Stepping into a step-family

December 9, 2009 by Memory Dete ·
Filed under: Family, Friendship, Community

Millicent and Mark joined the spiraling statistics of divorce figures in Zimbabwe in 2007, following a short-lived tumulus marriage, which only lasted for approximately one- and-a- half years. It was she who had made the conscious decision that her marriage was over and filed for divorce from her husband, following many months of having gone through marital trials, which stemmed from what she now regarded as having been a mistake – daring to step into a step-family and marrying a man who was twice her own age. Ever since she has had the issue of divorce laid strongly upon her heart.

Following her decision to move out of the matrimonial home, she faced much stigma from a patriarchal society that always points an accusing finger and puts the blame on women. Many gender insensitive Zimbabwean men have been known to declare that if they could have their own way regarding issues of language-change they would change the Shona name for women (vakadzi) to ‘vatadzi’ (evil-doers). In this case, Millicent was regarded as ‘mutadzi’ (a wrong-doer) in the issues surrounding her divorce, which became controversial because she dared to divorce a man of the cloth.

LEARNING TO ADJUST

It is not always easy to leave one’s past life and to adjust to a completely new family set up with very different rules and regulations. When a second remarriage occurs, the whole family goes through a transition period, but in spite of this sensitivity and thoughtfulness to the new spouse are essential to make the stepping into a new family go smoothly. I was a crucial part of my husband’s life and this made his children a crucial part of my life as well and creating family harmony and managing to balance our needs as a couple with the needs of an entire new family was challenging.

Although I never wanted to put my husband in a situation where he had to choose between me and his children , because this would put him in a nearly impossible bind, it turned out to be a never-ending story trying to get along with my husband’s children and I will always remember the statement that ,’ blood is thicker than water’ for it was this statement that was the final straw and which prompted me to pack my bag and leave my matrimonial home – this time for good. I had packed my bags and returned to my mother’s home on many other occasions, but I had always come back. But this time was different. I would not make a come-back. Going away for good was a must for my own mental health and if I remained in the household their abuse and the pain which they caused me would make my own attitude to become negative.

Family is always going to be family. My husband’s children were just plain evil! I never took the time to get to know them, before I got married although he had hinted to me that “my children are quite a handful’ but I had not really thought about hi statement seriously. How difficult could children be I had thought and so I just blindly married this man whom I thought loved me deeply until his children came along and ruined our marriage. The children had not wanted the best for their father and not wanting the best means making sure that his marriage, did not last!

My biggest mistake was waiting until after the marriage to get to know my step-children whom I discovered too late were so evil that they could try at anything to make me leave their home, so that they could have their father all to themselves, just as how they h ad always intended it to be. These children did everything possible to ruin my marriage to their father and because of that my husband and I started to argue constantly over this very issue and ultimately our marriage was completely ruined. There is not a day that goes by that I do not wish that I could have discovered the likes of his children before the marriage. I made a mistake and I had to learn the hard way. Had I known how evil his children were I would have never married this man for I would have sat down and asked myself…Is this marriage really worth getting into?

I thought that when their father married, they would take a back seat and respect me as their father’s new wife but in actual fact they wanted us to live by their own dictates and the family was constantly caught in the middle of blazing family rows. When these brawls and any kind of conflict occurred, my husband rather that I was offended than his children, which I think was wrong because I was his wife, whom he chose to be with. It became increasingly clear to me that his children’s behaviour was tolerable to him. I had known that it was important to talk to my spouse about how I felt because they were his children but all my lament fell on deaf ears. I think problems with his children mainly arose because he did not realize that his children were doing much harm to our marriage. If he had acknowledged this, it would have been easier to find a way forward together and he could have talked to his children and tried to straighten them up. The biggest problem arose when he did not see any harm that they were doing and in many instances he even took the same side with his children. I believed that it was up in his best interest to portray me in the best light possible. If only he had made it clear to his children that they had to treat me with respect and not the outright hostility that they displayed towards me..

They regarded me as a parasite that had come to feast on their father’s fortunes (as if their father even had a fortune) Why should I fight for material things? Where did they get this crazy notion from? I did not come from a poor family and in fact I had had a better lifestyle at my parents home, than what I was going through as a married woman. They constantly complained about me even though I did my best to be good. They wanted me to serve them lavish meals even when their father did not give me the money to buy the lavish ingredients and even when their father told them that he had no money for the family to eat expensive food. At times they refused to eat what I served then and accused me of purposely not serving them good meal.

