divorce – Sheila Dougal

5 helps for hard, I mean, all marriages

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In September my husband and I will have been married for 25 years. And that’s no testimony to our skill, secrets or practices. We’ve done just about everything wrong. And making it this long is no guarantee that we’ll make it another 25 years. When our friends ask how we’er doing, I tell them our marriage is healthier than it’s ever been. Nevertheless, the past tries to swallow me in a mire. And my previous attempts at holding tightly to our vows- as though they are the grace that saves me- have proven my idolatry.

Listening to Rachel Welcher yesterday on a Grace Covers Me podcast by Christine Hoover I heard a few things that struck a chord with me. Rachel is a woman who has at least in part walked a mile in my shoes. In listening to her story I echoed amens and scratched down a bunch of thoughts. Here’s five I thought were beneficial for all marriages:

Just because you’ve done everything right, doesn’t mean everything will turn out right. Describing how she met her now ex-husband, Rachel, she talks about how she tried to do everything, “by the books.” She did what she was taught was wise and godly in dating and picking the right person to marry. Yet her marriage still ended in a divorce she didn’t want. She brings up a great point: There’s a prosperity gospel theology undergirding the idea that if we do all the right things our marriages will turn out great. It’s not true. You can do all the right things and God’s will for you can be suffering and even divorce. Like Rachel, I too wrestle with how it works theologically that God can hate divorce and it still be somehow part of his sovereign will that you walk through a divorce. I may not understand but it’s true. The fact that we will suffer and experience blessing even in walking through things God hates does not mean we shouldn’t make wise decisions in dating and marriage. Our motivation is not freedom from suffering. Our motivation is love of God. We obey because we love God, not so that God will bless us. For the Christian the blessing in suffering in a hard marriage or even in loosing your marriage is that God is near to you.
Living with the looming possibility that your spouse might decide that the two of you are just too different now. Rachel talked about the torture of living in this limbo state where you know your spouse is considering a divorce. It’s interesting to me that we who have experienced this uneasy limbo in our marriages attribute our lack of control of the destiny of our marriages to our hard marriage situations. God has taught (is teaching) me over the years that no marriage is a guarantee. The truth is even the best and healthiest of marriages could be completely destroyed by one or the other’s decision at any time. Living in a marriage with an unbeliever these 25 year has taught me to live with open hands to God’s will. 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 gives specific help for believers married to unbelievers who want to leave the marriage, but the message in that chapter is also for all marriages: Let go of clinging to the shadow of marriage (vs. 29-31). Rachel’s description of the torn feeling of whether to focus on being a wife or, “… prepare for inconceivable heartache,” is a reality for people in hard marriages. But it’s also a reality for any marriage. Rachel’s friend’s advice,”You won’t ever regret loving him too much during this time,” is good for every marriage. As Rachel said, “While you’re married, your heart’s in your marriage.”
It’s not your responsibility to convince or save your spouse. 1 Peter 3 has been a go-to passage for me these 25 years of marriage. As I wrote in my piece at Desiring God, my desire to win my husband to Christ with my Christ-changed life is something, by God’s grace I will try to do until I die- whether we’re married or not. But Rachel talked about how the message some people delivered her way was that if she did the right things she might be able to save her husband. I know what she means. Over the years I’ve heard the same message. Maybe you should invite him to such and such. Maybe he should read this book. Maybe he should go to that movie. Have you taken him to that church? Would he go out to poker night with me? I’ve tried everything to “win” my husband in my own power. But Peter’s call to seek to win your husband is a call to be a light not a call to be your husband’s savior. I know the pressure Rachel speaks of, but I think the message of 1 Peter 3 is that even if we loose our spouses to divorce, while we are married, we should give our hearts to loving God and loving our husbands in such a way that desires to win them to Christ.
Living with shame in your marriage. Rachel talks about how her divorce was her identity for a season after she lost her marriage. I feel like I’ve wrestled with that recurring climate in my marriage for 25 years. When you’re in a hard marriage that’s been hurt by each other’s sin, divorce, differences of faith, etc., the pain can be so overwhelming that it’s the key landmark by which you identify your life. But the shame of brokenness in our marriages and in our lives is not what Christ wants to leave us with. We can take our shame to him and learn to live out of the identity of who we are in Christ. The brokenness in your marriage doesn’t define you. Christ does. I have to feed myself that truth daily, several times a day, in season and out of season.
You must be fueling your own relationship with God. Rachel mentions having been in the midst of privately writing essays on Job for two years when her husband filed for divorce. She was able to draw on what she knew of God during that terrible time because of her time in the scripture. Whether our marriages are broken by divorce, differences of faith, past sins and failures, or just the everyday sins and failures that make lifetime companionship with another person hard, we, like Rachel, can be steadied through the various seasons of our life knowing God can allow us to suffer and be good at the same time. But to know this kind of steadfast love we must feed our relationship with God by being in his word. Meditating on it day and night. Wrestling with it. Praying it. Daily.

