185: This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God through the Heartache of Divorce

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Season 8, Episode 185: This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God through the Heartache of Divorce

Guest:Vaneetha Risner

Air Date: March 9, 2026

Vaneetha (00:00):

My kids felt like my answer for everything was, “Well, let’s pray about it.” And they wanted me to just back off. And I wish I had been a little more nuanced about it. I was so worried about their faith and where it would go that I felt like every opportunity was an opportunity for a life lesson, mini sermon, and I wish I had trusted God and just recognized more is caught than taught.

Ron (00:34):

Welcome to the FamilyLife Blended podcast. I’m Ron Deal. We help blended families, and those who love them, pursue the relationships that matter most. And one of the ways that we do that every year is through Blended and Blessed our worldwide livestream. And our next one is just six weeks away. And guys, it’s free. You heard me; it’s free. Saturday, April 18th, Davey and Kristi Blackburn, Kathi Lipp—she’s hilarious—Cheryl Schumaker, Gayla Grace, myself and emcee Brian Goins, we’re going to be speaking live at Crossings Church in Oklahoma City.

You can join the live audience if you want to, otherwise make plans to just be with us virtually. In other words, sitting in the comfort of your own home. But your church can also host the event for an audience of any size. And what does it cost? It’s free this year. New theme, new speakers; tell a friend, you don’t want to miss it. BlendedandBlessed.com or just as always, look in the show notes, we’ll get you connected. Man, it would be good to meet you in person there.

(01:39):

Well, we’re talking about healing after divorce today, and odds are you or someone you love has been divorced. So stay with us even if it’s not your personal story. And if you’re thinking, “Well, we’re married at this point, we don’t need to revisit the past, do we?” Stay with me because the past is actually always in our present. Sometimes we don’t even know how.

Vaneetha Risner and her husband Joel, they were featured on episode 130 of our podcast when we talked with them about coping with traumatic events. Vaneetha got polio as a child. She lost an infant son. She went through an unwanted divorce before marrying Joel. She’s back with us today talking about her new book, and here’s the title, This Was Never the Plan. Can you relate to that? This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God Through the Heartache of Divorce. Vaneetha, it’s so good to have you back with me. Thanks for being here.

Vaneetha (02:36):

Oh, thank you, Ron. I’m excited to be back.

Ron (02:39):

I can’t tell you how many people through the years I’ve heard echo those words. Divorce was never the plan. It impacts us tough, doesn’t it? It really hits hard.

Vaneetha (02:51):

Yeah, yeah. You never think that when you’re walking down the aisle, it’s going to end that way.

Ron (02:56):

In fact, in your book, I got a little quote you say in the book, let me see if I can get this right, that divorce wasn’t just losing your marriage, you said, “I was losing the life I had built, the identity I had known, and the faith I thought was unshakable.” Three big ones: the life you’d built, the identity you’d known, and the faith that you thought was unshakable. In what ways did you lose your identity?

Vaneetha (03:24):

Well, I was leading a bible study. I was a homeschool mom. I felt that my whole life was this sort of picture of when you love God, your family looks like this. And it’s kind of sad to say that, but I felt so committed to marriage and all of those things that I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore. People were questioning whether I should even teach Bible study. My kids were falling apart and all of a sudden, I wasn’t this person with a buttoned up looking life. My life was a mess. And so my identity really shifted from this person who kind of had things together to somebody who didn’t at all.

Ron (04:11):

In hindsight, tragedy makes us realize how in control we thought we were and how we had it all worked and we were working it. And then we realize how fragile it all was really. Even then, we just didn’t know that it was fragile. But then all of a sudden, you wake up and you go “Wait a minute,” just like you said, “I had this structure built, this architecture that held me up and now that’s crumbling so I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Vaneetha (04:38):

Yeah, I really didn’t. I feel like I was able to offer people answers to whatever they had and all of a sudden, I had no answers and it was a very—I felt very different in the church everywhere. I was struggling in ways I didn’t think I would.

Ron (04:56):

Shame’s not always a part of that, but did you feel shame?

Vaneetha (05:01):

So much shame.

(05:04):

One, I didn’t feel free to tell the whole story, especially with kids. You have to be really careful on what you say and what you say to other people, so I felt so ashamed. I heard some people saying, “Well, I heard you were doing something and he left.” It was just so hard not to defend myself and just the whole idea of being pro-marriage, which I was and am. When a pro-marriage person is going through a divorce, there’s just this sense of failure and recognizing there’s all these questions that people have that they might not voice. Sometimes they will voice them, but whatever they do with them, you feel the weight of it.

Ron (05:53):

Yeah, absolutely. And then you feel isolated because you’re different from them, somehow, you’re less than them. I mean, that’s what shame says.

Vaneetha (06:03):

Yeah.

Ron (06:03):

And you get more and more lonely.

Vaneetha (06:07):

Yeah. Oh, I was so lonely then, Ron. I mean, I had been in a close circle of friends, couples that we did things and all of a sudden if I went, I was not part of a couple and that was really hard.

