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It
is a death of a dream too! Ask most any woman
who is trying to raise her children by herself,
and she’ll tell you. It wasn’t the way she had planned.
It wasn’t what she had hoped for. Or dreamed about. Something
happened, and it all fell apart.
The “dream” begins
as a young girl, with stories like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella,
and Snow White. Every little girl dreams of a handsome prince
coming to sweep her off her feet, carry her away, marry her and
make her his own - to live happily ever after and start their
own family to raise.
This “dream” permeates
every good romance written even today. Not just ending with a
kiss, but with a child happily tucked between them to love.
But divorce brings
death to that dream.
Many a divorced woman
will tell you that they not only suffer rejection and hurt, but
the death of this “dream”. Often going through the stages of death
and dying as if cancer were taking the one they loved. The dream
of happily ever after, and white picket fences, is dead.
And to the children,
it is a nightmare that will last a lot longer.
Pope John Paul said,
“Children of divorced families are orphans of living parents.”
Indeed, fully one third of children never see their fathers after
divorce. And the others find themselves most often in no mans
land shuttled between warring parents.
The US Census reports
that in 1999 and 2000, Of the 105.48 million households in the
United states, 12.87 million households (12.2%) are run by single
parent female head of households. Twelve percent of the US population
lives in poverty, and 28% of those are female single parent households.
2.9 million families in the US living in poverty are run by single
parent female head of householders.
This ‘death’ has powerful
implications for us as a society, for it robs us of our morality
as spouses abandon their families in favor of their own self indulgences.
And it shows us to be a compassionless people who ignore the needs
of those in desperate circumstances.
Both rob us economically,
spiritually, and physically. And it robs us of our futures as
children become adults, often repeating what they experienced.
The ‘death’ is a nightmare for all of us, whether we want to see
it, or not.
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