Hope grows where the light shines

The tension was thick. My husband and I sat opposite ends of a 6 foot couch and 23 years of piled up trouble from each other in a last ditch effort to save our marriage.

“Well, what about you? Your wife shared where she thinks some of her wrong thinking has come from. What do you think has influence your thinking in your relationship?” the counselor prodded.

“Well, um, when my parents were getting a divorce I had to go to some class and I remember the adult there asking me to draw a picture. I drew a picture of my family at the fair. My mom and sister and I were all going on rides and my dad was sitting on a bench. I guess if I had to think about where my bad habits came from maybe they came from what I learned from my dad. I guess I’m kind of on the bench?”

I was floored. I sat at the opposite end of that couch in the counselor’s office listening to the man I was ready to legally cut out of my life and for the first time I felt a glimmer of hope. It wasn’t so much what he said, it was that he said what he said because I had finally stopped being quiet. I had thought for sure that by speaking up, taking a stand, calling him out I was putting the marriage to an end. But hope was springing up it’s verdant head up out of the light-deprived soil of my messed-up marriage because I had exposed a dark area and said, “No more!”

I didn’t grow up thinking that’s what godliness looks like. It certainly wasn’t what I was taught a Christian woman looks like. But hope was rising out of the dark place where my complacency had let things that love the darkness hide because as hopeless as I was, the love of Christ was compelling me to stop clinging to my life and love my husband by speaking the truth! The proverbial scales were falling from my eyes and for the first time I could see that loving my husband didn’t mean hiding his sin for him under a rug of passiveness. It sounds so obvious, but when you’re blind, hopeless, stuck in a cycle of enabling sin, it’s not obvious at all.

Jesus said, “If you’re brother sins against you, go tell him…” When he was about to face the cross and knew Judas would betray him and Peter would deny him, he called them out on it. In fact, every time Jesus interacted with people caught up in a sinful pattern of living, he exposed it and dealt with it. But somehow, growing up I heard that as a woman I shouldn’t do that. I should be quiet. I should be submissive. I should turn the other cheek. Somehow I ended up 23 years into a marriage thinking if I wanted to be Christlike I would just hide one offense after another under my passiveness rug and try to stomp down the big lump that formed.

Hope sprung up for me that day in the marriage counselor’s office because the love of Christ was moving me to expose sin, not hide it. Hope was shinning in that room because the love of Christ was saying through me, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. We’re dealing with this.” Hope had been buried under a heap of offenses piled under a rug I called forgiveness. It needed light. It needed to be exposed to the light that says, “Let me wash your feet. You’re dirty.” Just when I thought there was no hope at all, and that surely my pulling the rug off that pile of sins in the counselor’s office was going to end what I thought I had fought for by shoving more garbage under the rug, my husband opened his heart and let me wash his feet.

Hope is a beautiful growth of goodness in the land of the living. And the living are a mess. It’s the springing up of something that breaths life and grows. But it has to spring up out of dirt. And it can’t spring up if it isn’t exposed to the light. Ugly things may come to light, but they get dealt with in the light. Hope grows where the light shines.