Over the years society has turned submission into something women should fear, yet submission is not about control or power like many men, such as my former husband, would like to believe, but it is about love So the moral of this story is that if you dare to step into a step-family, get to know your spouses children really well before youtake the plunge and even attempt to say “I do”.My husband always compared me with his deceased wife and although I accepted that she must have had some very good qualities that he was proud of , he should not use this against me and my accept my own individuality.

DOES GOD REALLY HATE DIVORCE?

An interesting verse where the words, “The Lord God of Israel says that HE HATES DIVORCE” (Malachi 2:16) has been quoted on numerous occasions by Pastors and Christian marriage counsellors in their often futile bid to save marriages, which are on the verge of collapsing. Yes indeed the Bible does state categorically that God hates divorce, but have we ever stopped to ask ourselves why God hates divorce? This author perceives that God hates divorce because of the negative effects that it causes on the couple concerned, who go through a myriad of emotions, as well as their children, if they have any, who are traumatized by their parent’s divorce. But does say that, should a Christian woman or a Christian man, find it essential to untie the marriage knot, he or she loses their salvation. Does God say anywhere in the Bible that such an individual, having gone through a divorce, is automatically condemned to eternal damnation in hell. This thought evokes the following question. In spite of God’s sentiment that He hates divorce, does a Christian woman or a Christian man have a right to divorce his or her spouse? This author believes that God does not ostracize a Christian woman or a Christian man, who finds herself or himself having to go through a divorce, provided that the reason for the divorce is legitimate, such as in the case of adultery as well as gross physical and mental abuse and not merely a flimsy reason.

Most of the time divorce is looked at as something terrible and the ultimate sin. However, there are times when the procedure of divorce is necessary to bring sanity into one’s life. While a harmonious marriage between a woman and a man is idyllic and is one of the most beautiful and rewarding experiences one can ever have in their living years, what happens when that once beautiful experience is not so beautiful any longer and the love that was so deeply rooted has turned to bitterness of heart and has grown to encompass hatred? What happens when proper counseling, conducted by marriage counsellors, who may include family friends, Christian brethren and family members, has not brought forth the desired fruit, and the hope of the relationship being restored becomes lost?

Researchers, who study the spiraling divorce figures approximate that at least 50% of registered marriages, including ‘Christian marriages between equally-yoked and ‘born-again’ Christians, are known to have ended through a divorce. One of the top topmost reasons for divorce in both Christian and secular marriages, is the difficulties that surround step families, which are also referred to as blended families. While being part of a blended family, in which one or both partners bring children into the marriage, after a previous divorce or after being widowed, can be an exciting and enriching experience, the blending of two families can also be a challenging experience because the partners involved are not starting on a fresh slate but are bringing “their baggage” with them into the new marriage For hers or his children to blend with their parent’s new spouse means dealing with a myriad of emotions and complexities and it can take a long time to settle into a blended family. In other cases it may become impossible to settle in a blended family, as in the case of Millicent, whose ‘Christian’ marriage ended up in divorce.

Many women, such as Millicent, are living single following the aftermath of divorce. Women who have taken bold steps to leave their husbands, for whatever justified reason/s, for instance physical abuse in a home fraught with domestic violence, are still stigmatized even though they have negative memories of their suffering in the marriage. Although Millicent sometimes has misgivings about her decision to divorce, she is happy that she extricated herself from the marital unpleasantness that she experienced in her short-lived marriage which lasted for approximately one and a half years. She however hastens to add that although divorce is ‘ugly’ even if the couples concerned pretend to be good-natured about it, divorce is never a pleasant personal experience and couples who have tied the knot should try with their level best, with the grace of the Almighty God, to keep their marriage knot tied tightly.

Millicent says of her now ex husband: “He wanted someone whom he could mould into his own version of the perfect kind of a wife. My mistake was confusing that with devotion and love. I believe that he married me to enhance his social status as a Christian figurehead so that he could be looked upon by the Christian society as a respectable man, blessed by God with a young and beautiful wife. I have since grown into a capable, confident person and I am more sure of myself and I do not want to live a wasted or disappointed life…..”

