Program: FamilyLife Today

But the next level of forgiveness of being willing to take risks and go deeper into a relationship and forgive them when they might continue to hurt you even unintentionally is the challenge for me. And so I'm still trying to just figure out what forgiveness means.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, October 26th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We're going to talk today about children learning to forgive their parents for something they will never be able to forget. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. You know, we've come to a place in our culture where we recognize that the impact of traumatic emotional events can carry on for a period of time. We've heard about post-traumatic stress disorder, people who are still adjusting to trauma they've been through, whether it's in war or some kind of a disaster.

I'm just wondering if we've come to the point where we recognize that we have a nation of people who are dealing with post-divorce stress syndrome, the children of divorce, who grew up and have a lot of pain hidden away that maybe nobody's ever uncovered before.

Dennis: You know, all this week, Bob, we have been talking about this very syndrome or disorder you're talking about. In fact, we're a nation ? 40 percent of us between the ages of 18 and 40 are children of divorce, and we've learned a great deal from our guests on the broadcast, and I just want to thank you both, Jen and Elizabeth, for being willing not only to write your stories out in your books but also all this week share your stories with our listeners because I had the feeling on more than one occasion as we've shared about the pain of divorce and how it impacts children that the listeners moved to the edge of his or her chair and then after the broadcast was over probably pushed their chair back and began to think and ponder and pray about some things they haven't thought about in a long time.

But I want to thank you both for being on the broadcast and for sharing your stories with us.

Elizabeth: Well, thank you.

Jen: Thank you.

Dennis: Elizabeth Marquardt works for the Institute of American Values. She lives near Chicago with her husband and two children. She's written a great book called "Between Two Worlds." It's a national study, really, that's done about the impact of divorce on children and correct me if I'm wrong, Elizabeth, isn't this the first study of this kind that's ever been commissioned and completed?

Elizabeth: This is the first national study of young adults from divorced families, and it's also the first study to examine systematically the moral and spiritual impact of divorce on children.

Dennis: Jen Abbas is a freelance writer and has authored the book, "Generation Ex," and that's not "x" as in X, it's Generation E-x. And of course, you're pointing out that we have a generation growing up out of homes that are broken, and they have been divided. They're a generation separated from their family, right?

Jen: That's correct.

Bob: Both of you come from a background where you grew up in homes where divorce was a part of the makeup, and we've been listening to the voices of other young adults this week who have been letting us in on their stories. We talked with one young woman who talked about some of the lingering impact of her parents' divorce on her life, and her parents divorced when she was in her early 20s.

Woman: I would think that by now I hope that I can separate things, but I will say that it has affected my fear of ? if I were involved in a relationship with a man that he would find someone else that he would want to be with rather than me. Now, I know in my head that I need to ? you know, my own self-worth, my own value, I'm not my mom, I'm not my dad, but I will say there is a fear in there of abandonment, of just that he would leave me for someone else. It is there that I have to be aware of, and to realize that if I were dating a man that he isn't my father, but still that is something I'm more aware of.

But with my dad, it's interesting ? I get e-mails from him, and he says ? and he prays for us, and it's just ? I don't know. It's really interesting, because he is my dad. I love him, but I just ? I don't want to just bare my soul to him.

Dennis: You know, as I listened to that young lady reflect back on her family's divorce and just hearing her process it even out loud, you just hear the loss, the loss of trust, the loss of a family, the loss of a relationship with a dad, maybe the loss of a relationship with a mom. You can lose your innocence, your childhood, some of your memories. There's the loss of a model of what it means to be a true dad who sticks to his promises or a true mom who fulfills what she promised.

Maybe it's the loss of having a normal family and, as you talked about, Elizabeth, in your book, you felt like a weirdo because you'd grown up in a broken home, and you started comparing who you were with others. This issue of loss is huge, and therefore if there is an issue of loss there is also an issue of pain and hurt and there needs to be forgiveness that replaces the hurt.

I want to ask you both ? do you both feel like right now you have worked through the issues of forgiveness as best you know right now in relationship to your mom and dad? Have you both forgiven your parents for what took place? Jen?

