Logically, I know that the holidays are no different than the rest of the year and if you’re having a bad year it probably won’t get any better just because everything you see and hear suggests this time of year is just naturally full of warm and fuzzy feelings. Emotionally, though, I really want to believe that something magical will take place at this time of year to make those warm and fuzzy feelings a reality.
Let’s look at the type of pressure you may be under for the holidays:
You feel obligated to spend money you don’t have buying gifts for people you might not care that much for.
You build up debt buying expensive gifts for your children. If you haven’t paid off your debt from last year’s gifts, the hole just gets deeper.
As much as you might like to spend just one holiday season ‘your way’ you fall into the guilt trap and continue the tradition of family gatherings with extended family members you have very little in common with other than you all share the same lack of enthusiasm for traditions that have gone stale over the years.
Divorced or separated? The holidays are a major reminder of just how much you’ve lost. Divorce happens to the best of people. Not every couple is meant to live together forever regardless of marriage vows. Some unions outlive their time or shoiuld never have taken place.
The pain of dissolution of a long term marriage will take time to subside no matter who wanted the divorce. Habits, even bad ones, are difficult to break. Living with an abusive spouse becomes a habit. Living with an adulterous spouse becomes a habit. Living with an alcoholic spouse becomes a habit.
Living with someone for a length of time causes us to depend on that person even if the life we spend with them is less than ideal. Dinner at six, television until ten, sex every other Friday night, grocery shopping on Saturday afternoons, church on Sunday mornings. Routine defines our life, just as being part of a couple defines us.
There are no simple solutions to adjusting to being divorced. Looking upon the situation as a new phase of life and seeking the opportunities for personal growth is easy to say but not particularly easy to do. It takes time to adjust, just as it took time for you to adjust to living with someone else, working someone else’s needs and wants into your life. Perhaps you replaced your own needs and wants with theirs thinking it was the “right” thing to do and now you have an emptiness because even those are gone.
There is freedom with divorce. Freedom from an abusive spouse or an adulterous spouse or an addicted spouse. That freedom comes with a price. Such freedom is difficult to understand and not easily appreciated if it has never been available before.
Being divorced isn’t the end of the world. Whether you are divorced, separated, or unhappily married, today starts the rest of your life. You may have made some wrong choices yesterday but that’s part of the past, an unchangeable, inflexible part of your history. There is nothing you can do to change that part of your life. Today is yours to make of it as you will.
What will you do with the gift of today? Will you squander it? Will you use it up with unwise choices? Will you build upon it to make a better future for yourself? It is your day, your gift, your choice of what to make of it.