WEDDING BELLS AND BREAKING THE NEWS TO CHILDREN

At the start of their relationship, which eventually led to marriage, Mark held an audience with his four children when he decided to re-marry and broke the news to them. They met the news with total repugnance and desperately tried to dissuade him from considering remarriage. He however remained adamant that he would carry out his decision and made it abundantly clear to them that he was not seeking their permission but he only wanted to inform them personally so that they would not hear the news first from other quarters. Why did his children object to their father’s re-marriage. Millicent, was later to discover the main reason that Mark’s children did not welcome their father’s decision to remarry, simply boiled down to the issue of inheritance. Therefore the children made a pact to do everything in their power to frustrate their father’s wife to the extent of driving her to leave their household. Mark’s two sons, not having taken their education seriously, had no professional careers and they roamed the streets of the central business district doing deals, many of which were illegal and tricking people out of their hard earned money by selling damaged or non-working goods, as well as stealing many of their father’s possessions to sell and make money.

DOES AGE REALLY MATTER?

It is widely believed that love conquers all and that love comes in all shapes, colors, sizes and ages. As long as the couple are compatible, respectful and committed to one another, age should not be a factor. Millicent married Mark, a much older man, he being 60+ (she could not remember his precise age at the time) and she being 30 at the time of their Marriage in August 2005. Mark was a widower, having been married before with 4 children, 3 sons and a daughter (the oldest son - who was now deceased - being three years older than Millicent) and he had 4 grand-children and two deceased grandchildren). Because she was young enough to his daughter no doubt their impending marriage brought opinionated and often prejudiced views from people. It was not too far fetched to conclude that their age difference is what perturbed most people, including Mark’s own children, as they could not fathom why in the world, a young woman such as Millicent, had married a man twice her own age. Although all those who knew her made a fanfare about Millicent’s relationship with Mark, in her own point of view, older men were more refined than younger men and they had a strength and wisdom about them and she sincerely believed that for anything serious and long term, it was best to partner with an older man. She had envisaged that marrying a man who was mature both in his age and world experience would help to mould and shape her into a better person. In her desire to be happily married and having the false conviction that he was the one chosen for her, she had given up everything hoping that together they would find happiness, but her heart had grown sick and she feel broken in spirit.

A MARRIAGE MATCH NOT MADE IN HEAVEN

Millicent lost count of the number of times that she was informed through the grapevine that the following statements were being spoken regarding her marriage

“The marriage will never last” or “We will give it a few months and then it will be all over. Their marriage will fail at the first hurdle”. Having the opinion that they were a mismatched couple rumour mongers prophesied doom and they openly told Mark that his marriage to a young woman would not last, and other individuals, including Millicent’s own relatives, went to the extent of trying to talk him out of marrying her and persuaded him to cancel the wedding.

What many people do not realize is that the Bible speaks strongly of the power that is inherent in the spoken word. If positive words are spoken, the positive affirmations come to pass and it is the same for negative speech. At first Millicent minded very much being talked about endlessly and being the subject of conversation at people’s dinner tables but later she resolved not to let it bother her. Instead this made her realize that people really didn’t have anything better going on in their lives, to be so preoccupied by the issue of her impending marriage and seizing every opportunity to air their views about it. However, true to these people’s predictions the marriage did not last long, even though both she and Mark had been determined to make it last and had wanted to prove all the ‘prophets of doom” wrong.

Despite all the murmurings going on the two had initially believed that in each other they had found true and lasting love and it was a great feeling no matter their age gap. Actually, Mark being a Christian, believed and often spoke out about how, “God spoke to me directly to marry Millicent (Millicent believed him and so did many other people but if God had really spoken to Mark, they would not have divorced because does the Bible not state that ‘God is not man that He should lie’). Mark would go on to explain this thought to those who cared to listen. In fact on their wedding day he repeated the story to the wedding guests, who were very much enthralled and if they had had any doubts before, they were left believing with him that the marriage was a match made in Heaven, or so it seemed at the time.