Ron (06:25):

Awkward fifth wheel.

Vaneetha (06:27):

But I didn’t want to not be invited. But then I didn’t know what to do when I was invited. And so that felt like a very awkward place. And I had some close friends, which I understand some people don’t. And that’s really hard. That really knew the story, knew me, but outside of that slightly larger circle over just a few friends, they didn’t know. And it just felt like I didn’t have a community anymore.

Ron (06:58):

So unpack that for a second. I think a lot of people experience this dynamic where, “Okay, my inner circle, they’ve heard my side of this story, everybody else has not,” and “They’ve heard this or they’ve heard that little piece or this little thing over here,” and so you sort of feel like you walk into a room, “Do I have to justify myself? Do I have to say, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, you haven’t heard my side,’ like, ‘Hold your judgment.’” That whole game in your head is exhausting, is it not?

Vaneetha (07:28):

Yes. Yeah. I mean I remember, and I talk about this in the book, going to this sort of gathering that I had been to lots of different times before. And I was talking to this guy and he just said, “How’s your husband doing?” And I usually just say fine and move on because I don’t want to talk about it. But I just said, “He left and he moved away.” and this guy, he didn’t know what to say.

(07:54):

So he just turned around and started into another conversation. And that was one of the most devastating moments to me. I didn’t even know what to do. I just kind of wandered and ended up going back to my car. But that was a group of people where I knew a lot of the people, and everybody was having fun. And it was a community I felt so a part of before. And then all of a sudden, I realized I can’t tell people all the reasons he left. I could just say he left at that point, because there were a lot of parents that whose kids were friends with my kids. And so I just felt so frozen. And that was one of the moments where I realized I don’t belong in this same group anymore.

Ron (08:45):

Wow. Fragile is the word that keeps popping into my head as you talk. It’s just even, okay, my social network is fragile, my identity is fragile, my sense of control, my sense of who I am in the world, my worth, my value, and all that just starts getting really fragile and you just don’t know what you know anymore.

Vaneetha (09:04):

Right.

Ron (09:05):

You mentioned faith earlier, that was a part of what you lost when you went through your divorce. What kind of questions did you have for God through that journey?

Vaneetha (09:16):

I had so many questions, Ron. I sort of have this journey through my life of just kind of going back to God, “Why is this happening?” And I know a lot of mature Christians say never ask God why. Well, I’m not one of those. I ask God why a lot.

Ron (09:32):

Well, I want to add, I don’t think mature Christians say you can’t ask why. I think mature Christians know there’s a whole lot in scripture that encourages the why.

Vaneetha (09:42):

Yes.

Ron (09:42):

It’s called lament, thank you very much. And there’s a lot in scripture that is outpouring of the why. So I just want to throw that little caveat in there.

Vaneetha (09:51):

Yes, exactly. I remember Ron, this so vividly when the disclosure all came out, I was in my pastor’s house and my pastor and his wife and my husband at the time, and I just screamed, “Why does God hate me?” And I mean, the room just went dead quiet. I was teaching women’s Bible study, but I mean, that’s how I felt. I felt that all of a sudden God hated me because through the other losses there was not a sense of shame at all. And so I didn’t question like there is this idea if you’re a faithful wife, you’re going to have a good marriage. There’s other things, my son died, but that didn’t have anything to do with my faithfulness. And I feel like with marriage and maybe with parenting, we see these things as sort of promises. If I teach my kids the right way, if I do everything I’m supposed to do, I will raise them to be godly people. And the same thing with marriage. If I’m a good wife, I’m submissive, I honor my husband, it’s going to be good. And I feel like we teach that a lot of times.

Ron (11:05):

Oh yes, we do.

Vaneetha (11:06):

So it felt like a massive unpacking of what I thought God had promised me.

Ron (11:11):

I’m so glad you’ve said this, and forgive me, I feel a little mini sermon coming on to our listeners and viewers. Let me just say what she just said is absolutely true. We have communicated for a long time this notion that if you’re a good wife or you’re a good husband, you can in effect keep your spouse from ever leaving you and keep them happy and loving you just the way you need them to love you. And that is a big fat lie. And it doesn’t work and it never has. And unfortunately, we’re, we now know better and we’re trying to make a difference. You don’t know this, but my wife and I wrote a book called The Mindful Marriage came out this last year, and it challenges this very concept and shows a much different path towards healthy, intimate marriage that’s not based on dependency, which is where you end up with, if I’m the good wife, then everything will work out just fine in our relationship. So with that, let me just come full circle and say that the outgrowth is that you felt more shame, you felt more the divorce was a commentary on your ability to be a good wife. And so clearly, you’re walking around and walking into a room with your friends and people and they’re looking at you like, “Oh, we think as negatively about you as you’re thinking about yourself right now.” Right. No wonder you feel shame. No wonder you feel less than. You don’t know who you are anymore because “Wow, I guess I failed.”

