Member-only story
The Divorced Family Schedule
“I just want to be a family again.” I heard from the backseat for months as I drove my kids to and from my house to their father’s; we lamented it during bedtime prayers, over dinner, and as each of us clumsily settled into our “new normal.”
“We are still a family. We are a divorced family,” I found myself saying more firmly than I believed it. This became our mantra, along with about half of other US families:
“We are a family. We are a divorced family.”
There’s a whole wide world of divorced family schedules that one doesn’t know until you’ve been through it or choose to be a family law professional. First, third, fifth weekends, Standard Protective Orders, custodial parent, visitation, color-coded calendars, the importance of 6 o’clock p.m. All are strange marks of what that truth:
“We are a family. We are a divorced family.”
means for these lives.
In our custody agreement, every Sunday at 6 p.m., my children arrive on the front porch. Sometimes gleefully skipping inside with tales from whatever arcade or entertainment a weekend with their dad included, and sometimes begrudgingly lamenting, “I don’t want to go to Mom’s house.”
We parents can’t take it personally. There is a constant dying to the self and rising for the sake of your kids’…
