Many people today are struggling with either wanting to get married or wanting to get divorced. The singles are influenced by what I call the “image consultants” who cheer them into marriage by way of guilt making them feel like something is wrong with them because they are single. These people most times push and persuade them to settle for whatever is available within their immediate reach.
Then we have the married and struggling being bombarded by church folks, or folks who refuse to even try and understand their pain. These folks most times cold-heartedly yell at the top of their lungs for them to stay married because “God hates divorce”, refusing to even try and understand their pains. But if I am sold into Christianity by being told that God loves me and wants me to live an abundant life, then why would He make me live miserable and married?
Years ago I found myself asking this very question. As I sat crying holding my broken heart I asked “God, why do I have to go through this? Why can’t I just leave?” It was torture knowing that I would offend God by walking out on my marriage, but I just didn’t want to be married anymore. It was too painful! I prayed “God, if the only way out is death, please kill him so that I can be free!” Sounds cut-throat and scandalous, doesn’t it? But, that was how I felt at that time and if you can’t be honest with God, you can’t be saved for real. God won’t work-out any of our situations if we are lying to Him and at the time my pain was so bad to me that I was looking for a clean exit and the only way I saw it was based on what I was taught; til death do you part.
The more I looked at my situation, the more it broke my heart. I couldn’t bear it anymore so I did all I could to look away from it. I did my best to look to God for hope and as I redirected my attention, this pain I felt surprisingly drew me closer to God. What I found was that God will use what seems to be killing you to help draw you near to Him. Truthfully, He wants our attention in the same intensity that we want what’s breaking our hearts and so He will use that very thing as an opportunity to get it. What He did for me was make me take my hopes off of my ex-husband being all that I wanted him to be to make me feel loved and put my attention more on Him. The more I prayed or spoke to God, the more He showed Himself to be present and real in my life. I became so amazed at how when I would tell Him or ask Him something in my private prayers and then I’d show up at church service and the Pastor would be giving me my answer that eventually the pain about what I wanted or expected from my spouse didn’t bother me so much. I had become so consumed with the discovery of this new connection with God that I stopped paying so much attention to my woes and disappointments and started applying what I was being instructed to do. As of today I can say that God has been the only one ever in life that could use the hope of His written words and release them from the mouth of His servants to take my pain away once I gave Him my full attention; and I’ve given my full attention to many things in life.
Years later, after I’d received my medicinal heart treatments; God revealed clearly to me that He truly doesn’t want us unhappy. He does hate divorce, this is true, but He cares more about the persons in the marriage than the marriage itself. The thing is He honors the laws in His word and the only way for us to really get the desires of our hearts, the ones that will last forever for real, is if we delight ourselves in Him. Anything we do without Him will give us happiness temporarily, but will eventually lose its savor leaving us unsatisfied when it’s all said and done. This way of living, without God, is called “chasing a high”; one that you can never reach. Most of us don’t like to live the way God wants us to, including us Christians, because it makes us uncomfortable. But my fitness trainer told me that “change won’t happen until you get uncomfortable”!
As far as being miserably married while knowing, and caring, that God hates divorce, what people usually don’t compassionately share with you because they are so adamant on keeping you married is that God hates divorce, but He cares more about us. If He had to choose between you being at a place of suicide or homicide because of your miserable marriage, He’d prefer you to divorce. God is a lover of the soul of man more than of religious entities.
