This past week I was told that someone I have loved since she was a little girl has recently gone through a divorce (from a third party) and that her marriage was a toxic one. My heart broke for her. And since, I just keep thinking about her and remembering my own.
I have been married twice (13 years and 3 1/2 years). I tried very hard in the first marriage. The second marriage, I was so jaded and emotionally shut off from the scars of the first marriage (and in no way healed enough to re-marry) that I barely made an attempt when I saw that the road was getting a bit bumpy.
The path of divorce is a hard one and no one can quite tell you how to navigate your way back to being whole. It doesn’t matter if you initiated the divorce or your spouse did. I feel responsible for a lot of things that have happened since the divorces, in that with both marriages I was the one making the decision to throw in the towel. And of course, that affected not only myself and my husbands but our/my children. So yeah, for me there was an extra dose of guilt because I was the one that left.
Guilt, grieve, anger, confusion, betrayal, loss, sadness, loneliness, ah and regret…there are so many emotions that go along with divorce and none leave you with a warm fuzzy. I don’t care if it was a marriage full of addiction and abuse, there are still all these emotions that you have no clue where to place them or how you will ever trust and be able to fully love again. And no one tells you that you lose all the family that you gained when you married the person. That one was VERY difficult for me to experience.
I gave advice to two people I barely know this week about their marriages. Neither of the women is in an abusive situation. So, I told them what I wish someone would have said to me. DO NOT give up! Learn how to lean on God and let him meet all your needs right now and find a good Christian therapist. If your husband will not go with you to therapy and to church, still go yourself.
The one piece of advice that my first husband and I received was “if you two will just stick with this, you will look back and laugh at this time in your lives one day”. Even though it was said in a light-hearted manner as we dropped our boys off so that we could have a full day date (beginning at the spa and ending with dinner), it still haunts me. I wonder if we would have ever got to the point of laughing about our almost divorce if we would have tried harder still. Ah well, if my Brother had a who-ha, he’d be my sister, right?
I don’t know that my advice will save their marriages or if it could have saved mine. But I do know that all things are possible with God. And I also know that I did not give God a chance to save my marriages because I was so very angry at Him. I hope if you find yourself in a stormy time in your marriage that you will give God the opportunity to heal before you pack up and leave. Once you leave, well there is so much damage that comes with that abandonment.
I know I haven’t given any solutions in all of this. If I had the wisdom to give, I would gladly share it with you. Almost eleven years after my first divorce, six years after my second, and months into a three-year relationship ending I am still working through the aftermath. I have always had trust issues (rooted deep from my childhood), but now, well I have titanium walls built on all sides. I let no one get too close. Of course, that excludes my children and longtime good friends. I do want to trust. I guess that counts for something, right?
After all, who doesn’t want to belong to someone? And to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that person is THEIR person and no one else’s and that no matter what happens, that person has their best interests at heart and loves them even on the days they don’t like them.
I will tell you though, the main reason I left my second husband was that I knew he so desperately wanted a child. I couldn’t give him a child and I also didn’t love him as much as he deserved to be loved. He is married now to a good woman and he also has a child. So, that does always make me smile.
18 May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
Proverbs 5:18-19 New International Version (NIV)
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Ephesians 5:21-25 New International Version (NIV)
26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26 New International Version (NIV)
Just Shae It 