HOPE: When Happily Ever After Fails

As Divorce Recovery life coaches, we work with healthy Christians, who have come through the trials and tribulation of divorce. Through our work with divorced persons, we find that Christians experience many forms of hurt that non-Christians do not experience, when they go through a divorce. Some Christians refuse to accept or associate with their divorcing  friends, almost out of a fear that if they are around the divorcing Christians, that their marriage will fail too, as if they could catch 'divorce' like you get the flu or a virus from someone else.

Surviving the Holidays-Divorced

So it's the holidays and you find yourself newly separated or divorced. All the commercials show happy family scenes and fabulous purchases from the jewelry store. For a split second, you wonder if you would be better off re-united with that former spouse! But for a number of reasons, that isn't possible, so now what?

I was driving, listening to The book of Matthew being read from The Message, when I suddenly had a new vision of marriage and divorce recovery. The verse referred to God's perfect plan for marriage as a great artist's creation. The initial vision that came into my mind, was one of a large white marble sculpture of a man and woman in a loving embrace. This initial vision, seen in the sobering context of  divorce; was of this masterpiece (the original perfect plan for marriage), designed by the greatest artist of all time, our Creator, when placed in human hands; being slowly chipped away at by stresses and strains on the marriage until it was destroyed. As you look back on your marriage, what were the major factors that chipped away at God's perfect plan for you and your spouse? Identifying these factors is the first step toward an understanding which can lead to divorce recovery and forgiveness of any remaining bitterness you may be experiencing. Let us know your thoughts.

Divorce Recovery Conference

We were asked the other day, Who should attend this conference and what are the learning objectives for the divorce template training portion of the conference in March 2011? This conference is designed for parish nurses, Stephen's Ministers, pastors, Christian life coaches, and counselors. The Divorce template training objectives are to equip Christian lay persons and professionals by training them how to use the Divorce computer template which serves as the framework for assisting a person who has experienced a divorce, in their divorce recovery. The template is designed to be facilitated in one hour sessions or in a "day away" personal retreat guided by a trained facilitator. This Discipleship Process (SM) is optimistic, and helps persons move forward into a new season in their life now that their marriage has ended.