News

Divorced and widowed find support through parish groups

Beginning Experience, Divorce and Beyond connect with Church

Published: November 25, 2006   

By Patricia May
Fayetteville Correspondent

Jodie Hightower

Kevin Van Pelt, Denise Pearson, Sam Dayer and Pat Jablonski discuss how their lives have changed since their divorces. They were participating in Divorce and Beyond, a six-week outreach program offered at St. Joseph Church in Conway from Sept. 18 to Oct. 23. Kathy Kordsmeier directed the program.

Jodie Hightower

Kevin Van Pelt, Denise Pearson, Sam Dayer and Pat Jablonski discuss how their lives have changed since their divorces. They were participating in Divorce and Beyond, a six-week outreach program offered at St. Joseph Church in Conway from Sept. 18 to Oct. 23. Kathy Kordsmeier directed the program.

ROGERS -- Betsy McNeil was visiting her children in Tulsa, Okla., when she noticed a church bulletin notice advertising a support program for widowed and divorced people. She thought she discarded it. But when she returned home to Rogers, the brochure was in her suitcase.

"I know I threw it away that time," McNeil recalled. A couple of days later, she fished it out of the wastebasket and called the phone number. As McNeil described it, the "precious, wonderful voice on the other end" convinced her that the program would be valuable in her parish.

As community and discipleship coordinator for St. Vincent de Paul Church, McNeil was in the perfect position to try to bring Beginning Experience to northwest Arkansas.

As a widow of nearly four years, McNeil was also in a position to judge the program's effectiveness -- even if she didn't think she needed it.

Beginning Experience was "absolutely beneficial to me," McNeil said. After her husband died, McNeil had been busy with so many things, including running a new retail business, that she hadn't had time to grieve. The program, called BE by veterans, enabled the Rogers resident to complete the grieving process she had delayed.

"I did what I needed to do and grew from it," she said.

Now, McNeil is a trained team member who helps other participants through the program, which is for people who have lost a spouse either through death or divorce.

"It is wonderful," McNeil said enthusiastically. "It's phenomenal. It's very structured."

Beginning Experience is just one program offered by churches in the Diocese of Little Rock for people who have experienced the loss of a spouse.

In Conway, St. Joseph Church offers a program called Divorce and Beyond, which is a workbook-based ministry that takes place over a six- to eight-week period. Beginning Experience is billed as "a weekend away for a lifetime of change."

It's a weekend retreat that includes personal reflection time and an opportunity for participants to share their feelings with others who have had similar experiences.

While it's not strictly for Catholics, it is spiritual in natural and there's usually a private Mass for the participants on Sunday.

The groups are intentionally kept small with no more than a dozen people at a retreat and two trained team members, such as McNeil, facilitate the groups.

It was in Tulsa, Okla., that McNeil discovered the program and participants from northwest Arkansas have continued to go across the state line for assistance through BE.

McNeil said she still wants to bring the retreats to Arkansas but it's difficult because the Catholic churches in the area don't have facilities for overnight guests. And the shortage of priests in the state also makes it a challenge for one to be available to celebrate Mass for the attendees.

"(Beginning Experience) gives people a chance to get away and not run into people they know," she said. Newly divorced, separated or widowed people often "feel left out of church events. This helps them begin over and helps with the natural grief process."

The program is spiritual but it isn't doctrinal. "We don't preach or promote Catholicism," McNeil said.

But that hasn't deterred McNeil and others from the region. About half the participants in BE retreats at Tulsa's Our Lady of Sorrows Convent this year were from Arkansas, she said.

The participants from Arkansas have enjoyed each others' company so much, that they now get together weekly at each other's homes to continue the close-knit relationship that began at a BE retreat.

Eddie McInnes is president of BE's board of directors in Tulsa and he is not Catholic. He said he sought help when his wife filed for divorce in 1999, and his counselor eventually directed him to Beginning Experience. He found his BE retreat so personally rewarding that he became a team member to help others and eventually found himself leading the Tulsa board, which has offered the program for the past 20 years.

Now, several years after his initial BE weekend, McInnes, 61, finds the retreats even more rewarding.

"I just like to watch the Holy Spirit. I get more out of a weekend (retreat) than (the participants) do. It's spiritual reinforcement, very uplifting and beneficial," he said.

In the Conway parish, Kathy Kordsmeier, pastoral care counselor, is assisted by about a dozen volunteers in offering programs for the consolation ministry. And Divorce and Beyond is one of the options offered to parishioners and others in the community.

The program is based on a workbook of the same name and is designed to be 10 weekly sessions that are 90 minutes each, but in Conway, the program has been shorten to six or eight sessions. Like Beginning Experience, Divorce and Beyond is spiritual, but not specifically Catholic.

The program has been offered at St. Joseph Church several times, most recently from Sept. 18 to Oct. 23. Two participants from those sessions said the program helped them feel that a failed marriage doesn't mean they're rejected by the Church.

After his divorce, "it was hard to come to church. I felt like I wasn't going to be accepted," St. Joseph parishioner, Kevin VanPelt, said.

VanPelt actually participated in the program twice. The first time was a year ago after he'd been separated from his wife but wasn't yet divorced. "I thought I was over it and ready to move on. I was wrong."

By the time the program started again in September, VanPelt's divorce had been finalized for several months. This time, he said he was ready. "I just got a lot more out of it."

VanPelt said he came to realize that "maybe the marriage was a failure but it didn't make me a failure. ... It helps you understand there is forgiveness in the Church."

Fellow parishioner Denise Pearson expressed similar sentiments. She said there's a tendency after divorce to feel "the Church has turned its back on you."

Divorce and Beyond is an opportunity to be with other Catholics who have experienced the loss of a spouse and to learn that they're not alone, she said.

Pearson was divorced earlier this year after 22 years of marriage and five children. She had attended Al-Anon meetings for 10 years and she she believes being involved in that support group made it easier for her to look for another support group such as Divorce and Beyond. She had actually been on the verge of going to a support group at a Little Rock Methodist church when she learned about the Conway program.

"I was surprised at the number of men in the group," Pearson said. More than half the participants were men when the program began.

Pearson said her only disappointment was that there wasn't a session with a priest for a discussion on annulments.

The topic is covered in the workbook, but there really aren't enough scheduled sessions to cover all the topics, she said.

Most of the participants in Divorce and Beyond and in Beginning Experience found out about the programs through their parish bulletins.

The Conway program is also advertised in the Log Cabin Democrat, the local newspaper, Kordsmeier said. BE also has its own Web site at http://www.beginningexperience.org.