Jen: Yeah, part of coming to terms with divorce means that you make a choice to define your parents based on their best moment and not their worst moment and, especially as Elizabeth is talking about being a parent herself, being married herself, you have a different perspective to look at, and you can look back, and you can say, you know, marriage is hard, and I can understand why someone would be tempted to.

And when you realize that your parents made the best choice that they could at the time they were making those decisions, and especially when our parents divorced, that's what culture told them ? the kids were going to be fine, and if you're happy then your kids will be happy. And so I don't want my mom to go into, you know, her last stage of life thinking that I have resentment for her over a decision that she made 25 years ago.

Bob: I have to step in here, because some folks will hear you talking about, "Okay, my parents made the best decision they could given where they were," and they go, "Huh-uh, no, they didn't." I mean, let's not just play this pretend game and pretend that they did. No, they were making some lousy decisions, and they were self-centered decisions, and they were a carnal decision. I mean, we can put all kinds of labels on them. What do you do with that?

Jen: Well, I think part of it is that there is a difference between recognizing that somebody made a decision out of emotion and not out of truth and not out of what was best for their child and all of those things and minimizing the reality that there are ramifications for those choices. And, I mean, we all have made choices out of emotion. We have all done different things that if we could go back we would do them differently, and we've all done things that we deeply, deeply regret, but there are still ramifications for those choices.

And so part of my maturity as a Christian has been to offer compassion. You know, my words are empty if my mom or my dad or my stepdad don't sense that I have forgiven them and deeply love them.

Dennis: But what I've heard you say all this week, Jen, is you've not minimized the choices your mom made or your dad. You've recognized them for what they are, but you've been realistic about their humanity.

Jen: Right. Divorce is sin. There is no getting around it, it is sin, and just like any other sins, there are ramifications, and, you know, the Bible talks about the sins of the fathers will be passed down from generation to generation. There are consequences, but it doesn't mean that there isn't restoration, that there isn't redemption, that there isn't forgiveness, and, I mean, would I have chosen for my parents to divorce? Absolutely not. But every day I get e-mails from people who have read my book, and parents are using it with their kids to be a neutral ground, to have conversations that they've never been able to have before.

I have counselors who are using it to help people broach these topics that they're not otherwise able to. I have people who use it as a pre-engagement guide because one person is from a divorced home, and the other one is not, and the other one wants to know what this experience is going to bring into their marriage.

Dennis: And, frankly, that's a good bit of the reason why I asked both of you ? have you forgiven your parents ? because I do hope these broadcasts and both of your books are going to start a national dialog on a personal level. Not so much bantering about in the media but, first of all, an individual inventory to evaluate ? have I forgiven? Am I holding this against my mom or dad? Where am I in this process? And, Elizabeth, what about you?

Elizabeth: It's a tough question you ask ? it's one of the toughest questions in my own spiritual journey. In a sense, it sounds so funny to ask whether I've forgiven my parents because I forgave them every day of my life. I love them extraordinarily and passionately, and they're huge and larger-than-life figures for me still, and the idea of forgiving these people who I love so dearly seems foreign. On the other hand, I know that there are things that they did that disappointed me or hurt me, some of which I understand and some of which I don't.

In many ways I think I have forgiven them. They were so young. I'm 35 now, raising my two little kids. They were 20 with a child, and I don't know how they did it. So in that sense of understanding that they are human and have human frailties like we all do, it's very easy to forgive them.

But the next level of forgiveness of being willing to take risks and go deeper into relationship and to stay in a relationship and forgive them when they might continue to hurt you, even unintentionally, is the challenge for me. And so I'm still trying to just figure out what forgiveness means.

Dennis: So you would say you've come to that point where you, as Christ talked about, you've given up the right to punish your parents for the hurt they brought to your life. You've relinquished that right to punish them for the past.

Elizabeth: I would hope so. I don't think I quite thought of it in those terms, but I do feel that there is so much that is good now, and they're wonderful grandparents, and I've been given this gift of children and a husband, and I'm looking forward, for the first time in my life. I spent many, many years looking backward, and now I'm looking forward, and I like what I see.

