Separation and mediation failed, you've hired an attorney, and now you're in the thick of the mess asking yourself how in the **** you ended up here. We can and will answer that as we continue this journey together, but for now, you need to know what to fight for.
Simply put, there are two things: your rights as a parent and financial stability.
Your Rights as a Parent
You'll notice that I didn't say you'll be fighting for you children, but for your rights as a parent. The reason for that is two fold. First, regardless of why you and your soon to be former spouse can't make it work, he or she also has rights as a parent. The goal is to maximize those rights so that the children still have their mom and their dad.
In previous decades, mom typically won custody with or without a fight. These days, 50-50 custody is almost always guaranteed if you are still living in close enough proximity that the weekly change is not detrimental to the kids.
The second reason that you fight for your rights and not the children themselves is because they will be better off for it. Let's be honest, the custodial parent gets a huge financial windfall in child support and tax benefits. There are plenty of parents motivated to get custody because of that. With shared custody, there may still be some child support paid by the higher wage earner, but not as much as there would be in a primary custody case.
Your children, whether elementary age or high school, aren't stupid. They know when they are the subject of a fight between the two of you and that adds to their feelings of guilt. It creates uncertainty as to whether or not it's okay to love both parents. Let me be very clear on this. YOUR CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO LOVE BOTH OF THEIR PARENTS WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY ABOUT IT OR THINKING THAT THEY ARE DISLOYAL TO YOU!!!.
The only time that you are going to fight for the kids and against the rights of your spouse is when there is a real danger to them, and I'm not talking about a simple difference of opinion.
Your Financial Stability
When my former wife and I separated, she stole some $10,000 from me. She kept the vast majority of tangible belongings we owned, the house, my boat... pretty much everything that wasn't my clothes or my triathlon bike. Heck, by the time child support was negotiated, I was left with $300 per month to live on, and I had a $280 per month car payment with $100 per month insurance. Pretty bleak.What I did have, though, was a place to live, food, and a part time job. I could sell the car and ride my bike if I needed to. I was taken care of by people that God already had in place. If I lost the car, I would still survive pretty comfortably with my family.
I could have fought for the money that was stolen, my half of the stuff, and forced the sale of the house. But I didn't need to. It wasn't necessary for my survival and the few bills I had were being paid. That meant I was free to let go of all of that other stuff.
Let be me honest though, I wasn't financially secure, I was only stable. A broken bone would have put me thousands of dollars into debt with no way to repay it. There were countless ways for that to change. But through all of it God was faithful.
I'm no health and wealth preacher and it was a fight to get to the point where I was able to let go. Through solid counsel and prayer, I tentatively let for of the tangible, temporary stuff and negotiated to keep my rights as a parent and to know that I was okay financially one day at a time.
All I had lost, I don't miss. The heart change that came when Christ became real showed me that my relationship with my children was more important than all of the other stuff I had allowed to become my idol. The simple things like having ice cream with my mom and going for a walk on a pretty day became something I enjoyed more than 6,000 channels on a 50 inch plasma could have ever done for me. It was absolutely freeing. No longer chained to it, I was finally able to start becoming the Dad that my kids needed me to be for so long.
This is where you want to be at the end of the divorce process: to be free from your idols, to have a growing relationship with Christ, to be okay financially on this day, and to be the parent your children long to love and to be loved by. The rest is really overrated, overhyped junk that our society tells us we need. The bottom line is that you need to put your trust in Christ and He will be faithful to you. So fight for the right to be in your kids' lives (and actually be there!) and be willing to sacrifice everything you have except what you actually need. Then watch Christ show up in ways you couldn't begin to imagine when you come to the end of yourself and place your trust in Him.