On the wedding day Mark’s children had to be practically dragged to the church to witness the marriage ceremony and throughout the proceedings they remained cold and distant, not wishing to share in their father’s joy at his marriage. Later that day as guests were gathered at his home, his daughter spitefully tried to play her late mother’s funeral video, in a bid to show her true repugnance at her father’s marriage and that incident was the beginning of my tumulus time spent in this household, in which I was wrongfully given the title of ‘the evil step-mother”

The local community, church brethren from Mark’s church and his work colleagues and friends, who had known Mark’s deceased wife for several years unfairly compared Millicent to his deceased wife, whom they set upon a pedestal as a measure of her success as Mark’s wife. Apparently, Mark’s deceased wife had been an ardent and a prosperous farmer and she had done farming exploits on their plot but Millicent on the other hand hated farming and rather preferred to work on her computer all day long. Millicent could never be a replica of Mark’s deceased wife she was a unique individual with her own distinct personality, gifts and abilities that were different from anybody else’s and it was grossly unfair to compare her to another woman. Millicent never wanted to compete with the memory of Mark’s deceased wife whom Mark often spoke about in light of having been a ‘super-wife’ and a ‘super-mum’. He often insensitively cited to her such statements as: ‘My late wife was not clumsy like you!’ or ‘My late wife was more enterprising than you!’ Undoubtedly these comparisons made Millicent feel very bad indeed?

Because Mark was old enough to be her father, he treated her thus. The age difference between them tended to make him paranoid, insecure and very controlling. He did not trust her out of his sight and often insinuated that she had extra-marital affairs and he often cited that she might decide to leave him for a younger man. Millicent often suspected that he had spies who reported her movements to him because often times he would retrace her movements during the day and he would dismiss the issue when she inquired how he came to the knowledge. He did not like her to dress well because he feared that she would attract the attention of other men who would snatch her away from under his nose. So after her marriage Millicent deteriorated in her physical appearance because he did not buy her any fashionable clothes or give her money to go to the hairdressers and people who had known her for her previously polished appearance, commented that it appeared as if her marriage was making her lose her luster.

It is apparent that it was not merely the age difference that affected Millicent and Mark’s marriage but there were other factors too such as the lack of respect from Mark’s children towards Millicent, whom he simply watched as they mistreated her. In their marriage it turned out that Millicent and Mark were not travelling along the same path and were not destined to the same place. He was a man who had, been there and done that, whereas Millicent was still discovering life. He held certain views which Millicent disagreed with, for instance his perception of women, which she felt was gender insensitive. He believed that women’s major role was the provision of all the necessary comforts to their men and he did not really regard women beyond that stereotypical image. He was also very set in his own ways and she was the one who had to compromise in all instances because he would not budge.

RESISTANCE AND RESENTMENT FROM STEP CHILDREN

While it is common for children to resent their parent’s new partner as they may think that he or she is trying to replace their own parent, especially if the parent is still alive, they must at least show respect for the rightful position of their parent’s spouse, even though they may not love the new spouse. Children may have fantasies about their parents getting back together again, after their parents divorce and the arrival of a new spouse may thwart these hopes. But their father was a widower, his wife, their mother, having passed on five years before so Millicent could not fathom why Mark’s children could not integrate here into the family and acted as though she had ousted their mother out of her marriage.

Being a step parent and coming into a family with adult children is an extremely delicate issue and it has many challenges, especially if the adult children are not much older than oneself. Millicent knew that comfortable family dynamics took time and that they did not just happen overnight, but she had anticipated that with time she could develop and enjoy a warm, supportive relationship with Mark’s children. At first she was not discouraged when none of his children welcomed her with open-arms. They clearly demonstrated that they did not want the marriage to work and were right from the onset bent on tearing her and Mark apart. But things did not improve and she found out first hand that children indeed can ruin a good marriage and she believes that his children played a major part in ruining her marriage to Mark. When she married him she knew that the difficult part was going to be for him to blend her together with his children with little conflict, but she never knew that their rejection from would be as ferocious. She was definitely not a replacement to their deceased mother and she never even tried or acted as though she were (She couldn’t even if she had wanted to because being more or less the same age group with his children, this was not logically possible). She had begun to worry about her own personal well-being in this tumulus situation.

