Grieving Your Anger Part 4: Bargaining and Acceptance
In this blog we continue our march through grieving the marital expectations that, if you have separated, may be driving negative behaviors. These negative behaviors definitely impact your children. If they are at all refusing to be with their other parent your ungrieved feelings of anger and bitterness are undoubtably playing a role.
We look this week at the feelings of bargaining or questioning and acceptance. Recall that grief does not proceed in rigid, step by step fashion. The main feelings will cycle and cycle and cycle until, like a camp fire they are all burned out. As we usually discuss, give yourself permission to feel the feelings of questioning. That is spend time on seeing if you are even letting yourself ask the hard questions. Here are how many of them may sound. See how they relate to the Greatest Blessing relationships. God, why did the marriage fail? Why didn’t you step in, in a more profound way? Why did you let me marry this person anyway? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? Why did I let them treat me this way? How am I supposed to forgive them? I encourage you to journal each one of these questions and just put them to God and wait for answers to come in your prayer time. Answers do come, but we need to take the posture of an open and trusting heart. The first and best step is identifying the questions and being willing to wait.
As we wait, we can look to Jesus. He gave us a model to emulate. We see His brief conversation with God before His crucifixion.
“saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Luke 22:42.(ESV)
In this brief passage, we see what is up ahead. Jesus sees spiritual and physical suffering and asks for another way. His very next statement shows us the very bitter pill we must swallow. “not my will, but yours, be done.”
As a parent raising children after separation and divorce, being negative in verbal and/or non-verbal communication is abusive to the children, science is clear on this point. They have a right to a positive and loving relationship with both parents before and after separation. That is the most loving thing you can do for the children after divorce. Like it or not, divorced or not, you will always be a family with the person you made children with. Living out the Greatest Blessings, “Loving God and others as yourself,” means facilitating that positive and loving relationship with your ex. If there are concerns that you feel are legitimate they should be dealt with in family therapy, not by venting feelings to the children.
Children hear venting and are then caught in a loyalty trap. Because they don’t want the parent who is venting to do the same to them, they align themselves with the alienating parent. They will often reject the other parent. But here is the thing, when they are in their twenties and the prefrontal cortex matures, they will be able to see and question what happened and often the alienating parent is ultimately rejected as the child heals from the abuse they suffered. I say all this as motivation to process your grief, anger and bitterness as quickly as you can. True forgiveness of God, your spouse and yourself is the only path to humble peace. If you grieve and ultimately do not forgive, you will remain bitter for years to come and your children will suffer because of it. Give yourself space in solitude to bring all of the bargaining questions to the forefront. Just remember to keep it in solitude or be humble enough to say “I am working through my anger and hurt, but ultimately, he/she is your dad/mom, and you deserve to have a good relationship with him/her. We will get through this and get to a point where our family will be at peace. This moment will not last. I want you to love him/her, I will get through this.”
Next, I go over a truly crazy idea to tie all of this talk of grief together: A marriage funeral. That’s right! A marriage funeral. I hope you will tune in and hear me out. There is a lot of wisdom baked into the idea.