfort you have received, and that's really what we're hoping will occur because you've had to draw heavily on the grace of God, both of you, in the process you've been through.

Jesse, you described for us the turning point in your young life as you were 14 years old going through eighth grade graduation and saying goodbye not only to middle school but also to a family that was dissolving at the same time. That was that turning point and a traumatic one.

Dennis: Yeah, and as you graduated, you described that time in your life ? life would never be the same again. And as you watched your dad move all of his belongings out of your house that day, you said you had a choice of what you would become, and you decided to become a rebel. And one of your first acts was a sign of becoming a rebel.

Jesse: [laughing] That's right. Well, using the word "rebel," you'd think that I got some sweet leather chaps, and I went out and stole a bike or something, but my rebellion is pretty watered down but, man, I thought I was cool. I got some of my buddies together, and we had kind of banded together in my high school, you know, we'd kind of gotten known as the "God Squad," because we were the church kids and, of course, the funny part was that it wasn't because of our incredible love for each other or our work with the poor or anything ? it was just simply by the fact we didn't cuss. And so that was ...

Bob: That was enough to mark you.

Jesse: Exactly.

Dennis: So you convinced the God Squad to join you in your rebellion.

Jesse: That's right. So I'd say to the guys, I'd get them on the phone, it's a summer ? boring summer night, and I say, "Guys, we're going to do this thing. I've got to do something. I've got so much aggression right now," and, you know, I'm 14, 15, years old, I've already got that aggression that's just built in, plus I'm going, you know, my folks are splitting, and I'm just, like, all right, we've got to do something so at least I can feel like I'm in control of something.

So we get ? I call up my buddy and his older brother shows up in a little Honda Civic hatchback, and so we pile in ? I think there's five of us in a tiny Honda hatchback, and we drive down to kind of a remote spot by the river where we had seen this sign, and we decide we're going to steal a sign. So I grab a saw out of the dark garage that the light had burnt out, so I just grabbed a saw and left and threw it in the back of the car. Well, we get there, I pull out the saw, realize I've grabbed a pipe saw, you know, for a metal pipe. Well, the teeth of this thing are teeny, tiny, and I don't know if you've ever actually gotten close to a sign, but they're huge. I mean, the wood on that thing is enormous.

Dennis: It's like a telephone pole.

Jesse: Exactly, so we're sitting there trying to [makes sawing sound] you know, with this saw, but the teeth are this big. So we're like going, going, going, going ? okay, next guy. So we kind of all switch off, and we're doing it, and we go for about 20 minutes and any time a car would come by, we'd shout, "Car!" and we'd all dive into the blackberry bushes, you know, and then we'd get out, and we'd pick the thorns out of our clothes and off of our ? you know, out of our hands and then say "Okay, go, do it again."

So we'd go and then after about a half an hour of doing this, the guys are, like, "Dude, we're not even half an inch through this thing, and we're all totally tired. Come on, let's just go, you know, and do something else."

Bob: Rebellion over, right?

Jesse: Right. Congrats on failed rebellion, but let's go, bud. So I'm so frustrated, so I just ? I don't know what to do, I've just got so much anger in my ? so I just basically kind of pile-drive this sign with my shoulder and just get right in it, you know, like ...

Bob: Going to knock it over.

Jesse: Yeah, and I actually did, and I put my shoulder into it, and I saw the sign kind of rrrrrrrrk, kind of halfway over, and I thought, "I am the strongest man alive." And, of course, we're by the river where the dirt is very soft, and so I realized that, man, if I just kind of pull this thing back and forth, back and forth, I can kind of rock this out. So that's what we did, and I said, "Come on, guys, get in." So we take a sign that's probably 10 feet tall, including a two-foot ball of solid concrete at the bottom ? we shove it into a tiny Honda Civic where about three or four feet of it is hanging out the back including a giant cement slab.

Dennis: What was the sign? I never heard what the sign said.

Jesse: Oh, it was just, like, one of those signs that said, "Slippery when wet," kind of a curvy road sign, you know, and, for some reason, in my mind, that was the pinnacle, that was like "I must have this."

Dennis: But you described it in your book as being a statement or a sign of your rebellion.

Jesse: Absolutely.

Dennis: That you were angry about your parents breakup.

Jesse: Yeah, and it was, like ? and at the time that wasn't really going through my mind as in, like ? in my mind, it had nothing to do with my folks, it had everything to do with myself.