Vaneetha (12:35):

Yeah. I think failure was this word I wrote in this journal I started keeping. It was a sort of a scrapbook journal after my husband left. I just wanted to process what—just everything. So I put letters, I just put everything I could think of, articles, but on the first page I wrote, who am I? And underneath it, the first thing that came to mind is I am a failure. And yeah, that’s exactly how I felt. Like I’m rejected, betrayed, and I’m a failure.

Ron (13:15):

Which translates into God. Why do you hate me?

Vaneetha (13:19):

Yes.

Ron (13:20):

Really, I want people to hear that. Much of what we put on God is really what we feel about ourselves. I don’t like me. I screwed up. Everybody else is saying that about me. Or at least I see it in their eyes. I think that’s what I see it in their eyes. And so God must be in the same boat. He must be going, yeah, I’m going to take you down because you haven’t performed well enough. That’s just not God’s posture toward us at all. And I know you know that now. If the you of today could talk to the you of those moments in the past, what would you say?

Vaneetha (13:55):

I would say God loves you. There’s sin in this world, but you don’t have to own this. God will never leave you through this. He loves you extravagantly and unbelievably, this will be the making of your faith.

Ron (14:13):

Wow.

Vaneetha (14:15):

That’s what I would say to me. But I feel like for so much of my life I had these unilateral contracts with God. I will do this. I’m hoping, I’m expecting you to do that. And that really broke all of those expectations.

Ron (14:40):

You tell people in your book not to rush past their pain. Why is that?

Vaneetha (14:47):

Because I think if we put these Jesus happy face stickers on our lives and say we’re completely healed, I think one, that’s a lie, and stuff comes up later that can be so destructive. Whereas grief just takes a long time and there’s so many layers from divorce.

(15:07):

The grief is so much as we’ve talked about identity as well as loss. You miss the person as well as, for me I did. I thought we had a good marriage so the minute he left, it wasn’t like I was like, “Oh, I’m totally done.” I know that some people have been through abuse and serial infidelity and a lot of things where they are kind of done too when it’s done, but I wasn’t. And so there was that grieving of this marriage that I thought I had and this grieving of feeling foolish. So many people asked me, “Well, you must have known. You must have had an idea.” And maybe I just chose not to look at the little red flags, but I didn’t know. And so there was just so many layers of grief for that than from what was happening—the future that was gone, the different path my kids were going to have. I mean, I thought we were just going to grow all together. Our kids would have this wonderful, intact, terrific family. And I’m still grieving some of those things and I’ve been remarried 10 years, but there’s things that—my daughter just had a baby, and I realized that’s not the same.

(16:24):

And just recognizing, don’t rush past that. And I know a lot of the listeners are in blended families, and so they might think, “Well, I don’t want to even admit that’s hard” with a great new spouse. And I absolutely love my husband Joel, but it is different recognizing this. My daughter’s dad and I will never be actually holding the baby together. I mean, we’ll see each other, but I think grief is important to voice.

Ron (16:54):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And when we move into new relationships, that is a big temptation to go “That was then. This is now. I don’t want my new spouse to feel weird if I’m talking about the pain with my old one as if I’m holding on.” We just sort of undo ourselves with all that sort of thinking. And now we’re marginalizing ourselves from our own lament. And you can’t process it. It just sort of stays buried in you, but it’s still there. I think that’s far more damaging to people than to grieve it outwardly.

Vaneetha (17:32):

And grief doesn’t have a timetable. I think sometimes we think it should, that the timer goes off and you should be done. And some people act like you should be done and “Well, that was a while ago. You should be okay.” And not the same but I remember after my son died, somebody said a few months later, “Well, I’m hoping you’re over this.”

Ron (17:55):

Wow.

Vaneetha (17:56):

Wow. I don’t think I will ever be over that. And divorce is obviously a little different than that or quite different. But there are some—grief takes as long as it takes and it could last through a lifetime, just threads of it. I mean, you want to give it to God, and I think that brings it around and gives you hope.

Ron (18:19):

There’s another element giving it to God. Yes. You talk about community and the importance of that sort of a community shared journey through the divorce. Yeah. What would you recommend to people, even people who perhaps like you have been married again for some period of time?

Vaneetha (18:40):

Find community, find trusted friends. I mean, I had two friends I had prayed with since actually since our son was born. I started praying with them, so they walked me through his death, and we were praying together when my ex-husband left, when I remarried, all of those things. And those people know my life. They know all the nuances, all the pain, all the questions, all the “Why does God hate me?” and “Wow, God is better than I imagined.” They have gotten to walk through the ups and downs of my life with me. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

People who really know you—because you realize through something that difficult who your real friends are and who really knows you. And if people don’t have that, reach out and find somebody you can pray with, who you could share your life with. Because it makes a huge difference to feel like you’re known, even just by a few people because the larger community may change, but that group of people who you’re shockingly honest with will walk you through a lot.

Ron (19:52):

And when you find those people, hold onto them really tight.

Vaneetha (19:54):

Yes. Yeah.

