As the calendar year turns over, we rejoice in all of God’s blessings in 2024 and look ahead with joyful anticipation to 2025! Here’s a short recap of some of the best highlights of 2024, and some goals and dreams for what’s ahead in 2025…

This is a poem about my parents’ divorce. The title “Flight 1015” refers to their wedding anniversary on October 15th and in the poem their love is metaphorically described as both the turbulence and the airplane itself. The poem is also a modern dialogue with Robert Frost’s famous poem about marriage entitled “The Master Speed.”

The year we got married, Dan’s parents completed their divorce proceedings, which had begun more than a decade earlier when they separated while he was in middle school. It felt ironic and deeply sad that we were beginning our life together as his parents were definitively ending theirs. And it caused some anxiety in us: Could we make it work? Would we last?

The phenomenon known as “gray divorce” — when couples older than 50 end their marriage — has grown dramatically in the past few decades. Since the 1990s, the divorce rate has doubled for Americans over 50, and tripled for those over 65. And the trend doesn’t seem to be abating any time soon.

What about the children in these situations, like Bruce? They are young adults or adults themselves, perhaps out of the home or getting ready to “launch.” How does their parents’ split affect them?