What Do I Have to Offer as a Divorced Catholic?

We all want to live a perfect life. 

Make minimal mistakes, meet the perfect mate, live in a happy marriage, and have kids and a family that contributes to society. It’s a healthy goal to strive for. 

But as many of us know, life sometimes gets in the way and we fall short.

The perfect dream never materializes, or it does but then shatters, leaving us groping around bleeding as we sift through the shards.

When this happens, we feel like failures. We are disappointed and disillusioned. Life did not turn out like we’d hoped. And we feel like we have nothing left to offer.

But is that true? Or is the exact opposite true?

Thornton Wilder wrote: “In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.” No one who is faultless and perfect can truly minister to the broken. Only those who have experienced wounds can effectively minister to people suffering similar wounds.

A cancer survivor can comfort a cancer victim because they have been there. An alcoholic can strengthen an addict because he’s been there. A divorced person can encourage someone experiencing divorce because she’s been there. 

When Joseph’s brothers threw him in a well to die, Joseph could have been bitter and given up. But he saw it differently. “Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve this present end, the survival of many people” (Genesis 50:20).

Satan and other people may have caused us harm, but God can use it for good if we let him.

We can minister to other people from our wounds. 

What does this look like practically? Maybe you are a divorced person sitting alone in church each week envying the happily married couples all around you. But that’s not all who’s around you. There are likely sad, broken, divorced people in your congregation too. You could reach out to one of them. Make a friend. Offer your own hard-earned wisdom and encouragement to them. Maybe consider starting a divorce recovery group in your church.

I’m a writer, so when I went through divorce, I decided to write a book about my experience that could help other people. I could never have written that book, obviously, if I had stayed happily married. But now I found myself wounded and in pain. So I decided to share my experience with others to let them know they are not alone and that they will get better.

If you are a divorced Catholic, know this: You have much to offer the Church. Things you couldn’t offer if your life had turned out like you wanted it to.

You can either wallow in your pain and grief, or you can re-channel it and use it to help others suffering the same trauma. 

In a strange way, your personal failures and tragedies have made you stronger. Use that.

Befriend divorced people in your church or at work. Share your story and your life with them. Let God use you as a conduit for healing for them. You may feel useless sometimes, but in fact, you have much to give.

In this way, pain (yours) will turn into healing (theirs). God will use you in a way he could never use a perfect person. And anyway, no person was ever perfect except Jesus Christ. We are not Jesus, but we are his children who can minister to one another through the pain life has inflicted on us. 

As you continue to grow and heal, you can also be an example to others that God really does heal and life goes on and even gets better.

Pursue your own healing and let that be a light and encouragement to others who are slogging through the darkness right now. As you heal, you show others that healing is possible for them too.

There are so many ways you can be a light. 

You were married once, a member of that group who has found union between a husband and wife. But now you are not. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, even though you will experience feelings of shame from time to time. But now you are a member of a new group: the broken but redeemed and still loved by God. 

We sometimes look to saints for help, but in this life, nobody wants a saint to preach to them.

They need a sinner who’s been through the fire and the everyday nitty-gritty of despair, anger, and pain. That’s you. Broken on the wheels of living. A wounded warrior. And out of your scars healing will flow. 

So don’t sit in your pew and offer nothing. Get up and reach out. Jesus said: “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much” (Luke 12:48). A trauma like divorce doesn’t feel like a gift, but it is now something you have been entrusted with. Share that gift. Comfort, encourage, and love others out of the wounds you have suffered. That redeems the pain and incorporates it into God’s plan of love for everyone. 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Share from your pain and exercise your God-given role as a healer. You have so much to offer. And it doesn’t come from your innate strength. It comes from your weakness. 

Rise and be a wounded warrior.