Ron (19:56):

Because they’re super special and valuable. And man, I mean, that’s your core. And I totally agree with you. Here’s the thing about, for anybody who’s coming across this idea, sharing my deepest dark, “Well, I don’t know, I won’t share that with anybody,” but here’s the thing, until you find those people and go there with a lot of courage, it’s really hard to have yourself reflected back to you in any other way. You just sort of walk around going, “Yeah, I can’t tell everybody, anybody because they’ll judge me, whatever, shun me.” So you feel fragile in all of your spaces. It’s having a core that do know the truth, that do know the heart, that do know the ugly that’s come out of you, and they still love you in spite of that, that’s when you finally feel safe and connected with somebody, like you belong there. So until we go outward with the hard, be calculated about who you share this with, don’t be stupid. Some people will use it against you, but when you find those people who won’t, my goodness, those are trusted friends and you need to hang around with them.

Vaneetha (21:05):

Yeah, yeah. I had said to one of my friends, “You could open my journal and read any page, and you wouldn’t be surprised.”

Ron (21:13):

Oh man, that says a lot right there about how honest you’ve been. That’s really something. We talked earlier a little bit about that; the past is always in the present. When do you feel, I’m just curious, maybe you don’t, but do you ever feel, even now, your divorce showing up in life?

Vaneetha (21:31):

Yeah. With my daughter’s daughter being born, just recognizing, okay, this is different. And at wedding, both of my daughters are married and that showed up. It was good in that my ex-husband and his new wife, we wanted them to sit with us at both our daughter’s weddings. They really aren’t connected to a community that our daughters are anymore. So there’s not that much, not many people they know. And I really felt after praying about it, I want to have them at our table. So we sat together and that was something that at first was hard thinking about, this is going to be different. And yet it was wonderful, but just the whole planning of it, just so many things about it just come up. And I also realize, and I’ve said this to Joel, my husband, we’ll be watching a movie or something super innocuous about something and then there’ll be some issue about an affair, and I am immediately thrown back into that.

(22:47):

Sometimes I’m like, “I can’t watch this. This is too intense for me to see.” And it comes up very random times. I am surprised by it, and yet it is a reality for me, and I think always will be because the pain was so deep. When you see somebody able to articulate what you went through, then you feel it. Yeah. I was reviewing a book on divorce that somebody sent me, and I started crying, and I mean, this is so long later, but she said a few things that I had not been able to put into words until I read it and I thought, “Oh my, okay, this is something that I’m still feeling.”

Ron (23:33):

Did you know there’s the parts of the brain that hold trauma, don’t have any connection to time. That when something gets triggered, like reading a book or seeing a movie that takes you, it immediately connects you to everything wrapped up in that trauma, the pain, the emotions, the feelings. And as far as it’s concerned, it’s present. It has no perspective on time.

Vaneetha (23:58):

Oh wow. That makes—that’s really good. That makes a lot of sense. I feel like there are times that I have thought, “Oh wow, what is happening?”

Ron (24:07):

Where’s this coming from? Why is it so intense? I thought I’d be past this all by now. But to that part of your brain that holds all of that, it is still today. And by the way, we share with people treatment like EMDR, and there’s different things that trauma work that counselors do with people to help unlock that, to move it into a different part of the brain that allows you to process it with your now redeemed adult, more calm self as opposed to the person that you were in that moment when you were experiencing it. And that, I mean, that’s how PTSD is handled today and there’s so much that happens. I say all that just to say to anybody who’s watching or listening, “Hey, you have moments where you get triggered. Well that means your brain’s doing what it’s supposed to do. Alright? That’s the good news. The bad news is that’s not going to change for you unless we move it into a different place in your body and soul. And so yeah, there’s hope in that notion so I would want people to hear that. But that whole triggering thing is very, very common. And so the past is always a part of us in the present. Now the good news is as you process things, you’re in a new way. Your brain is then able to go, huh, okay, I can look at this with a different lens, not just the lens of the person who was being impacted at that moment in time.

(25:32):

I can put time perspective on it. I can put maturity and God’s Word and all of those things. Those layers can be filters for how that trauma impacts you or doesn’t nearly the same even today. There’s a lot of hopefulness in that.

Vaneetha (25:48):

Yeah. And I think one thing that’s helpful for me is the minute that happens, like talking to myself like, “This isn’t truth. This isn’t who you are now. This is how you felt then.

(25:59):

But what are the promises? What has God done? Where are you now?” And that was really helpful when I was reading this book. I was reading it on the plane with Joel was right beside me. He’s like, “What’s happening here?” And I was like, “This person has just put into words how I felt.” And then I talked to him about it and then just realized, “Okay, since something’s going on in me, I need to pay attention to this and what is truth? What do I need to see?” So I think that’s also something in the moment if something’s happening, “Okay, kind of curious. Okay, God, what are you showing me in this?”