Dennis: I think it's very important, however, before you look forward that you take an inventory of what took place in the past. And for you, Jen, you wrote about this in a poem that's called ...

Jen: It's called "The Eruption."

Dennis: And it's about divorce.

Jen: It is about divorce. I wrote this shortly after my mom and stepdad divorced.

Bob: So you were 18 at the time?

Jen: Eighteen, yes.

Dennis: Now, when you read this, there's two ways you can read this ? one, as someone who has written a poem that's just reading it. Could you read it, as close as possible, to how you expressed it when you were 18?

Jen: Sure. I don't think I've read it out loud since then, so it will be interesting.

The Eruption

Divorce is like a trembling earthquake.
The world shakes, rumbling with rage,
And all the anger, guilt and frustrations
That have been festering for so long
Below the surface
Suddenly spew upward in an inferno
Of hate
Or apathy.

At times, the earth calms, and you think
the turmoil is over, settled, stable.
But then the cycle begins again,
Repeating, repeating, repeating.
You're weary, you want to rest,
And that's when you realize
The shaking has stopped but
There is an eerie feeling
Lurking in the air.

You are hesitant to believe anything anymore.
You are so tired after struggling
For so long.
And so you rest on the one last solid
Patch of land
Only to watch it split in two ?
Two separate distinct parts
That will never come together again.
Each new patch supports part of you
And as you watch
They pull away.

Dennis: You were 18.

Jen: Mm-hm.

Dennis: You said you had your feet on a rock, a patch of land that split in two.

Jen: Yeah.

Dennis: What did that feel like?

Jen: It felt like being pulled apart, and there was nothing stable to support me, and at a time in my life when I had the expectation that my family was going to be there to launch me, that I would have this place to go back to as I went off to college. We all went our own separate ways, and I guess to carry the analogy, I jumped off onto a completely different piece of land.

Dennis: What did you jump off into?

Jen: I jumped off into just a search, and it caused me to question everything, and it just seems to me that there had to be something that was true and something that I could believe in and something that wasn't going to drop me for something better. And so I was going through, and I studied Islam and Judaism and Taoism and Buddhism and all these different faith systems, and I realized that Christianity was the only one that had an element of grace that it wasn't about what you did, and I was the quintessential perfectionist, and it wasn't about what I could do. And there was a great relief in knowing all I had to do was accept what was being given to me, and it took such a burden off of me, because divorce taught me that love was fickle and fleeting, and if you're not always on your game, it's going to go away.

And so to understand that I could be loved just because I exist was a powerful life-changing realization.

Dennis: And you met that love ...

Jen: ... I did ...

Dennis: ... in the person of ...

Jen: Jesus Christ.

Dennis: And received Him as your Savior.

Jen: I did.

Dennis: And found forgiveness of your sins ...

Jen: ... yes ...

Dennis: ... so that you could forgive others?

Jen: Yes.

Dennis: And, Elizabeth, having interacted with you all this week and watched you grapple with some of the questions and be real honest ? and I do appreciate your integrity of being honest as you've answered them ? do you have any thoughts for someone who is taking that inventory? Just about the hurt and all the losses? Because if you haven't taken a good inventory, you're not going to be able to express a clean forgiveness.

Elizabeth: I guess for anyone listening who is a grown child of divorce and who hasn't really gone there yet in terms of thinking over how this experience shaped who they are today, the first thing I'll tell you is that life is too short to just put up a wall, and I think what a lot of children of divorce do is they just numb. They just hurt so much when you're young, and you've got to get through it some how and especially the successful ones, the ones who didn't end up struggling with obvious serious problems. They're good at just blocking emotion. They're afraid of emotion a lot of times. They don't want to hurt anymore. They can't imagine what joy feels like.

And I guess I just was just thinking the other day, you know, our time here is so short and what a shame it would be to just live this short time on earth being numb to it all, and so let's take a risk, you know? Let's feel.

Dennis: And, really, Elizabeth, what you said is so profound. Life is so short. Why would you want someone else's mistake to so define your life that you'd spend all of your life wrapped up in yourself and in your pain and not, first of all, receive forgiveness so that, secondly, you could give forgiveness?