“But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:13-14

Messages women need to hear from leading men in the conservative evangelical Church

Statements from the president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Paige Patterson, have stirred up a dark message I heard as a young girl and still hear as a 43 year old woman in the conservative evangelical American church. The message goes something like this:

Being a Christ-like means being passive, quiet, soft-spoken…don’t upset the apple cart. Being a Christian woman especially means you exist to please men, serve men, and submit to men. When people hurt you, turn the other cheek and don’t say anything.

Those messages are the dark hiding place for abusive men. And they aren’t Biblical. But it’s the message I heard as a girl. I heard a lot of teaching about wives being submissive to their husbands, that they should be quiet, and that Christians turn the other cheek. I accepted these messages and formed my relationship with my husband at the young age of 19 with those messages in mind. After 24 years of tumultuous marriage marked by unhealthy cycles of separation and “reconciliation,” I found myself ready to file for a divorce in a marriage counselor’s office. There, unhealthy patterns, both on my part and my husband’s that helped hide and grow sin in our lives, were exposed. A lot of my unhealthy thinking came from growing up in a church environment where submission, anti-divorce and turn the other cheek was preached but condemnation of abuse, the empowerment of women’s voices, and true Christian love which deals with people’s sin rather it hiding them wasn’t.

When I read Mr. Patterson’s statements this old, disgusting feeling crept up in me. I realized that I wasn’t the only one who had experienced the dark, unhealthy thinking where abusers hide in the church. Although my husband has never been abusive, the unhealthy patterns of not dealing with the sin in my husband’s life because I thought I was supposed to be quiet to be loved by men and God allowed an evil to grow that nearly destroyed our marriage. That kind of thinking is the kind of thinking women in abusive relationships have. They hunker down in churches where pastors aren’t exposing abusive thinking, quietly telling themselves that to love their husbands and obey God they needed to be quiet and endure abuse.

Passages in the Bible such as Matthew 5:38-42 where Jesus teaches us to, “turn the other cheek,” can be confusing to people living in abusive, unjust or unhealthy situations. In fact the whole crux of Christian living- that we take up our crosses and follow Jesus– can be misconstrued as a call to live passive lives enduring abuse in the name of Jesus. The concept of being Christ-like can be miscommunicated as being doormat-like to the people on the receiving end of the abuse of power. Passages that teach submission can be communicated in such a way that women in abusive marriages or women living with husbands who abuse alcohol/drugs, use pornography, commit adultery, lie pathologically, and other sins which destroy the trust in a marriage, feel like if they are going to be Christlike and pleasing to God they must quietly endure.

I believe in the complementary nature of the male/female relationship. We are made for each other, to help each other. But women are not first and foremost made for men.

I believe we are called to self-sacrificially love each other. But love abhors the evil of abuse. It exposes darkness. It’s love that compels us to call each other out on sins such as abuse, adultery, pornography use, etc. And in some of these cases, loving each other self-sacrificially may mean losing the man your married to because he has to go to jail or to an inpatient treatment program.

Because abusers of power can twist precious truths in scripture and use it against those who are on the receiving end of their abuse, pastors must shine light where these wolves are hiding in their churches. A few months ago I heard my pastor preaching on marriage from Ephesians, and it was the first time I had heard a pastor say, “Listen, I’m afraid that I’m going to teach what this passage says to you wives and some of you are going to think I’m saying you should stay in your abusive situations. I’m not!” It was like someone opened the door to a very dark dungeon and let the first glimpse of light in a room that has been festering with things that love the darkness for too long.

No doubt being a Christian means we will endure suffering. Jesus said that and modeled that very clearly. But there needs to be a very clear message from the pulpits of churches, a message that Jesus brought, that God hates abuse of power and taking advantage of those in vulnerable positions. We women need to hear our brothers in Christ standing up there in their positions of leadership in the church saying, “If you are an abusive man, we will not tolerate your abuse! You can not hide in this church behind passages in the Bible directed at self-sacrificial men and women who love Jesus.”

