Empty Moving Trucks

There are two moving trucks outside our townhome, one each being rented by next door neighbors. These are the two neighbors we first met when we moved here. Each had a daughter nearly Jacob's age and were natural playmates. These children would knock on our door and ask Jacob to play. Sometimes they came into our home and played upstairs in the play room. We only briefly chatted with the parents, but they seemed quiet normal. Yet during the brief 5 months we have been here, both families had one spouse decide they just did not want to stay married, then moved out and filed divorce. The remaining spouse is packing up the remaining belongings and leaving in the moving trucks.

I don't think I have ever seen divorce this up close. I have had closer friends go through divorces, but it has not seemed as vivid as these two. I believe it is because of the children and their connection with Jacob. One girl became, in some ways, Jacob's first girlfriend. She was certainly his best friend here. She would knock on the door after school and ask if Jacob could come out. They played little imaginary games, have little silly fights where one would leave angry or crying but then come back to each other in ten minutes to play again as if the fight had never happened. Jacob would talk about how pretty she was and how much he liked her, but it was always very innocent and without the connotation of a true romance.  A five year old boy and a five year old girl who were best friends.

She told Jacob she was going to travel to Arkansas for a long visit, but she would come back. I am sure that is what her mother told her, but they were never coming back. I spoke to the father, and he said she was depressed at motherhood and its loneliness, her weight gain since having the daughter and just discontent her life. There was no real strife or enmity within the marriage. The wife just wanted a new start.

As the weeks went by, Jacob still talked about the girl and how she was coming back. Then one day when Shannon was driving him home from school, Jacob began talking about her and he must have finally realized the reality of the situation. He began crying, and through the tears he said "She lied to me. She told me she was coming back, but she isn't." What do you say to something like that?

The other girl was a bit older than Jacob, but she would still play with him. When we met her, she was so sweet. Shannon felt she would be a good influence on Jacob. One day I saw her mom and made some small chat. She shared her husband had left her, and she did not know why. You never get all the details on marital troubles, and we only heard her side, but apparently there was no infidelity or growing embitterment. He just got tried of the marriage and left. It was the second marriage for both of them, with each having kids from the first, and together they had a 7 year old daughter and a 10-month old son.

Since then, this sweet 7 year old would still play with Jacob but now in a manner that was less sweet, not nearly as generous. I noticed that every time I would encounter her she would try to hug me or jump on me or grab me or ask me to pick her up.  One time on the common lawn, I was walking back with Jacob, and she ran up behind me and jumped on me. I gently put her down and kept walking to the house, but she persisted in this bizarre assault. As I was literally holding her off of me at arms length, as she kept saying "Spin me around. Spin me around," I got concerned that neighbors would think it very odd of this young girl chasing this grown man.

You don't need to be counselor to see how her father's abandonment of the marriage was changing her view of herself and her need for love and affirmation. She is very pretty little girl who would flourish in loving and stable home. Now I worry about her future. Will she be promiscuous as a teenager and young adult? How will she view and trust men? Maybe she will turn out great. Maybe.

The best sermon I ever heard on divorce was from my friend Greg Methvin. It was soundly Biblical in holding up the standard of marriage but wisely pastoral in dealing with broken people and the hurt experienced through divorce. He spoke of the connection that two married people always have, that divorce can never truly take away. You become one, then are torn apart, but part of that person always remains with the other. The tearing also rips apart others, especially the children, but really all the people who were part of that one life you shared, including the 5 year old neighbor boy who adored your daughter.

Both trucks are nearly full with their belongings and ready to head out to their new locations. A new start they might say. But they might as well be empty. The stuff that really matters can't be loaded into a moving truck and carted off. It will always be left behind.