Dennis: It was not the only way you were showing and demonstrating your rebellion. At one point you asked God why, and then you said that was the last prayer you uttered for four years.

Jesse: That's right. I was so angry that one day my mom had come in, and she said, "Hey, Jesse, you've got to take out the trash," because that was my job at the house, that was my chore ? trash. And I said, "Whatever." And she kind of, I think, pretended she didn't hear me and walked away and came back a few minutes later and said, "Hey, it's time to take out the trash now. You haven't done this in a couple of weeks."

And with all of this anger and resentment and these feelings that I didn't know how to deal with inside, I just let her have it, and I just went off on a string of words that would make a sailor blush. And my mom kind of calmly sat there and listened to me, and then she kind of disappeared for a second and came back.

Dennis: Now, let me ask you a question.

Jesse: Sure.

Dennis: Did you cuss her out?

Jesse: Oh, yes, oh, yes.

Dennis: It wasn't aimed at the air?

Jesse: Oh, no, it was very much directed toward her, yeah, definitely. And so she brought back some trash bags, and she started emptying my drawers into the trash bags, and she said, "It's time for you to go and ? you need to go live with your dad for a little while and take a break here." And I ? and, again, yet another thing in my life that was my stability gone, and I just busted out of my room, and I pushed past her, and I ran outside, and I just ran. I mean, literally. I didn't know where I was going to go, but I just ran. I just starting running down the street and then down the hill, and I just kept going. And then I couldn't run anymore, and I was out of breath, and so I kind of hid under these Manzanita trees that are in Northern California, and they kind of create this sort of umbrella, and so I went under, and I was out of breath and just heaving, and then the tears just came, and I was ? but I couldn't cry. It was like I wanted to, but I couldn't, and I couldn't catch my breath, and I was so angry, and I just went vertical, and I just said, "Why did you do this to me? What did I do? Why do I need to be the guy that ? You just destroyed my life. And if that's the way that You rule, then I'm out. I mean, we're done. I don't know why I want to be in a relationship with You," and that was it for about three years.

Dennis: You know, Bob and I recently talked with an author who did research into ? well, over 1,000 individuals across the country who are children of divorced homes, and your rebellion at that point against God is common of those who grow up in broken families. Their ability to trust God and to pursue a spiritual relationship is greatly diminished against those who come from intact families. And so your little illustration here of ripping up the sign and shaking your fist at God and then no longer praying for four years, and I assume you dropped out of church at that point, is that right?

Jesse: Yep.

Dennis: Or if you went, you just sat there.

Jesse: Yeah, I kind of went very sporadically, but that was ? there was no connection.

Dennis: That's all a picture of what's happening in our culture today around a generation that has all these feelings, and they don't know what to do with it.

Bob: And, Bill, I have to ask you ? you probably didn't know about the sign until years later ? didn't know your son was off being a juvenile delinquent, did you?

Bill: That's true. I mean, to this day, oftentimes, people will ask, "Now what every became of that sign?" And I just want to say that, on the advice of our attorney, we are not answering that question.

Bob: When your son, though, showed up at your door with trash bags full of his belongings, and you knew that he'd just cussed out his mom, or you learned that later, and you knew that he wasn't going to church anymore. What's going on in your heart and head?

Bill: Well, when I think of that time in my life, and as we mentioned earlier, I was so introspective at that time because I was trying to make sense of my own life, I was also trying to be a good dad, but that was very secondary in my thinking. I was just trying to get my life back in order again.

And so there was this mixed feeling of "I'm really glad that Jesse is here," I mean, "I'm glad that we're going to have some time," but there is a moment from that time that I don't think is in your book, Jess, that I remember very well, because it was a real wake-up call to me. We had shared custody, so the kids would go back and forth, and I remember having the kids at one point, and I was in the kitchen doing something, and I came back out quicker than they anticipated that I would come out, and the five of them were essentially saying, "I don't want to go in the kitchen and talk to him, you go in the kitchen and talk to him." "I don't want to go in the kitchen and talk, you talk to him." "Somebody's got to talk to Dad," and it's like nobody wanted to talk to Dad because they hate me or they don't love me? No, it's because I was such a mess. It was, like, what do we say to this guy?

Which is another thing that children of divorce feel a lot, is there's like this role reversal. Mom and Dad have become children in their emotions and in their behavior and especially Jesse and his older sister. I mean, they're the two eldest, and they almost have to, "Well, we've got to become almost the Mom and Dad in this thing, and not only parent our younger brothers, but we've got to parent Mom and Dad because Dad's a mess, I mean, somebody's got to help him get out of this."

