Lessons of Divorce

This January was the 1st anniversary of my divorce. Time is not always a gentle healer. But I have learned a few things over the course of time.

I'm not alone in divorce, obviously, and I feel a certain kinship with my fellow divorcees. There are more than I thought. Many are Christians, married for many years, and now thrust into the pain, and shame, of such a public failure.

The first thing I have learned will sound like frivolous self-abnegation, but it is merely the truth: I am pretty jacked-up. The truth is that I am unwell in various ways. Before my ex-wife discovered this I was aware of it, and fought against it, by God's grace, for all the years of my marriage. But marriage teaches us, and divorce certainly has reinforced it, that human flaws are not so easily mended. Some are merely held at bay for periods of time with intense, but ultimately feeble, moral discipline. I think this serves to drive us to something beyond mere moral discipline.

They say we must "believe in ourselves." We are to move forward with confidence that someone will love us in spite of our flaws; that indeed we should love ourselves in spite of our flaws. But that is incomplete counsel! It suggests the we need not, or cannot, change; that therefore it is the duty of the world to change around us. But the only solution to my significant flaws is the penetrative grace of the Almighty. To Him, and to Him alone, do I cling. Divorce has driven me to the place I should have remained from the beginning, and that is utter dependence on God's all sufficient grace. But grace is not just a balm in time of trouble. It is purifying fire as a solution to trouble. It is trouble as a solution to trouble, and it promises the more intense trouble of life altering change. In the end, I trust that He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it.

The second thing I have learned is that sometimes we just make stupid choices. We are not merely rational beings. We have emotional needs. Men and women alike are motivated to seek companionship and comfort. My marriage was not entered into by two mature people, fully understanding the gravity of the commitment, though we persisted in marriage for 21 years. We were married at age 23, and only after knowing each other for a relatively short period of time. We were friends, and then engaged for 9 months. We thought we knew each other, but our failure was that we didn't know ourselves. We didn't know how we would be with the other person over time. We just were not particularly compatible, and if we had been wiser we would have seen it. I seem to remember now that there were others who saw it, and so delicately tried to address it with us that we missed their attempt to wake us up to the fact. It was perhaps even obvious to everyone but us.

The third thing I have learned is that forgiveness includes moving forward without need of blame. Whose fault was our divorce? At this point I don't even care! I don't see the wrong anymore, and I don't think she sees my wrongs anymore either. It is just a fact in the records of our memories. It seems to me as fruitless to dig up old sins in marriage and assign blame for them as it is to flagellate oneself for sins committed as a teenager. Learn from them, yes! Feel anything about them, or let me captivate, or in any way shape the future beyond what they already have? In the words of Paul, "Heaven forbid!"

The fourth thing I have learned is that the most loving thing you can ever say to someone is that you don't need them, but you intensely desire them. This is a point with sufficient theological and personal complexity, so let me unravel it for a moment.

When I say that I don't, or never did, "need" a spouse, I only mean that in the most fundamental sense. I only mean it in the sense that I don't need another human being to "complete" me as an individual. The love deficit in my life, and my own sinfulness and incompleteness, are not solved by adding another sinful and incomplete human being to it. Christ alone can make me as an individual whole. In point of fact, Christian marriage is supposed to be a union of two people in whom Christ is operating to make each whole. They are not providing for each other what only Christ can provide. They are only sharing with each other the overflowing love of God born in their hearts by faith.

When one partner, or both, looks to the other to "complete" him or her, in the sense of making him or her whole, then idolatry follows. One has placed a burden on the other person that only God in His infinite power can shoulder. This can only crush the one on whom the burden is placed, and deeply disappoint the one placing it there.

But here is where this matter gets complicated. God in wisdom made us, in His original design, for a spouse. In creation we were built for a deep spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual bond with another individual for life. He said that it was not "good for Adam to be alone." Prior to the fall, when human beings were whole, they needed each other in this sense; in the sense that, in order for total unity and diversity to be experienced, they required marriage. If we are going to experience the depths of God's design for community in marriage, then we need a spouse. But in a fallen world where Christ has supplied our individual needs in redemption, and has drawn us directly into communion with Himself, the further communion of marriage and family can be superfluous for those left single in this world. In other words, if a person, as a result of this being a fallen world, never marries, then God's extravagant love in Christ will supply all the compensating graces necessary.

But even those who are called into marriage by God must note this well: It is only two whole people who can truly be unified in the manner that God designed. Their first need even in their need for marital union will always be in Christ!