The best Christian books to bust a divorce legacy

This first book gave me the necessary perspective to consider the impact of divorce on my children’s entire lifespan, not just their childhoods.

It lays the groundwork for what legacy we’re breaking, since hopefully your children are young and you’re still married. I never once thought about how divorce when my three children were small would influence the nature of their adult intimate relationships and ability to navigate marriage in their future, even though I had direct experience with it influencing mine.

This is the spell breaker of all the divorce books. It will snap you out of any trance you’re in that might be preventing you from factoring in your children’s lives. It was the first time an author spelled out to me how divorce impacted me as a child and young adult, and it explained so many reasons for my behavior in relationships, especially fear of commitment.

I love this book because it worked its magic on me on all dimensions: child of divorce, adult divorcing, co-parent once divorced, and now supporting adult children of divorce who are my own. This is the legacy we’re breaking in our 5-book tool kit here.

The last book will help you create the new legacy. Read on!

It should have been required reading for me in premarital counseling because it would have provided the template I lacked and failed to construct for myself before getting married. It also would have provided me with a blueprint for what it was going to take in the years ahead to remain together with my children’s father.

Because it was so profound to read in hindsight, I’m thinking of how much foresight it could give you while there’s still time to save your family. One sentence of this book could save your marriage. 

The wisdom just permeated my soul like a healing balm, weaving its way into the broken, sharp pieces and reassembling them into a mosaic, as if the truth was enough to restore the damage.

For instance, just knowing that we are to live for the other, we can’t look to our spouse for what only God can do, and that wedding vows are a mutually binding promise of future love, would have helped me try harder, not give up so easily as I did.

I love this book for giving me the full picture of what my marriage was really about, even though I was no longer in it.

This book is jam-packed with the maturity I lacked, so I felt it was handed to me like a desperately needed meal. In fact, when reading it, I felt I was growing up chapter by chapter. Perhaps it was because I was so ready to be made new.

The timing when reading this book came after the understanding of the legacy I wanted to break, and then learning more about commitment, so this one made me want to rise to the challenge.

I think this book gives the courage and fortitude required to stay married. If you get just one of the good qualities of a marriage going, you’re in the game and ready to play more. 

This book is so easy to apply to real life because of the way it’s written. It clearly spells out the objectives as well as the steps to take to really engage with your partner.

The practicality makes this book the bridge from theory to application, and inspires the desire to actually practice what works, and let go of what doesn’t.

Secretly, I love this book because it isn’t a bestseller yet. It’s more of a movement slowly gaining momentum, making it not only okay but righteous to stay married “just for the children.” So when I find a treasure among the troves, it’s like the best-kept secret in the bunch. This one would have kept me married, too.

I have to include the best-selling book of all time, the Holy Bible, in my toolkit for breaking divorce legacy because the Word of God is so powerful. Choose any Bible, but I chose this version because it’s aimed at the 12-step recovery movement.

Addictions ruin intimacy, and in today’s world, we can be addicted to anything, and it won’t appear problematic. Reading romance novels can be an escape from your marriage, especially if they suck up your actual sex life like a vacuum. But this Bible connecting 12-step recovery to Scripture provides the power necessary to carry out the will of God in family life and break all chains, not just the divorce legacy. 

I’m on my third round of book study using this Bible and in a monthly club with it now, and it’s a deeper experience of God every time. I can say with conviction that as a result of immersing myself in this Bible, I don’t practice any addictions anymore as a result—not even to caffeinate or clutter.

Because it’s a book I wish I’d studied with my husband when we were married, it makes me feel like I’ve been restored. So I came to it a little late in the game, but the Lord restores the years the locusts have eaten.

For the purposes of this toolkit, this book comes with a strong suggestion: Read it with your spouse!

If you want to bust a divorce legacy, do it with basic instructions for dismantling dysfunction in a textbook devoted to creating a healthy family legacy.

I came from divorce and also divorced as an adult, but I did learn in time not to divorce again, and this one book paved the way for me to get married in the first place, stay faithful for 16 years, and raise three beautiful children successfully with their father in shared custody.

Watch out for the pothole I stepped into: I focused so much on recovery from family alcoholism that I didn't stay cognizant of the hard work it would take to stay married longer term. In other words, this book is for any family dysfunction, not just alcoholism. 

This one book taught me to love my broken inner child: She was mute, mad as hell, and wanted to write. What I didn't know is, after learning to parent my inner child, it gave me a parenting template for three coming daughters.

I love this book for freeing me from my past in order to leave behind all kinds of unwanted family legacies, and pass on lessons learned from the divorce legacy I failed to overcome while raising children.

I love this book for its deep, deep healing potency. So I credit this book for my ability to be the mother I am today. It also paved the way for parental forgiveness, and who doesn't love that?