Dennis: And, Bill, I want to stop you there, because as I've listened to your story, at the point you needed help from others, you needed some people to initiate into your life.

Bill: Exactly.

Dennis: Because you don't have the strength personally to go pursue the help from others that you really need. You need people to step into your life, make a phone call to you, and say, "Hey, Bill, let's go to lunch." "Hey, Bill, meet me over here, we need to talk."

Bill: Boy, you really hit on an important subject there, Dennis, and if I can just say one thing about it ? I have the best friends a guy could have. As a matter of fact, when people read my stuff, they say, "Man, I am so envious of the friends you have," yet they're really just normal guys. But the coup de grace, the one that gets everybody's attention is, as Jesse mentioned, we were living in Northern California, I took everybody down to Southern California for a Disneyland vacation, and my best friend lives in Southern California, because that's where we had lived prior to us moving up North. And on the way down, I'm realizing, I haven't told Joe that we're split up, and he's going to know we're down here, and he's going to want to get together, and he's going to smell something suspicious when my wife isn't present at the family vacation.

So I arranged what I had it nailed down to the T. We are in a little motel across from Disneyland. I told Joe to come over to talk to me. We were right by the pool, and the reason we were right by the pool is ? remember this, Jess?

Jesse: Oh, yeah.

Bill: I knew I couldn't tell him the story without breaking down and crying, and I had already figured out if I have water all over my face, it will just look like the kids were doing cannonballs by the pool rather than me being so upset.

So I told Joe and, sure enough, I broke down, and I cried, and he said, "Well, have you told anybody else about this?" I said, "Well, no, you're, like, the first guy." And he said, "Well, does Mike know about this?" And Mike is a mutual really good friend who lives in Omaha. I said, "No, Mike doesn't know. You're the only one that knows." And he said, "Well, I think Mike needs to know." I said, "Joe, everybody needs to know, I just don't have it in me right now to tell people."

So we talked a little more, we went back to the hotel that night ? this was all in the evening. I went to bed. The beautiful ending of this story is 8:00 the next morning I get this [knocking sound] knock on the door of my hotel room. It's Mike. He flew ? took the first flight out of Omaha. He says, "You are hurting. You need a friend. I'm here for you," and he arranged for the kids to go to Disneyland all day, and Joe and Mike and I just hung out all day, and they ? we talked, we laughed, we prayed, we cried, we just tried to make some sense out of this.

Dennis: The reason I wanted to underscore what you just said is because the Christian community ? I'm talking about the community of faith, it's in moment like this that we generally recoil, and no knowing what to say, we say nothing because we don't want to appear to be awkward and, you know, there's really nothing wrong with someone reaching out and even having an awkward moment, because the act of reaching out is a statement of love in the midst of brokenness.

Bill: Right. I don't think it's about being verbal, I think it's about being nonverbal. I just totally endorse what you're saying. I need to just let my brother know, "I'm there for you. I'm a listening ear, I'm a shoulder to cry on. I don't have all the answers, you don't have all the answers. That doesn't mean we can't work together on this."

Dennis: You know, we've not been talking to this group of people, but I want to address perhaps a very small group of listeners who may be on the precipice considering divorce right now, and they've been listening to us talk about its impact, and they've heard Jesse talk about his anger as a child and not knowing how to process it and dropping out of the church and giving up the faith and ...

Bob: Stealing that "Slippery When Wet," sign.

Jesse: That's right.

Dennis: No doubt about it, and I just want to encourage you, if you are in that place, find a group of people that will bring hope, that will bring help, and that will bring healing, and that's not necessarily an easy, quick fix to avoid a divorce, but, you know, the problem with so many divorces is they occur in the midst of isolation, where two people think they're the only two people in all the world who have ever faced an issue like you're facing. Well, you're not alone. This is where the Christian community ought to outshine the world by 1,000 miles. I mean, we ought to be there with our armor on and on our knees praying for these couples.

But I just want to say, "Don't give up." Don't do anything to emulate a quick divorce, a quick fix, a quick escape from the suffering and the lack of peace in your home. Call us here at FamilyLife and get some help and hope and find out where our conferences are being held. You and your spouse get to one of those conferences, get in a small group, a Homebuilders Group, but find a way to keep that marriage intact and then rebuild, even out of the ruins, rebuild and make your marriage and family a trophy of God's grace, and that's not meant to sound trite. Marriage is hard work but you know what? So is recovering from divorce. If we've heard anything this week, it's that divorce is not easy to go through nor is it easy to recover from. It's a lifetime process.

