Identity in Christ: Finding My Worth after My Parents’ Divorce
By Rebecca Smith*
“But as many received Him, He gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in His Name, who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:12-13
There are three questions that haunt me. They occupy my sometimes restless days and sleepless nights: who am I, to whom do I belong, and who shapes my identity? I think many children of divorce grapple with these questions. To this last question, the answer might be, “It depends on the day” or “It depends on which parent called me last.” But that question is haunting, isn’t it? Who shapes my identity? This ever-present question seems to give me a constant gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach.
My parents got divorced when I was 17 years old. The three years prior to that were an ever-increasing build up: fighting, screaming, one parent sleeping on the couch, thrown utensils, long silences, constant tension. When they finally decided to get divorced, an epic custody battle ensued. The court ordered my brother and me to go to counseling where the “counselor” basically manipulated us to tell her which parent we liked better through a series of incredibly leading questions.
My dad got full custody. My mom, who up until then stayed at home, now found herself on her own, with no skills, working minimum wage in an apartment complex down the street. For the longest time she actually lived in an extended stay hotel. To this day, whenever I drive by an extended stay hotel, I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach: guilt.
I will be honest with all of you. I do not remember the majority of my high school career. It is a dark black hole and to this day I struggle with feeling detached from my body, a feeling that started around 8th grade when my parents’ fighting became intense. As I later learned, this feeling is a psychological condition called dissociation. It is basically your brain going into protective mode and ‘detaching’ from your psyche during trauma. It’s a constant feeling like you are floating. But since I still deal with the fallout of the divorce, the source of the trauma never really went away, and so that feeling is still there. I’ve only just now started going to therapy for this.
Fast forward 10 years. My dad has now been married two more times, and my mom married and divorced again and is now living with a new boyfriend. I’ve watched my father struggle to connect with his current wife’s family and fail to ‘blend’ their ‘blended family,’ and I’ve watched my mother, who is very mentally ill, bounce from relationship to relationship. And all while I’ve tried to please both of them at the same time, which makes me constantly question: where can I find belonging, rest, and peace?
And ultimately, the question remains: where do I belong in all of this? Belonging 50% to each parent doesn’t make a whole person, does it? My search for the answer to this question served as a journey toward the only person who could answer it: Jesus Christ.
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The culture tells us that children of divorce are fine and resilient, and says many other lies that ignore our trauma. Until I realized that I carried a wound, I actually thought it was normal to feel anxious, guilty, and stressed; to worry about pleasing others; to constantly ache for stability and unconditional love; to fear abandonment; and to be insecure about God’s love for me.
But thankfully, by God’s grace alone, I stayed in the Church. As time passed, I started to observe--very carefully--all of the big, beautiful, intact Catholic families around me. Those who all share the same name and stay in one house at Christmas, who only need to buy one round-trip ticket instead of three one-way tickets during the holidays, and who can talk to both parents at the same time. The ones who can say “I belong.”
This grounded identity in a family is what I still long for. I want it so badly it physically hurts sometimes. As beautiful as they are, being around these big Catholic families unfortunately always brings my reality into stark contrast. I always feel as though I’m floating between two nightmares and that this desire for a loving family of my own will always be just a bit out of reach. Why do I feel this way? As I heard on a podcast recently, this feeling comes from losing the foundational love that was necessary to create me and bring me into being. The loss of this foundation is like the carpet being pulled out from underneath you. Like being relegated from the varsity team to the backup team because the coaches couldn't figure out their strategy, not because you weren’t playing well.
Losing the foundation of my parents’ love has reverberated throughout my entire life. It created a myriad of consequences that have affected me and all my relationships. I feel the consequences almost daily in my own life. When a foundation that was created by a covenantal bond is broken, your entire world view, your identity, is rocked. When my parents split, it was as though a beautiful puzzle with its many intricate pieces broke apart, and then me, a part of that puzzle, consciously or subconsciously tried to find a new puzzle to fit into. This constant internal scanning -- looking for new people to belong to and find my identity in -- brings an unnecessary layer of pressure and anxiety into any relationship that is just starting to grow and bloom, whether that be a new friendship or new dating relationship.
The consequences of this lost identity reared its ugly head and wreaked havoc when I started dating someone seriously. I started to wonder if this person could help me create my new identity. I longed to say “I belong to him” or “we are together.” But this desire was always, always, always, coated with a thick layer of anxiety. Questions constantly buzzed around in my mind: “Will this last? Will he leave? When will the other shoe drop? Is he mad at me? Should I apologize? Is he annoyed?”
This anxiety made me feel crazy. But one day, I brought it all to prayer. I didn’t hold anything back and cried out to Jesus for some consolation, some healing. For anything to make me feel at peace. And our good Jesus said to me in prayer, in a moment I won’t ever forget: “Find your worth only in Me, for you are the daughter of a King.”
This beautiful consolation from our Father was the key that unlocked everything for me. Of course we all say that we belong to God, that we are his children… but do we really, truly believe it? Daughter of a King. Son of a King. This identity is a real, physical, substantial, living, present identity! My worth, my identity, begins, continues, and ends, in Jesus.
Psalm 139 says, “For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful, wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
This is one of my favorite psalms because it shows that from the very first moment of my creation God has known me completely. It shows me that the Creator of the universe wrought me out of nothing because He wants me and loves me. It shows me that I belong to Him first, and that even if my earthly reality is chaotic, my supernatural reality is nothing but love and peace.
The truth is, we can identify with the person to whom we belong. We belong to Christ. We are His sons and daughters and He is our father. He gave us His perfectly beautiful mother to be our mother. And the best part about this is that it can be an actual lived reality. The holiest people in the world are our heavenly family, and we belong to them.
Finding my identity in Jesus isn’t always easy. For me, I try to remember that marriage, as well as the other sacraments, are earthly signs of heavenly realities. Marriage is supposed to be the earthly sign of the heavenly union I will hopefully one day have with God. When this is broken, as with our parents, it can distort how those heavenly realities are perceived. But Jesus is constantly reminding me of the primacy of my relationship with Him. It’s hard to see that when there is a constant battle for peace with my earthly parents. The more I focus on the order of importance of my relationships, the easier it is to navigate those relationships. If I start my day off saying, “my main identity is in Jesus, and I first and foremost belong to Him,” my attitude shifts and the things my parents do or say do not have the same negative influence on my peace as they did before. If I pray to be constantly grounded in my identity as God’s daughter, my outlook completely changes and the chaos surrounding me settles.
While questions still haunt me in the night, they aren’t as intimidating anymore. While I still struggle with social anxiety and loneliness and frustration with my parents, I can walk confidently because I was created in love by the Creator of the Universe.
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*Pseudonym used for privacy’s sake and with the permission of the author.
Rebecca attended a Life-Giving Wounds Retreat in 2019 and was amazed at the amount of healing and bonding that occurred in just three days. She decided to be as involved as she could with this burgeoning ministry. In her spare time, she loves reading, baking, and listening to podcasts!