Ron (26:33):

Yeah. Which is the equation for lament, the pouring out, the “God, where were you? Do you really hate me? Do you not care anymore?” stuff. And then remembering and reminding yourself of what is true, but you are faithful, you are good. You have shown up for other people and me in the past. I know you’ll do it again because you keep your word. That’s what lament does. It does both of those things. And it’s that turn towards getting rooted in truth that becomes the therapeutic moment for us.

Vaneetha:

Yeah.

Ron (27:16):

I want to go back to wedding you were talking about a minute ago, sitting at the wedding with your ex-husband and his new wife. Okay, that’s a symbolic moment. A lot of people listen to that going, “Never going to do that. I would not give him the time.” Let’s unpack. There’s a lot of layers to this. There’s hurt in there. There’s forgiveness, got to be somewhere in a layer of that. There’s got to be this whole blame and who was responsible for what happened to our relationship. Boundaries—I don’t want to get too close. You don’t want to be—learning to act divorced. That’s all a big ball of twisted yarn. I think for people emotionally, it’s difficult. So how did you get to that moment? Let’s just sort of unpack some of those different themes, which you do in the book, by the way, which is so helpful to people. How do you manage that? Boundaries, forgiveness, hurt?

Vaneetha (28:04):

Yeah. Okay. Well, there’s boundaries when you’re going through divorce and then after. And a lot of it when you’re going through it, I was kind of a mess trying to figure out all of a sudden, this person has moved out and then what am I saying they can do and not do? And that was helpful to talk to a counselor. I’m not great with boundaries, honestly, Ron. I feel like people trample over my boundaries, which is maybe why I didn’t see a lot of the things that maybe I could have seen. I don’t know in hindsight, but I had to say, “You can only come in at this time. You need to move out.” Boundaries that were pushed back on a lot.

(28:47):

And just talking to counselors, talking to my pastor, just saying, “What makes sense?” And the first time I held it, it was just so hard for me. But then after that I recognized it’s done. It was done if you hold your boundary, whereas if you keep moving it like, “Well, maybe not,” then I feel like for me, then I would be badgered more. But when I finally was like, “Nope, this is the line; that’s where it is.” That was really helpful.

And then in terms of after, there weren’t as many issues, but there were some after the divorce—same sort of things of, “When can I come over?” “When can I see the kids?” “When can I do those things?” and “Can we all be at a birthday thing?” or just those things and deciding based on the moment in who was going to be there, is that appropriate or is it not? In terms of forgiveness, that changed my life, being willing to forgive. And I see forgiveness as a unilateral thing. I don’t see it as the person has to be repentant.

Ron (30:03):

It’s different from reconciliation.

Vaneetha (30:05):

Yes, exactly. They don’t even need to say, “I’m sorry,” I don’t think, because I think forgiveness is between us and God and what happens if it’s between restoring a relationship or reconciling, there really has to be repentance. So I see them as different. And then I think there’s another category which is premature forgiveness, which is when people are like, the minute something happens, “Well you’re going to forgive?” It’s like, “Well, don’t ask me that right now. Right now I would prefer murder than forgiveness.”

Ron (30:45):

That’s right. And that feels like God could forgive me for that easier than, yeah. So I totally agree with you. We have this Christian platitude about jumping to forgiveness as if that is going to immediately bring about reconciliation, all kinds of things. Those are two different things. One, forgiveness stands on its own. There may or may not be repentance on the other person, change of behavior, new track record. Okay, trustworthiness has been reestablished, now we can reconcile. That’s a whole separate process. And that’s important to distinguish because some people feel like they can’t forgive because they feel like it means they have to take the person back and they just don’t think they can do that. No, no, no. Those are different things, but still you got to wrestle. Forgiveness is hard enough in and of itself.

Vaneetha (31:34):

Right, yeah. Because you want to, I see it as sort of giving up the right to hurt you for hurting me. And so there’s not revenge. That’s the biggest thing that changed in me. I remember thinking so often, I would just think about ways to get back or to sort of either verbally or just lots of ways that it was like, “You’re going to pay for this.” And forgiveness just sort of released that, but it’s not a one and done. It’s not like you say, “I forgive you,” and then everything is all great and you don’t really even need to tell the person, but I found it can be every day you need to look at things. For me, it was releasing them to God and not rehearsing them because whenever there was a new offense, I would want to rehearse them. And they had well-worn tracks in my mind of, “Well, you did this. You did this before. This is how it is.” And rather than doing that, I felt like every time I wanted to do that, it was, let’s release this to God.

But for me, the process of forgiveness started Ron by writing everything that what he did took from me. And I wrote and wrote and wrote, and wrote, and wrote for days. I had a journal and it was present, past, future, identity, faith, everything. And I just kept writing because I didn’t want to, even with telling God I forgive him, I didn’t want to do that until I was ready.

(33:14):

Because I wanted it to be sincere and real and I didn’t feel like I needed to announce it to other people. This was between me and God. And so I wanted to really give it to Him but feel like I understood what I was forgiving.

