In American society, the common conception of having a warm home and a loving family to come home to is something that everyone strives for. However, with a divorce rate of 50% in America, that isn’t always an option or available. That means that half of the marriages succeed— but half don’t. Divorce is something that is looked down upon as weak or giving up. However, that is anything but the truth.

Divorce means that you attempted to work at something that you knew no longer worked for you. It doesn’t mean there weren’t good times, even though there were a lot of bad. No one goes into a marriage expecting an outcome that would break that bond. Yes, marriage is supposed to be forever. Marriage is supposed to bring good health and happiness. But when it doesn’t do that and there’s nothing to make it work so that it can, you are stuck at a crossroad that ultimately is best when you decide to walk away. It doesn’t mean you're walking away from your family. Or from the good times.

It means you're walking away from the negativity.

In my family, we still have photo albums of fun vacations and cruises, and often talk about our holiday family traditions. We don’t choose to neglect them, but we honor them. We give them the respect that they deserve because, at one point, they made us all happy.

At one point they made us believe in the possibility of a forever family. At one point they made us feel the warmth radiating throughout our entire body. But also, at points, there were times that made us feel as if we were so small. This made us want nothing more than to be happy but apart from each other because after a while it became too hard to hurt people that you loved. It became too hard to handle the fact that even if we do love each other, we weren’t meant to be.

America tries to stigmatize that we NEED a family in order to be complete. But what happens when we’re complete.... apart? What happens when every holiday becomes something that we dread, rather than something we are excited for?

We lose respect for those times that we did make each other happy because we are too focused on being afraid of each other. We hide away in our rooms because the warmth and laughter we once created turned into boxing matches and tears. We become something that we swore we never would be, but yet we couldn’t help it.

Suddenly, all of the good times become just part of the past. We wait till we are so lost in the fighting that we just burn each other and all of our bridges. We throw oil on the fire instead of water. Oil and water look the same. It’s easy to get the two buckets confused. It’s easy to forget which one puts out the fire when the sound of fighting is ringing in your ear.

You beg God to bring back the good times. But even he knows that our holidays bring more warmth without the fighting. Without the hate. Looking at people with families that are together can make you feel really lonely. It can remind you of what you had but also what you didn’t have. What you wanted all along but instead you were left gasping for your own air. But the oxygen tank comes when the divorce does. You can breathe again. You don’t have to live in fear. You don’t have to dread coming home just because you know a deadly fight is about to come.

Growing up in youth groups, they often criticized me for not being strong enough to keep my family together. For even having a family that couldn’t be kept together. But what they don’t know is that you’re falling asleep with headphones in because every sound in your house makes you flinch. They don’t know that you pray every night to have to stop fighting alone.

So when society tells you to stop being upset over something that is good or when society tells you that your family is less than others, remember what was written in the stars. What made you feel broken down and tired and how you no longer have to experience that. How you now have the warmth that you remembered, but just in a different way. That you don’t have to make the same path that you experienced. That the holidays can be waking up on Christmas morning again and being excited to run downstairs likes little kid. Because there’s peace. Noel.