Divorce Care

[dayhiker]

Has anyone taken Divorce Care?
Does your church offer it?

My church is offering it for the 1st time and I'm taking it.

 

[dayhiker]

Went to the 2nd class last night. Its very good.
Tho its amazing how much pain some feel when they are going thru divorce. I don't think I've ever felt that much pain in my life! I didn't want my divorce, but I sure didn't feel as much pain as some in the class have felt. So far the video has only spoke of people who have really strong pain from the loss of their marriage.

So its really educational for me.

 

[EazyMack]

I know my church offers divorce care. Hoping to not have to attend.

 

[dayhiker]

Mack ... I hope you don't have to as well.

 

[dayhiker]

So I went to Divorce Care, class 3, last night. It was on anger and they listed about 7 or 8 reasons divorce can cause anger. Then of course there was ways of dealing with anger.

Well, I had very little anger of my divorce, even at myself as I was the cause of the divorce. I could have been anger at my wife, as I did everything she and the church asked me to do including stand in front of the congregation to publicly acknowledge that I'd sinned and to repent and stating I was coming under church discipline.

But I don't remember being anger. I was mostly sad.

 

[dayhiker]

Divorce Care 4 last night .. depression. They must have listed 8 or so symptoms of depression .. I had about 6 of them. But I also did many of the things they said one should do to keep depression from taking over ones life.

I also was thankful for how the church we were attending stood by us and helped us. I wasn't alone, or kicked to the side of the road, but had things they wanted me to do and a lot of time spent with people. Places were I could talk about the issues I had.

I spent days reading to understand the Bible and the issues I was facing. It lead to some real answers for my life, doesn't God's Word always lead to that. But it wasn't the answers that the church leaders expected! So eventually they asked me to not come to their men's retreat!

 

[stevenmoon]

Hi,
I had remembered reading about this program years ago. My divorce is stuck in neutral for the past 4 years, we have temporary orders but I can't afford to go back to court for the final judgement, and the ex will not agree to anything I propose.
But I read your post, and found that there is a church 5 minutes from where I work that offers this. They are on week 3 'Anger' tonight, and I will be attending - checking it out.
My one trepidation is that I was told that the entire class is female. This may or may not be a problem - I don't know. I may be seen as an enemy or an invader, just for being male. Or I may be welcomed for my perspective. We'll have to see.
My question - do you feel that you have benefitted from attending? Are your issues being handled, processed through your brain? Or is it too soon to tell?
Also, since I missed the first 2 weeks, do you think I would be better served to wait and try this from the start? I'm anxious to see what help this can be and don't want to wait until January at the soonest to start the next round. Can you advise on this?

Thank you,
Steven

 

[dayhiker]

Hi Steve,
I am benefiting from the class. I've been divorced for 5 yrs and the process was before that, so I'm well past most of the issues with the divorce. I wanted to go because I've meet so many divorced people and they don't feel welcomed in church. Yet 50% of those that marry divorce and need the Jesus/church. But the church for the most part isn't doing anything to reach them.

I material has both men and woman in the video and doesn't put blame on either sex. If the leader of the group is wise he isn't going to have the focus on the blame game. The focus will stay on how to deal with the emotional pain of the divorce. At least that's what the 1st part of the course is about.

The depression helped my understand that I was having some depression thru the process. I'd not recognized that before.

I hope you went to the class last night. I think you can get as much going to it as you if you started from the beginning. I think these groups need both men and women. We are almost 50/50 in the one I attended which surprised most of us.

Did you make it to the meeting? How was it?

 

[stevenmoon]

Thanks for your words here. I did attend last night, I felt welcome and safe. There were people at all different stages, some new and still shell shocked, some part way, and some at peace. We discussed anger, through hearing other peoples comments I could relate to almost everything said, as it all had affected me at one time or another. And then next week will be depression. I will attend that for sure. Actually I've committed in my mind to see myself through this process.
When they asked what they could pray for in my life, I asked fro closure. My divorce has stalled due entirely to lack of funds to proceed. So I asked for prayer for God to grant both me and my estranged closure on this chapter of our lives so we can proceed to wherever we need to go next.

 

[dayhiker]

Ya, that is one of the biggest things couples have to deal with is how much less money they have as individuals compared to how much they had married.

I moved out and was very lucky. This older lady ha a big house and rented out 4 rooms. I rented one of her rooms for 4 yrs. It was quite cheap compared to getting an apartment and paying utilities. She also needed some help with things around the house. We got along well and she paid me a little money to do some work for her. So by making my expenses so cheap it helped me to get thru. Which was a blessing because I lost my job a few months later and it took me 3 years to get back into my line of work.

So I'm one week ahead of you. This week we do loneliness.

 

[dayhiker]

So tonight's lesson was about loneliness.

There was some loneliness when I got divorced, but the church I was attending kept me quite busy so I was with people a lot.

The main thing they said was one should go to God 1st and learn to be single, learn to be comfortable with yourself even enjoy spending time alone, to know oneself. Well, I didn't get married till a few days before I was 28. I was already comfortable being alone then. So when I got divorce It was easy to slip back into that same attitude. I still like my alone time, I don't know that I'd want to marry again if it meant not having some alone time.

 

[dayhiker]

Divorce Care last night was good and bad ... the good is the group is getting comfortable with each other and so we are talking more. Plus the video topic had some pretty good stuff about what the Bible says about divorce. It was good for example that even tho God hates divorce they talked about how its one situation that happened in ones life just like any other sin.

But I disagree with its interpretation of what most fundamentalist give to some of the verses that bring a lot of guilt to people. The emphasis on the guilty party not being able to remarry when there is no evidence that that was how 1st century Jews or Christians viewed things.

 

[dayhiker]

DC this week was about new relationships. The biggie is that for every 4 years one is married they recommend 1 yr of being single to heal. They say one should be comfortable in our own skin and not need a mate to feel whole and complete. There were the expected warnings about sexual involvement and dating while separated.

 

[dayhiker]

So this week DC was about how kids handle divorce. Basically, the video says kids go thru the same emotions as the parents, feeling depressed, worried about the future. Talk about how parents shouldn't put their kids in the middle.

It was interesting how several woman talked about how they stayed with their abusive husband until the kid made some comment about they couldn't take their fathers abuse any more. They moved out very quite after that. A good thing to have buyin by the kid(s) I think. But in general kids don't understand adult issues, but they do know and understand when they aren't being treated correctly.

 

[dayhiker]

This week was about single again and sex. The basic message is if you have sex as a single things will go very bad for you in every way.

In the discussion afterwards the pastor asked what we thought about masturbation. I said I'd not thought it was sin since my 20's. Think I was the only one.

Anyways, this chapter was the least helpful for me so far.

 

[dayhiker]

Last week was about forgiveness. I'll not say much as if anyone has read much about forgiveness this is the same massage just applied to seperation and divorce.

 

[mjmcmillan]

I may have to look in on something like that. It's been three years since the divorce, and up to now I've pretty much been handling issues alone.

 

[Kaseye330]

I'm looking for a new church in my area and if they offer divorce care that would be great...is that something you can start while going through the divorce or after?

 

[dayhiker]

DC is beneficial at any point ... Its really good at giving you information about what a divorce is like, the emotions, the relationships, the pain the finances, etc Its all talked about. DivorceCare.org is the web site. You can find if there is a local group meetings there and get some material. They even have a free email each day that couvers much of the material over a years time. The meetings are like a support group with education. It might be the one place where other will understand what your going thru.