His children had their own opinions of her. For them she was a gold digger (although this perception puzzled her because Mark certainly did not possess any goldmine (he was not a wealthy man but just a middle class earner) and on some occasions the family had to scrape for a living from his meager salary or rather basic allowance that was offered to him by the Christian ministry at which he worked), they purported that she wanted to inherit their father’s property, meaning the house in which the family lived in, which incidentally was not Mark’s alone but one procured through a business partnership, and they thrust upon her the title of the ‘evil step-mother.’ She thought to herself that if the children had ever read a folk tale titled Hansel and Gretel, they must have likened her to the evil step-mother depicted in this children’s classic book, who ostracized Hansel and Gretle from their biological father and left them to die in the dangerous woods after coercing their unwilling father to partner with her in this devilish plan to kill his innocent children. They scandalized to all and sundry who cared to listen to their lies, accusing her of all sorts of less-thank-kind things. Their ultimate plan was to get her out of their father’s life and they did a good job of it and eventually they got what they wanted. Having had enough, Millicent suddenly left the household without giving anyone any warning. She packed a small suitcase which she stuffed the necessities that could be carried and she left everything else that she had brought into the marriage packed in one room.

When Mark came home from work that day he discovered that she had unceremoniously left. Having been placed between a rock and a hard place, Mark had to endure having to face a loyalty conflict – was he going to be loyal to his wife or to his children. Invariably all his allegiance went to his children and Millicent was left in the cold. She read the writing on the wall and it was then that she had made the decision to leave so that she could allow Mark and his family to live peaceably, because it was apparent that her entry into the household had brought about much discord. However as a Christian, the idea of divorce has been very daunting and an unwelcome one for her, but as more time has gone on and the worse off she had grown, she had realized that she must make a change in order to simply recapture her lost joy and vitality.

Millicent realized that it was painful for Mark’s children to see their mother being replaced and their anger at this replacement was not necessarily directed at their biological father but it was directed towards her, who had dared to walk into their life and step into their deceased mother’s shoes. There was also some degree of emotional turmoil because of the dramatic transition in their lives. They probably felt confused with the new way of doing things around the house and they felt that they wanted to carry on with the way they had always lived. For instance, such an uproar was made when Millicent decided to move furniture around, to change the curtaining of the house and to re-decorate the house to accommodate her own personal style. The youngest son was totally displeased and he made no secret of it and she guess that he was probably experiencing loss of his family surroundings. But did that warrant that she was not free to make her own decisions about the kind of household that she wanted to have?

As far as she was concerned, Millicent had respected Mark’s grown up children and all she had wanted was to do the best she could to provide what the family needed and all she had sought from Mark’s children was mere courtesy and respect, which was not forthcoming. Unfortunately Mark had not realized nor appreciated her quandary and she stuck out like a sore thumb and never really felt like she was a part of the family. She found it very disturbing when he made no attempt to protect her from his children’s outright hostility, but rather made excuses for their ill-treatment towards her. The final straw came when he quite plainly told her that, “I can do nothing. Blood is thicker than water.” He always felt that Millicent was the problem and not his children and he refused any sort of reprimanding to his children for their disrespect to his ‘young wife’. Those with whom they attended church with, as well as his colleagues in his ministry work, sided almost unanimously with him, and she had concluded that it was her much younger years, which were always used against her, that automatically made her ‘’wrong’.

Taking Plunge: Filing For Divorce

Millicent’s unceremonious departure from her matrimonial home left rumour mongers with mixed feelings. Her controversial and much scandalized departure from the matrimonial home, became public knowledge, thanks to Mark’s youngest son who went about broadcasting the news to all and sundry that, “kamukadzi kababa kakaenda! Daddy’s unsuitable wife has left him, just like we predicted!”. Several rumour mongers did not waste any time in reminding Mark: “We told you so. How could a man of your stature marry such a young and frivolous wife? She was bound to leave you in the lurch. You should have listened to our warnings.” However, those who were wiser chose to be more careful with their words and did not want to make wrong assumptions and were more careful to ponder over the chain of events that led to Mark and Millicent’s separation .

Rumours quickly abound that Millicent had left Mark because she had realized her folly in marrying an older man and was now on the desperate search for a younger man. This rumour was gullibly taken in by all of Mark’s close friends and colleagues who had never really liked Millicent, for reasons that she could not fathom, and she was berated for having ‘wasted Mark’s time’ and tarnished his reputable image that he had carefully built over the years within the Christian community. Although difficult, Millicent vowed not to let the rumors get the better of her because she alone knew the truth of the matter.