We also need to hear the message of empowerment of women’s voices. We need to hear Jesus’ men in positions of leadership say, “Sisters, we don’t want you to be silent! The Bible doesn’t want you to be silent! Jesus wants you to address the sin of your brothers, husbands, dads, pastors, teachers, etc.” As a woman in the conservative, evangelical American church, it’s the silence from our brothers that speaks the loudest. But thank God the silence is being broken.

I know there are men who love Jesus, who affirm women, protect them, empower them, stand behind them, and lead them in self-sacrificing ways. And I’m so thankful. We need to hear from you brothers! We need to hear you being like Paul to Peter and calling out leaders in the church who are getting it wrong when it comes to loving, leading, protecting and empowering women like Jesus does. We need you to be like our Good Shepherd and take on the wolves. We need to hear you in the pulpits. We need to hear you telling us what Jesus told us, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers...”

Are you saying divorce for abuse or adultery is “giving up” on your marriage?

Since Tuesday, when Desiring God published my letter to a woman married to an unbeliever, I have received many private messages from Desiring God readers. Among them questions, objections and concerns were brought up that I responded to privately. I want to address those issues here. This post will be the beginning of a few posts dealing with the most common questions I received from my article. But before I delve into sharing my thoughts on these issues, I just want to say: I am not a trained counselor, pastor or scholar. But I am a woman in awe of Christ. He’s got a hold of me. I just want to follow him.

Through my hard marriage I’ve been tested and I’ve learned a few lessons I think are important to share. My hope is that as I share what God is teaching me He will be honored and someone will be helped.

One of the responses I received went something like this:

Q: Are you saying if you divorce your spouse for a good (Biblical) reason, such as abuse or adultery, you’re sinfully “giving up”?

A: Anytime a person speaks about divorce in the Christian community serious concerns rise to the surface. What about cases of abuse? What about adultery? Isn’t there Biblical cause for divorce? All of those questions are serious and Biblical answers should be sought out. But my article wasn’t specifically aimed at those issues. My aim was to speak to women, who like me, are married to unbelievers, and feel like giving up at times because it’s just hard.

Sometimes I feel like those issues are brought up sort of like the issues of rape, incest and harm to the mother’s health are brought up when speaking about abortion. I know there are hurt women who’ve been abused and abandoned by their husbands and then found no support or help in their churches and/or from people they trusted . These women are not who I was aiming my thoughts at in my article at Desiring God. But addressing issues of adultery and abuse is very important.

My article was speaking specifically to women ready to give up on their marriages because of the everyday hard things of my being married to a man that doesn’t share your love of Jesus. I also had in mind women I know who’ve left their Christian husbands because their marriages were getting hard.

Why Most of Us Divorce

The truth is the majority of divorces, as well as the majority of abortions, are not carried out because of abuse, adultery, rape, incest or life-threatening health issues. The majority of divorces (and abortions) are carried out because of the inconvenience of dying to self and dealing with the hard things of loving a sinful person. We get tired of each others sinfulness. We get tired of being not loved well. Whether it be marriage or raising children, both require commitment to die daily to your own needs and wants, trust Christ to provide all that for you, and to get down low and engage in the mess real relationships are.

As I see it in scripture, God created marriage. And for the Christian, marriage is a ministry, not a place to find your ultimate fulfillment.

Whether you’re married to a believer or unbeliever, the example God is displaying in you as his child is one of his faithfulness and self-sacrificial love. But that faithfulness and love is not to be confused with enabling or ignoring adultery or abuse. The Christian woman is called in marriage help her husband by faithfully loving him and dealing with his sin with the grace and truth found in Christ. That includes everyday offenses, abuse, adultery and all other kinds of terrible situations one can find themselves in when they’re married to a fallen person.

We all sin. There is no escaping that. And whether it be an accumulation of passivity or aggressiveness, or negligence to cherish, or refusal to show longed-for affection… whatever daily sin-pattern you can bring up as an example, it’s going to get hard to enjoy and love the person you vowed to be faithful to until death parts you. You are going to have to suffer something to love your spouse. You are going to have to die to something to foster a loving relationship.