Ron (33:29):

I think that’s so insightful because then you knew the magnitude of it. So when you decided to try to let it go, you weren’t denying any of it. You weren’t minimizing the impact, pretending, you were facing what was. And by the way, I know people who have made that list and said, “Well, I can let this one go today,” cross it off. Well, there’s 500 more still to go, but you don’t have to necessarily do it all in a lump sum. You can do it in pieces, but that can be helpful for some people.

(34:06):

As you’re talking, I’m thinking about, this is always related to co-parenting because I do have to sit at the table with you at our daughter’s wedding one of these days. I do have to—we have to share children and parent together and back and forth. And that ongoing relationship requires that somehow, I separate my pain from the parental function that we now have to do together.

By the way, I don’t know if you know this, but last fall, FamilyLife teamed up with Barna and a number of other organizations to do a big study that what they called the—Barna called The State of the Family report. And it revealed that 41% of parents with children under 18 are single parents. Let me say that again; 41% of parents with children under 18 are single parents. I know our listeners, our viewers right now, most of them have been a single parent at one point in time, or you’re married to somebody who was a single parent at one point in time. This whole journey of divorce, navigating all these changes, difficulties, forgiveness, the hurt, all that kind of stuff, and you got to parent together at the same time, let’s cooperate and get along on behalf of the kids in spite of all this junk going on between the two. That is so difficult.

Vaneetha (35:23):

Yeah, especially when there’s different ways of looking at things.

(35:27):

That was really hard for me when my ex left. We had parented very similarly. We had raised our kids very similarly. I mean, obviously we raised them together, but our attitude and mindset was very similar. And then all of a sudden, it was completely different. I remember walking in, they were in our house, and I had said they could watch a movie with their dad. And I walked in and it was like, “Okay, this is not a movie we would have been watching.” And how do you even navigate that? And then when they were at his place, it was like, “Oh, we did this, or we saw this, or we listened to this,” and there’s this dad—”Dad, let us do that. Why don’t you?” Those are hard things to navigate when you’re trying to co-parent and you’re trying to be gracious to the other person, and you need to be and want to be, and yet there’s things that you disagree with, and you don’t want to put your kids in the middle of that.

Ron (36:31):

That’s right.

Vaneetha (36:32):

And make them have to police their other parent. And that was fairly complex for me. It required a lot of prayer and writing emails sometimes saying, “Hey, I noticed this. I’d love to tell you how I’m feeling.” And then I would wait a whole day before I’d send any kind of confrontational email. I’d have my sister who is my best friend and goes through everything with me, I’d have her read it and say, “Okay, is this reasonable? What is the tone?” And I’m so glad I did that, even though in the moment I wanted to call fire off something, tell the kids they weren’t allowed to do that. And then yeah, I felt like, “Okay, this is a way that I’m not involving them and I’m not getting mad myself.” An email you can think about. And I really tried to wait 24 hours unless it’s a huge issue that had to be addressed within the hour or something like that. And I think that kept our discussion a lot more civil.

Ron (37:40):

That’s good. If you’re new to this podcast, listener, viewer, we have pressed into this co-parenting thing many, many times, but you just heard some gold right there. Hang on to that. That’s why this conversation we had a little while ago about forgiveness is so relevant because in that moment when the kids say, “Well, dad lets us watch, why don’t you?” and you’re feeling like he has positioned you to look like the bad parent with your kids, that’s when all the pain of the past comes up and you want to lamb blast him. You want to make some derogatory remark. You want to get mad at the kids, you want, all that pain will just dominate the next moment. So to be able to have some peace about it so that you maintain yourself and don’t do those things is super, super important because it is challenging.

(38:33):

And by the way, what I would say to somebody who says, “Well, what do you say in that moment?” Well, you say something neutral as best you can. “Yes, that’s what your father does, but in my household, this is what we’re going to do.” And so it’s not a derogatory thing about him, it’s not a judgmental thing, it’s just a “Yep, that’s true, but I’m now going to manage my boundaries in my home, and this is the way we’re going to do business here.” And you just follow through with that and stick with it. And yeah, there’s maybe a conversation to have with your co-parent, but that’s later. That’s not in front of kids.

Vaneetha (39:07):

Right. Right.

Ron (39:07):

That’s a different dialogue.

Vaneetha (39:09):

Yeah.

Ron (39:16):

What about parenting just itself? Like what you said by the way is not uncommon. Marriage gives parents motivation to parent more similarly to one another, but divorce means you’re free to do what you want to do and that’s when it shows up and that happened for you. How was your parenting during your single parent years? I mean, when you look back on it, do you have much guilt? Do you have like, “Well, I really blew that,” or “I did great,” or I mean, how did that go for you?

Vaneetha (39:42):

You want the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Ron (39:44):

Sure because I think that’s what most people experience is all the above.

Vaneetha (39:46):

Yeah. Well, I’ll give you an example of the ugly, which is when I was so angry at my daughter for mouthing off at me that I dumped a full glass of ice water on her head. She ran to her room, and I yelled outside the door, “I can’t wait for you to go to college because I can’t wait for you to leave this house.” So that was a massive regret of mine. So she’s sobbing at that point and she’s 11. I am horrified that I did that because I know that those words, they say things that they are mad about in the moment, but what you say as a parent, that sinks deep.

Ron (40:32):

It does.

Vaneetha (40:32):

And after I could hear her crying, I mean, I collapsed into tears and just lots of remorse, but you can’t pull, you can apologize. And she’s forgiven me over and over because she knows how horrible I felt. The ice water was one thing. I didn’t feel as bad about that, but what I said I felt really bad about. So that was kind of how ugly it got. I think I talked a lot about faith to my kids and wanted to keep doing Bible study, and they were really questioning how could a good God let this happen? Just the way I had said, “Why does God hate me?” But I had a lifetime of faith behind that to really press into God. But for both of them, they didn’t have that. And all of a sudden, we were this Christian family, my older one had just been baptized, and my ex-husband, the pastor asked him at the last minute, “Hey, do you want to come up here with me and baptize her?” So all of that had happened and then all of a sudden, it’s like, where’s God? And my kids felt like my answer for everything was, “Well, let’s pray about it.” And they wanted me to just back off.

(41:47):

And I wish I had been a little more nuanced about it. I was so worried about their faith and where it would go that I felt like every opportunity was an opportunity for a life lesson, mini sermon. And I wish I had trusted God and just recognized they—more is caught than taught. Not that there isn’t a time to do that, but when your kids are reeling and don’t want to hear it, maybe it’s a time for me to just trust God and pray for them and let them lead a little bit in that.

The good I would say this one incident stands out in my mind, and that is—so my daughter, one of my daughters was in seventh grade and just really, she was falling apart through all of this, and she had an art project for school, and she brought it home and she doesn’t like art at all. And she had erased it so much. There was a hole in the paper. So the teacher gave her a new piece of paper and said, I want you to just work on this. My kids both really struggled. I was homeschooling them up first. I put them in school soon after that. And then school was very hard in terms of adjusting. And I mean, it’s just a very hard situation.

Ron (43:03):

So much was going on around their life that time.

Vaneetha (43:05):

Yes, exactly. So the teacher offered some grace, gave the picture, and it was the Hokusai great wave off of Kanagawa, I don’t know how to pronounce it. But anyway, she was begging me, “Can you help me sketch this?” So I was like, “Okay, I will sketch the big part of it and then you need to draw the rest in. But it was just too hard for her to get the proportions. I was looking at the picture and showing her how you do that. “How do you look at a picture and look at this?” I said, “The most important thing is just paying attention to a master, look at their lines and imitate what they do.” And she looked at me and she said, “You are my Hokusai and I want to imitate what you do.” And that was not that far away from the ice water incident, so we’re not talking years. And that was probably mixed in with that. So it wasn’t like we went on this great trajectory, but it felt like, “Okay, I need to pay attention. What I’m doing matters. She may hate me right now on some level, but on other levels she’s watching.” And this daughter has a huge faith and really loves God, but I mean, it was after that. I remember we were in church and she screamed in front of an elder “F you.”

(44:33):

And the words, I mean, I didn’t even know what to do. So it was back and forth. So there was that Hokusai, then there was that, and yet now she has a strong faith that she owns.

Ron (44:48):

Vaneetha, I so appreciate you sharing all three of those stories. The good, the bad, and the ugly because every parent listening right now has had a good, bad, ugly moment, day, three seconds in a row where we do all three. I have, you have, we all have. Let’s talk about the past and the present. So if somebody’s listening right now and they’re going, “Okay, yeah, I repaired pretty well from a couple of those,” or “No, I never brought that back up again. That was back in the day when things were hard and we’re in a different place now.” Do you think there’s need to try to wrap back around and repair with a child, especially around the ugly stuff?

Vaneetha (45:27):

Yeah. Yeah. I think it helps so much. “I’m sorry” is a huge thing. I remember sitting with her saying, “I’m sure this is how this made you feel.” And to say those words, I think were so healing. And I have even now gone back to my kids multiple times and we’ve had good conversations of, what did I do? What have I done? Especially in those years because life was a blur and there were times when I did and said things that I don’t even remember that I’m sure hurt them. And they’ve been willing to say, “Yeah, this was really hard. I wish you hadn’t done this. I wish you had let us into what was happening a little more even on our level.” I was like Fort Knox, and I don’t know if that was the right thing. And they said they knew other people knew so much more about what was happening in their life than they did.

(46:27):

And I don’t think we share everything with our kids when we’re going through a divorce, but there is a place to share a little more than I did, and I had to apologize to them and say, “I get it. It feels like everybody you know, you see, all the adults know things about your life that you don’t know. And that’s got to be painful.” And I would say to anybody listening, if you have kids that are holding onto things or maybe not even, but just open the door, there’s a chance to repair.

Ron:

That’s good.

