A Hug From Heavenly Father During a Divorce

A guest post by Daren Davidson; NM, USA

I was divorced from my first wife in 2003 after 16 years of marriage and four children. Divorce was something I just didn’t think could happen to me. I never really understood people who had been divorced. Divorce didn’t make sense to me.

I had met my wife at BYU after I had served a mission. We were married in the temple. I thought no matter what happened we would always be married. It’s hard to express all of the feelings I had when I realized my wife was serious about wanting a divorce. I think my biggest concern was the effect on our children. It was also embarrassing and humbling.

My parents and both of their parents were married their entire lives. That kind of marriage was all I knew. I’m still the only one of the 8 children in my family that is divorced. All of my siblings except my older brother who passed away after his mission married in the temple and most served missions (6 of the 8 kids).

When my wife asked me to leave the house, I found a very small apartment to save on cost. The apartment was terrible. The area was bad. Cars in the parking lot were smashed regularly and sometimes spray painted with bad language. People would play their music loud all hours of the night. My car was broken into.

The kids came to visit regularly and the apartment was so small that we slept on air mattresses in the one bedroom and living area. I still remember Jared as a small child asking “why was I staying at the Epartment”.

Although it was a bad location the time turned out to be a spiritual time for me. I only watched church videos. I learned to love the animated stories of Christ that I had on VHS for the kids. I was reading my scriptures and praying often. I prayed about finding a better place to live.

At work a friend stopped by my office who was leaving for two years for Washington D.C. and he asked me what to do with his house. I suppose he heard that I had done a similar stint of two years in D.C. a few years before. I told him we had just let people we knew house sit for us since we weren’t allowed to charge rent. I told him I could help him out.

Shortly thereafter I moved into a nice home in a good area of Albuquerque. My now ex-wife had remarried by the time this happened. The marriage was to a guy living in Las Vegas. He had a business there and she wanted to move with the kids to Las Vegas. I told my ex-wife and the children that I did not support that at all and I felt the children needed their dad more not less. I was not going to allow that to happen.

I was able to convince my ex-wife to not do that by agreeing to continue to pay alimony for an additional two years to help her new husband get on his feet in New Mexico. They bought a house in New Mexico before I moved in to house sit for my friend at work. I was surprised to find that the house I was going to be living in was only a short walk to the house where the children were living with their mom and her new husband. I was in the same ward with my children!

In April of 2005 I had all of the kids in this house and we were watching general conference together. Elder Bednar’s talk was about the tender mercies of the Lord. He told the story of a church leader who had a dream about one youth in his stake. He told the youth about the dream and asked him what it meant. He said “It means God knows who I am.”

At that instant I felt the spirit as strongly as I have ever felt it which to me felt like a hug from my Heavenly Father. I felt his love and I teared up and could barely speak which is very rare for me. I realized in that moment how miraculous it was that two years after my divorce I was in a very nice home paying zero rent, had my kids in the same ward, living just down the street from me, and they could come over at any time. It hit me very powerfully that God knew who I was. Just remembering how I felt at that moment is still very powerful to me.

Thank you for sharing!

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