Jon and Kate; It’s Not Too Late!

While I was taking a class in the big city last week, I had the chance to watch a TLC marathon of Jon and Kate Plus 8.  I hadn’t heard of this family until a month or so ago when they started showing up on the tabloid rags at the grocery store.  I watched this marathon in amazement as they would go about their days, totally disconnected from each other and trying to manage eight kids in the process.

When word of their divorce came down this week, I felt only sadness that they had, as Kate put it, become another statistic.  You could tell she was sad, that Jon was sad, and I can only imagine how confused those kids must be by now.

The dynamic that I saw on the marathon was interesting.  Kate is a control freak.  Jon is a wimp and tries to avoid conflict.  He can’t take care of himself much, so you can imagine that the marriage started out with him wanting a mommy, and her wanting to raise a boy.  Dynamics like that can only last so long before everyone gets tired.

After years of putting him down both in private and on camera, Jon I’m sure came up with more than one excuse to cheat on her.  And Kate, wanting a man that she didn’t have to raise, gave up control of her life to money, fame and supposedly her body guard.

And TLC along with their advertisers, watched the whole thing implode.  To their credit, they pulled the plug on the show so we wouldn’t have to witness this train wreck any more.

So who won and who lost?  If you count selling soap, the only winners were TLC and several marketing departments of big companies.  Who lost?  This kids.  The parents always talked about how the show saved their lives by allowing them to thrive financially and how they could now afford to care for this big family.  If you were to ask the kids if they’d rather have a new bike or a mommy and daddy that loved each other, I think they’d choose family.

The sad part is this could have turned out so much better.  How cool would it have been if last week instead of the divorce news, we would have heard something different.  How Jon and Kate took their wealth and hired the best marriage counseling money could buy.  How they were going to go into individual counseling too; Jon to work on his avoider and pleaser issues and Kate to work on her control problems.

How cool would it have been if they had gathered the whole family together and told them that mommy and daddy were having troubles, but that nothing couldn’t be fixed.  That they would do everything in their power to make their family better.  That the cameras would go if that’s what it took; that all of the celebrities, fancy parties and vacations would stop so that they could concentrate on being a normal family without all the distractions.

What if their testimony could be broadcast again on TLC as a witness to the power of being humble instead of selfish.  What if they could have been a light of hope for couples with kids who are struggling to make it and instead have sought comfort elsewhere.

I’m still hoping for a reconciliation, but the statistics are not in their favor.

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Tags: Christianity, Divorce, Family, Jon and Kate, Kids, Life, Love, Marriage, Random, Relationships, Religion, Sex, Thoughts

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