Because there is one thing I don't want to become ? I don't want to become an old, bitter man.

Elizabeth: Tell me about it.

Bob: And this is so key, too, because you've talked about maybe I haven't explored all of the pain, and I can imagine some folks who are going, "Yeah, that's where I am. I spend every day exploring all the pain," you know?

Dennis: Well, that's a real problem in this culture today, too.

Bob: That's the whole victim mindset. It is one thing to be honest about the pain, but the pain is not going to define your life, is it?

Elizabeth: I certainly would hope not. It's popular to say we have a real victim culture right now, and I think in some senses we do, and we all know the TV shows where people let it all hang out. But I think most people embrace a story of raised up by their own bootstraps, you know, made it the hard way, take care of themselves. I mean, that's really, in many ways, what America is about. We're a country of people who do it on our own, and we're proud of it.

And I think there are some people who wallow in their victimhood, but most people actually could stand to be a little more gentle with themselves and be willing to confront some of their pain and to try to put some words to it or express it ? however it works best for them. So I think most people need to be encouraged to go there.

But, sure, I mean, we're all ? you know, we're grownups. I'm a mom now. I'm responsible for other people's lives, you know, my childhood is not the issue right now, and it's certainly not about blaming your parents for your problems today or for who you are today, but it is about kind of just recognizing it and understanding how your family shapes who you are so that you can get the help you need to be that responsible, mature adult, but not be afraid to go deeper into relationship with the people around you and to take a risk and to do what it takes to just feel that joy of knowing that God wants us to be full and alive and free.

Dennis: You know, Elizabeth, this is where the Scripture is so wise. I'm always astounded when you kind of peel back the Scripture, and you look at a command, and you experience the command and say, "Oh, that's why you wanted me to do that." All these benefits ? well, there's a command in Scripture to forgive. It's the last verse in Ephesians, chapter 4, "Forgiving one another just as God, in Christ, has forgiven you."

And it's interesting that the concept of moving toward forgiveness as you've talked about dealing with the past, forces us to put the past behind us instead of clutching it in our white-knuckled fist, angry about the past. We open our hands, and we release it, and with the releasing of the past, you can now turn around and release not only the pain, but you can also release them from being punished and be able to give them the forgiveness that hopefully you've received in Christ.

Bob: And this is not the last step in the process of moving on. It's really at the front part of this. In fact, I was just noticing, it's Chapter 2 in the book, "Generation Ex," "Make Peace." We can choose to release resentment and develop the ability to forgive. It's where you start, it's not where you wind up. You don't work through a bunch of stuff to get to forgiveness. You forgive to work through the stuff and move forward.

We've got copies of the book, "Generation Ex," in our FamilyLife Resource Center along with the book that Elizabeth Marquardt has written, which is called "Between Two Worlds." I want to encourage our listeners, go to our website. In the middle of the home page ? the home page is FamilyLife.com, by the way ? in the middle of that home page there will be a red button that says "Go," and if you click that button, it will take you right to the site where there is more information about both of these books. You can order online.

Jen's book is available in audio book form as well as being available in printed form, and if any of our listeners are interested in a copy of both books, we can send along at no additional cost the two-CD set that features our complete conversation on this subject this week.

Again, our website is FamilyLife.com. Click the red button that says "Go." If you're interested in finding out more about these resources or ordering online or call 1-800-FLTODAY. That's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY, and someone on our team will make sure we get these resources sent out to you.

Let me just remind you of when you do get in touch with us, if you are able to help with a donation to support the ministry of FamilyLife Today, we are here to try to provide practical, biblical help for your marriage, for your family. Our goal is to see every family a godly family ? families whose lives are centered on the truth of God's Word, and we appreciate those of you who help support the ministry to help make that happen. Your financial support is both needed and appreciated. So let me say thanks in advance if you are able to help with a donation for our ministry this month. We really do appreciate hearing from you.

Well, tomorrow we want to continue to explore this subject of the impact of divorce on the lives of adult children. I hope you can be back with us for that conversation.

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 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.