Bob: This weekend we kick off the fall season of Weekend to Remember conferences in cities all across the country, and we have seen couples who have come to those conferences desperate, really confused and feeling very hopeless about their relationship, and we've seen God give them not only a fresh sense of hope but some practical tools that they can begin to use that transform their marriage relationship. We've seen too many letters come two and three and five years later from couples who say, "We thought we were at the end. We've been able to rebuild thanks to help we received at the Weekend to Remember conference."

And our listeners ought to know that most of the folks who come to the Weekend to Remember don't come because they're in a desperate situation in their marriage, they come because they want to do some preventive maintenance on their marriage and make sure it continues to be healthy for the future. But there are folks who come who are in a very difficult situation, and often God will meet them there and do a transforming work in their lives and in their relationship.

And if our listeners would like more information about the fall season of Weekend to Remember conferences, we're going to be hosting conferences in more than four-dozen cities all across the country. If you want to find out when a conference is coming to a city near where you live, go to the website, FamilyLife.com, click the button that says "Go," and there will be a link there to take you to information about the Weekend to Remember conference.

You'll also find information about the book that Jesse Butterworth has written called "Six String Rocketeer." It's a book that gives us an up-close look at what is going on in the heart of a teenager when Mom and Dad get a divorce. And if you know a teenager who is going through this, and you want to be able to help that young man, that young lady, this would be a good book for you to read and then to pass on to them. As you said earlier this week, Dennis, whether you're 13 or 30, this is a book that puts its finger on some of the real emotions that often accompany a breakup of a family.

We have copies of Jesse's book in our FamilyLife Resource Center. You can request one when you're online at FamilyLife.com or by calling 1-800-FLTODAY. You can also get information about the book that Jesse's dad, Bill, has written called "New Life After Divorce" that gives his perspective on what God wants to do to help you walk through the painful process of moving from the pain you're in to a place of renewed hope and a stronger relationship with God on the other side.

Again, our website is FamilyLife.com. Click the button that says "Go" when you get to the home page, and that will take you right to the site where there is more information about the resources we have available here at FamilyLife. You can also call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY. Someone on our team can let you know how you can get any or all of these resources sent to you, or they can answer any questions you have about our Weekend to Remember conferences. Again, our fall season begins this weekend.

Let me ask you a couple of questions, if I can. One, is is your family one of THE families in your community ? and by that I mean one of the families that helps support the ministry of FamilyLife Today. We have a lot of folks who listen in each of the cities where our program is heard, but we have just a small group of families who come alongside and help with the financial support of this ministry. Some of those families are monthly donors to FamilyLife Today. We call those folks Legacy Partners, and we appreciate your financial support of this ministry. Others are folks who make a donation from time to time as they are able to help with the financial needs of this ministry, and if that fits you, can we ask you a second question and that is would it be possible for you to help with our financial needs this month?

Again, we are listener-supported, and it's those monthly donations that do help us continue this program on this station and on stations all across the country. If you can help with a donation this month, we want to send you a thank you gift. It is a two-CD series that includes an extended conversation that we had with author Shaunti Feldhahn on her book, "For Women Only," which is a book that looks at what men are thinking and feeling that women often don't get or don't understand.

This two-CD series was one of the most requested series of the year last year, and we'd love to send it out to you as our way of saying thank you for your financial support of this ministry. You can make a donation online at FamilyLife.com, if you'd like, and if you do that, when you come to the keycode box just type in the word "women." We'll know that you want the two CDs with Shaunti Feldhahn or call 1-800-FLTODAY, make a donation over the phone and just mention the two-CD series called "For Women Only." Our team will know what you're talking about, and they'll be happy to get those CDs out to you.

Again, thank you for your financial support. We appreciate you getting in touch with us, as you are able, to help with the financial needs of this ministry.

Well, tomorrow we want to spend some time understanding, Jesse, how you went from where you were as an angry, confused teenager to a place where your relationship with God had been reestablished and where you were beginning to better understand some of what was going on in your own heart when your parents got a divorce. We'll talk more about that tomorrow, and we'll hear the song you wrote called "Six String Rocketeer." I hope our listeners can be with us for that.

I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ.