Saddle up your camels, ladies, we're off to battle! A free-wheeling commentary of a lady who believes that women belong in combat, certainly not in the military, but in the home -- in the spiritual battle for their families. Join us on the frontlines as we cover homeschooling, the culture wars, raising sons, virtuous manhood and womanhood, helping our husbands, femininity, serving Christ the King, and all other fronts in the holy war we face. Up camels!

Friday, October 19, 2007

Homeschooling and Divorce

Here's a letter I posted in response to a homeschooling mother who told an email list that she was thinking of divorcing her husband because she didn't love him anymore and they were not getting along at all. I hope if you are thinking of divorcing your mate, that you will read this very carefully and think it through.

Dear Friend,

I wish I could give you a hug! I'm so glad you asked for help instead of going to a lawyer!!!!! I believe God will intervene in this situation!

Now for the tough love part: a real, practical, earthly reality check. We are state homeschool leaders and sooner or later, many problems in the homeschool community in our state cross our desk. We see a lot of divorce situations! How in the world, you're probably thinking, would a divorce affect homeschool leaders? Here's the reality check: when you divorce, you are telling the state that you can no longer run your own family, that the adults in the marriage are no longer in agreement, so can not be allowed to make decisions about the children. When you do this, the family judge has, hear me, **complete authority** over your family. Most family judges are older people who are ignorant about homeschooling and they will jump on the slightest excuse to *order* you to place your children in public school. Now, I know that there are exceptions to this, but you can't decide what judge your case comes before. Our state homeschool board members and those in other states will testify if asked, but generally to no avail. And HSLDA will not help you in custody situations, even if homeschooling is the issue.

Now, you may think that you and your husband are in agreement about homeschooling, but when it comes to a divorce, *anything* can be used as a weapon. When someone is cut to the quick - and tearing apart a one-flesh relationship definitely does this - they can react like a wounded animal. We see parents reporting each other to social services, calling the state oversight agency and making complaints, asking the judge to give them total custody, asking the judge to stop the homeschooling. We see this a *lot*because the hurt or angry mate knows how important this is to his wife. Often these are Christian, homeschooling families that no one ever thought would be in this situation.

Even if you can possibly get through the judicial situation, you are not done with your husband. When a couple with children divorces, I think they seldom realize that they will be tied to each other forever through the children and courts. One of my dear, homeschool-mom friends is allowed to homeschool, but her husband has custody every weekend (and if it is a situation where no one has done anything wrong, 50/50 custody is the norm), so she almost never gets to go to church with her son, never gets to relax on a Saturday with him. Every other holiday is alone. He is gone a lot of the summer to make up for the 5 days she has him to every 2 his father does during the week. This, if you can believe it, is one of the best situations I know - not much of a best is it?

I can not urge you strongly enough, that nothing short of a real, physical, abusive situation or unrepentent adultery is even close to worth submitting your family for the rest of your children's childhood to the authority of a probably unsaved, probably hostile judge! Trust me, we see a lot of tough situations, and divorce will not take away your problems, they will just become problems you are not allowed to change - court orders.

The next thing we see, is moms who have gotten through all that and now they have to support themselves. Generally, judges will *not* order the husband to completely support the family as before since he sees no reason the wife should not work. And if you go to work, you can bet the judge will want to know who is supervising the children and not believe you can homeschool, too. It's a vicious cycle.

Now, there are people who get through divorce more easily than this, but can you take that chance?????? If Satan cares enough about wrecking your familyto spend two years tempting you away from loving and respecting your husband, do you think he will stop when victory is in his grasp???

I'm not going to go into the spiritual and emotional rebuilding advice, because I think you are getting a lot of great help, except to say, God would not command us to love one another if it wasn't something we can choose to do and not something that comes and goes without our decision.

Dear friend, I really don't want to see you go through this! You may even be in our state. I don't want to have to see a judge take over your family. Please count the cost and ask God to restore your marriage.

With much love,
Melanie Young

2 comments:

Angela said...

I just stumbled on this article and I am on the other side of the world (literally), but I'd just like to say AMEN! And thank you for having the courage to fight against such a great world sickness - divorce and the destruction of the family. Why do wives expect to be a wonderful and useful bride of Jesus on His return when they have so much trouble humbling themselves to loving their own husbands on earth? Can I add to your letter? 'Behave in a loving way to your husband and children, even when you don't feel like it, and you will be amazed at the love that is stirred up in your heart. Sometimes a lack of love in a marriage is just pride and hardness of heart in both parties rather than just a sign you aren't true soul-mates (like the movies tell us!) you can't changed him, but you can changed how you behave.'
God bless.

Anonymous said...

I just stumbled on this article and must express my gratitude for having touched on a great many points that are so very important in this issue. I am on the "other side of the coin." In our situation, transpose the 'mother' and 'father' roles in your article. I am the homeschooling father. It is important to remember that, although obviously 'rare,' there do exist circumstances wherein the parties involved are on different sides of the fence than is commonly seen. Thank you for the article, it has given be a renewed reflection that I appreciate greatly.