Don’t Mistake Mercy for Enabling Evil

When it comes to particularly egregious sins like adultery, physical or emotional abuse, theft, drug use, alcoholism, addictions, etc., God provides a way to deal with these kinds of sins with transparency, boundaries, accountability and safety. Women who find themselves in relationships with these evils will need wise council, Biblical guidance and clarity on the difference between mercy and enabling. God teaches us to expose and deal with sin in a way that hopes for restoration and reconciliation. But a cheap-grace message taught in church can lead to a misunderstanding of the gospel, the mark of Christ’s majesty in Christian submission, forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation.

This confusion about how the gospel of Christ plays out in dealing with sin in our daily lives, combined with our natural tendency to either wink at sin (boys will be boys… that’s just her personality, etc.), sweep it under the rug, enable it, or condemn the person for doing it, has led many into unhealthy relationships. When we mistake mercy for enabling sin and grace for ignoring wickedness, and then condemn people for sins we personally can’t handle, we cheapen the costly blood of Christ and minimize his power to change lives.

Author Jen Wilkin summed up the heart of the problem in pointing out that the gospel is not just being declared innocent of sin in a recent tweet:

“Don’t reduce “gospel-centered” to “justification-centered”. The Good News is more than our freedom from sin’s penalty. It’s also our progressive freedom from sin’s power and ultimate freedom from sin’s presence. Justification, sanctification, and glorification are all the gospel.”

Looking back in my marriage my thinking has been clouded by a misunderstanding of grace and my self-preserving tendancy to not deal with sin like Christ teaches us to. Both the Old and New Testament show us a God who is faithful to his covenant with his people, and exposes and disciplines them for the purpose of their redemption.

Help From The Scriptures and a Warning

In the Old Testament the Lord’s people are typified as a wife to God (Read Hosea). Israel is adulterous in her relationship with God. But her unfaithfulness and betrayal is not ignored, winked at or enabled. And although Israel’s sinfulness is dealt with harshly, she is not utterly condemned because God is faithful. In the New Testament you see Christ deal with Israel’s ugly, bigoted, perverse, greedy, hypocritical and abusive behavior. And he clearly speaks to the harsh consequences adultery can have on a marriage (Matthew 5:31-32)

Much wisdom can be gleaned from looking at how God dealt with his people’s sin in the Bible. But I want to give a clear warning here to women who might misunderstand the gospel: You and I are not Christ. We cannot save our spouses. We don’t suffer to atone for their sin.

It is not your job to suffer abuse to save your husband. Christ did that.

If your husband is abusive, the kind of suffering you may be called is the loss of your marriage because you hold your husband accountable for his sin using the governmental and legal means God provides. Hand your husband over to the legal authorities, seek safety for yourself while giving your life to following Christ and interceding for your husband.

Whether it be adultery or abuse, Christ does not lead us to enable, ignore or dismiss the sin in our spouses lives. He leads us to humbly, yet boldly expose sin and follow him. We should pray for and want our husband’s to be truly saved and made new. And that is shown by our willingness to deal boldly with our husband’s sins in the light. Saving grace and mercy is not shown by enabling, ignoring or dismissing a husband’s evil behavior.

John 13 is on passage that has taught me to vulnerably expose the sin that needs to be brought into the light and then forgive.

Not ignore.

Not say it’s ok.

But to do what the Bible teaches us to do: expect to see repentance and reparations (fruit of repentance) before reconciliation can happen.

Ignoring, enabling or dismissing your husband’s adultery, abuse, addictions, etc. is not the way Christ has called you to be a Christian wife to him.

Get Help and Follow Jesus

If you find yourself in a marriage to an abusive man seek safety and legal help. If you find yourself in a marriage wrecked by adultery, unless your spouse is repentant and willing to seek counseling and set up measures of accountability and do the hard work of establishing trust over a long period of time, send him away. Wait on God. Pray. Get counseling for yourself. And get on with following Christ.

Your truth and grace stance with your husband may be the very means by which God does a life-changing work in him.

May God bless you as you seek Christ and follow him!

“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,