Judging by the bad mouthing that passed around about her, which eventually and inevitably reached her own ears, Millicent came to the conclusion that the people who spoke so ill about her never really understood what she went through and what precipitated her decision to walk out of the matrimonial home. Many times these rumour mongers had previously lectured her on how walking out of the marriage would destroy Mark’s reputation as a man of the cloth but they never stopped to consider what she was going through and due to their biased views, they chose to sweep the animosity and open hostility that his children displayed to her, under the carpet. She had ended up not even bothering to explain anything to them and she told herself that, after all, they had never really liked her from the start, when Mark had first introduced her to them, and they had not hidden this fact from her and had only tolerated her for ‘Mark’s sake’. The judgmental ‘brothers and sisters’ in Christ (who had always continued to preach to her but had not even sat down with her one single day to enquire from her why she was unhappy in her marriage and just kept correcting and imposing unwanted advice to her.

The rumour mongers who had prophesied that Mark and Millicent’s marriage would not be long-lasting were joyous when their prediction came true just over a year later, in March 2007. Millicent had reached the end of her tether after having faced much emotional distress Mark willingly and gladly consented to their divorce without a single question and he happily signed the divorce papers, citing that who was he to stop her from getting what she wanted. She had filed for divorce and he was not about to stand in her way of having the divorce granted. She had thought that he would at least try to persuade her to think twice but it seemed that he was eager to have the divorce granted.

After having filed for divorce, Millicent feared that God was going to punish her severely and the news of Millicent having filed for divorce was met with condescension from most of those who had known them as a married couple. How could she choose the path of divorce, yet she professed to be Christian? Christians were not supposed to divorce because God hated divorce. Being divorced would tarnish Mark’s immaculate image in the Christian circles and how could he possibly continue to lead a Christian ministry and counsel other couples as well as minister God’s Word, having the stigma of divorce hanging above his head?

For Millicent the fourth and the most difficult stage of going through a divorce was adjusting to life after the divorce and developing new social relationships. For instance, the people Millicent knew through Mark were no longer comfortable with socializing with her anymore and it was the same for the people whom Mark had known through Millicent. Apart from the first three stages of divorce; the first stage being the actual decision to seek divorce, the second being locating and consulting a lawyer and the third stage being negotiating a settlement with one’s spouse. Millicent skipped the fourth stage because she did not want a single dime from Mark coffers. The worst thing about their divorce was that Mark developed an acrimonious attitude towards her but she had resolved not regard her ex-husband as her adversary.

On The Healing Path From Divorce

Millicent wondered for several months whether she had made the right decision in filing for a divorce, but she admits that divorce has given her the opportunity to spend more time pursuing her own personal dreams and she is happy with the strides that she is making. She sincerely hopes that she can fully heal from the divorce and leave the hurt and the pain behind her and make new relationships as she lives out the rest of her days as happily as she possibly can, under the circumstances. Through the divorce she believes that she has emerged wiser and stronger and more ready to tackle life’s problems that may in future be thrust upon her path in life.

Millicent had difficulty dealing with her divorce and she was plagued by societal stigma and feelings of guilt and she thought that she was condemned, and this was maily due to the way society had regarded and treated her following her divorce. Due to her spiritual belief she had difficult questions that she wanted answered on the Biblical stance regarding divorce and remarriage so she sought a lot of helpful information and she found insight. She had been taught the “conventional” teachings on the issue of divorce but some truths had now been restored to her concerning divorce and re-marriage to save her from the feelings of guilt and shame and rescuing her from this prison that she could well live in for the rest of their life. She had believed that she had no Biblical right to divorce, let alone to re-marriage, because she had heard it said by Christians with legalistic views, that it was unacceptable for a Christian man or woman to consider re-marriage after going through a divorce, because this was considered to be sinful and tantamount to adultery. She was constantly plagued by the fear that should she decide to re-marry she would be living in a state of continual adultery because this is what she had been taught all her life.

Following her divorce she had searched high and low for a balanced view of the issue of divorce and re-marriage with regard to Christians and in her search for answers she had found out that in spite of her divorce she was still of great worth to God and was still approved by Him. However, she found that it was very difficult for the rest of the people who knew her (especially Mark’s church brethren, colleagues and friends), many of whom now shunned her for having made the decision to divorce Mark, to concur with her that God still had the same regard for her regardless of the fact that she had initiated the divorce with their beloved and blameless Mark. Contrary to what they thought, and as controversial as it sounded, Millicent believed that hers was indeed a God ordained divorce.

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