Vaneetha:

And to listen and say, “I bet you felt this way.” And I feel like when people say that to me, when I tell them how I’ve been hurt, it really reframes that memory.

Ron (47:08):

That’s good. That’s so important. One of the things that’s kind of related to this that I hear pretty regularly from couples in blended families is life has moved on, they’re moved on, family has evolved, and yet they still see the residue of the parental divorce on their kids who are now older, perhaps having their own kids starting their lives. What do you do with that? I know sometimes there’s some guilt wrapped up into that, and sometimes parents really get hard on themselves when they see that pain on their children. Yeah, have you experienced that? How do you navigate?

Vaneetha (47:44):

Yeah.

(47:45):

Just even at weddings, I mean lots of things. And even when my kids, they were younger when we divorced and just this whole idea of will I ever trust a man again? That was a big conversation with both of the girls. You didn’t know. So how would I even know should I even trust? And that was just hard because you think I hate that all of that, what happened, is impacting your life and probably will impact the rest of your life. I can’t make this go away and fix it and make it better. You’re going to have these questions, and we can talk about them, and I can reassure you about certain things, but we don’t know the future. I can’t give you these ironclad, “If you do this, this is going to happen” because that’s what I thought and that’s not how it happened.

Ron:

That’s right.

Vaneetha:

So you can’t promise that to your kids. So there was a lot of heartache for me when they both said, at different times, “I don’t know if I am going to be able to trust.”

Ron (48:46):

I think that doubt is pretty natural in a child who has grown up, watched and is just uncertain for themselves. They don’t want to walk down that same road as they have seen. I think one of the things we can do is just try to come alongside our children and help them lament the things that never were, or the things that happened that were hard and difficult for them, and have them cry that out to God and move toward Him and turn the corner and try to learn how to say, “But God, I’ll trust you.”

Vaneetha (49:21):

Yeah. Yeah. I would say for both of my girls, they would say it was the making of their faith.

(49:30):

One of my daughters, she went to Wheaton and she was saying that in her small group that she was part of that is a big part of her story is I grew up in this family where I thought I knew the answers, I knew the way it was going to be, and things changed so much I didn’t know where my faith was. And then God showed up and He was real to me. And I own that so much more than I don’t think I would have. I own that more than I would have if I hadn’t gone through that. But we don’t like to see our kids suffer and especially when they are drifting from God or rejecting the faith, we kind of think this is going to be forever. And a friend of mine said to me, parenting is a long game, so don’t judge it by right now.

Ron (50:20):

Right. Looking back, how did the Lord sustain you? And I’m wondering how the church helped or hurt.

Vaneetha (50:30):

Well, my church helped. My pastor was super supportive and so were all the elders and the church—so the church was wonderful, walked me through that, but it really was the Lord that sustained me. And a lot of times it was just getting up in the morning Ron and opening the Bible even though I didn’t want to. I remember at times like, this feels like cardboard but just praying in this one verse I would pray every morning, which is Psalm 119:25, “My soul clings to the dust, revive me according to your word,” and God would revive me every day. Somehow His word would just have a spotlight on it, and I would read something that I really needed, and God was nearer than he has ever been for me.

And so that’s why I say this was the making of my faith because I didn’t know that God could be so real day after day consistently. Because before that I had some great quiet times sometimes and it wasn’t like every day was amazing, but I remember often thinking, “Okay, I had a quiet time.” It was almost like a to-do list, and it stopped being that. And it hasn’t been that way since. There was something God changed in my heart towards His Word because it fed me so much that I don’t see it as a have to do. It has changed into a get to do. And it changed during that time.

Ron (52:11):

Hebrews says, Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered. Isn’t that a weird passage? I mean, Jesus had to learn something, and it came through suffering and aligning himself with the father’s will in the midst of his suffering. There’s something there that wow moves us in the way of Jesus, and I just can’t get around it. I mean, this is God’s subtle invitation to us in hard things to trust him more and that will move us toward him and him toward us. And it’s a mystery. And man, I wish there were a different way, but so many times it seems like that is the way. It is what it is.

I appreciate this book. It’s great. You’re going to help a lot of people. Thank you for being here and for sharing and thank you for the ministry that you have.

Vaneetha (53:09):

Thank you, Ron.

Ron (53:10):

Well to you, the listener or viewer, if you want to learn more about Vaneetha and her ministry, check the show notes. We’re going to get you connected. And if you don’t mind, share this episode with someone. Post it to your social media so others can help find support as well.

FamilyLife is a donor supported ministry. All gifts are tax deductible and you help us reach families around the world when you give. So we appreciate it. Don’t forget to add Blended and Blessed livestream to your calendar, Saturday, April 18th. Again, check the show notes to register for the free livestream.

Okay, next time you’re going to hear some clips from last year’s Blended and Blessed 2025. Gayla Grace is going to be here to join me. We’re going to talk about what you hear. That’s next time on FamilyLife Blended.

I’m Ron Deal. Thanks for listening or watching. And thank you to our production team and donors who make this podcast possible.

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