My Beam: Divorce

Last night, I listened to a training conference call for one of my businesses, in which the speaker urged us to get around successful people if we want to be successful. If you want to be rich, don't hang around broke people.

The speaker made the statement: "If you want good marriage advice, don't go to a divorced person."

Ouch.

Not only was the comment hurtful to me, I also happen to disagree with it most fervently. A divorced person is the best person to go to for advice! Happily married people cannot relate to people with severe marital problems! Alcoholics Anonymous is successful precisely because it involves alcoholics meeting with and sharing with other alcoholics!

And from the pure business perspective, I happen to think there is excellent knowledge to be gained from talking to people that have not chosen your product or service! This is Marketing! The customer comes first! (But that's another topic).

My divorce crushed me for a time. For 32 years I had held myself up as a success, for not entering into an unwise marriage. I thought that this had prepared me to be successful in marriage. I appreciated it more, once I was in it. I had a life goal of being successful in marriage. I could make even a bad marriage successful.

Yes, I was full of pride. And that pride would be my undoing.

I am divorced. Divorce is a very public kind of failure. Our generation makes excuses ("We were married. Nothing is wrong. We just grew further apart, so the marriage ended, like all relationships do eventually. But we're still friends.")

But divorce is failure. Let's not sugar-coat it. The divorced person has failed his kids, his parents, his siblings, his ex-spouse, himself, and his God.

Failure.

So now today, people around me can always say "Who are you to give advice? You're divorced." Yes, I know they don't actually say that. But they are thinking it. I know they are thinking it, because I think thoughts like that about others. I have heard conversations in which people make judgmental comments like that about those that are not present.

So, it will always be a limitation on my effectiveness. But I also know that God can make the weak strong. He can turn defeat into victory.

Let me say one last thing about this idea about gossip and judgmentalism: when you really think about it, most gossip is correct. Those things that people say about you, where you respond "I don't care what people think," well, most often those other people are right.

If people treat me with less respect because I am divorced, they are right to do so. I know that some people do not want their kids around me, or in my home, for that reason. And they are right to do so. I don't blame them.

And the same goes for every one of us, for you, when people comment on decisions you have made. What people are saying about you, and me, is probably correct. We probably should listen to them.

So we have a couple of problems: one, that we don't listen to the good advice from others; and two, that those others haven't fixed themselves before handing out advice.

Next - Another one of my beams.