For the person who has experienced a divorce, the secret to forgetting the past marriage is to experience a death.
This may sound morbid but it’s true.
I know from personal experience.
When my wife left me, she left me to pursue an affair with my brother-in-law and best friend. It was thoroughly heart wrenching because I couldn’t even go to my best friend for consolation.
One of my pastors recommended a book called, “Love Must Be Tough,” by Dr. James Dobson and I 100%, totally, whole heartedly, recommend this book if your divorce is due to infidelity! In the book, Dr. Dobson has a woman write a letter that inspired this prayer:
“God, please restore my marriage.
When I married, I chose to marry a woman totally faithful to me.
Please restore that relationship between my wife and I.
Please draw her home.
Lord, if she will not, and You know, please make it easy for her to marry this other so that I may be free to pursue a woman who will be faithful to me.”
Our pastor referred me to Deuteronomy 24:1-4 where God said it was an abomination for a man to marry his ex-wife after she married someone else. An abomination! Surely that was something to avoid!
Well, I took that as my cue to remain faithful and ardent in my pursuit to see my wife and marriage restored until the day she married the man with whom she was having an affair. I retained my wedding ring on my ring finger because it first represented my covenant, my promise to God and to her. At least God was remaining faithful to me. I would remain so to Him.
I retained her wedding ring on my pinky finger as a reminder of my commitment to her, “through thick and thin, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part”. Hey! Sometimes, I DID need that little reminder. I did WANT to give up and get on with my own life and certainly did to some extent. (Again, read “Love Must Be Tough.” You’ll see what I mean. Great book!
Wedding announcements had gone out for their wedding not long after I had prayed this prayer. They would be married New Year’s Eve at midnight.
The day of the wedding, my pastor came to my work place and pulled me aside, saw that I was still wearing both of our rings, and asked if I was doing okay. I told him I was and would remain faithful and continue to believe my wife and I could be restored right up to the last moment. He prayed with me and gave me hug.
As a side note, no one should go through this alone. It is OUR responsibility to surround ourselves with men or women of God (I want to specify men supporting men and women supporting women because we have no business being with a person of the opposite gender during a time of emotional crisis!)
If you have friends that tell you it’s okay to divorce your spouse because of their infidelity, you need to fade those friends, at least for now. A real friend cares about your heart and knows the only reason God allowed for divorce was for the “hardness of man’s heart.” Real friends care about ALL of you and will challenge you to live according to God’s Word and not according your circumstance. Circumstances change, even ones like these. God’s Word remains the same. Surround yourself with real friends.
Oh, and a side note to my side note, if you drop something on one of your toes, it lets your brain know about it! I knew it was my responsibility to let people I trusted, who knew more of God and His Word than I did, know what I was going through to pray for me, to support me. That toe doesn’t call out to another toe, it calls out to something that can do something about it. You should too.
That evening, a number of those friends called and said they were praying for me. At 11:50pm, the pastor of our couples group called me and asked if he could stay on the line with me until after midnight. We talked about how this had all begun. We talked about God’s Word and God’s way of carrying me through this. It was incredible!
At 12 midnight. He asked me to remove the ring.
I did.
We prayed again and said good night to each other.
As I sat there, I felt God telling me that my wife was no longer my wife. The one who had married me was no longer there. The person who used to have my last name, didn’t anymore. She had died.
The next morning, I shared this with one of my pastors and asked them how they had dealt with the recent death of one of their loved ones. How had God brought them through it. I told them about my meeting with God the night before and that I wanted to “mourn” the loss of my wife.
I took (I chose. So much had happened that was not by my choice. This was something I could do.)
the time (Mourning for an individual in the Bible was between seven and 30 days)
to mourn. (I know some will disagree and that is certainly okay, too.)
I fasted, separated myself from others, and spent a moment on the beach and at other old favorite places and said good-bye to the good and bad memories I had of the one who died.
After the death of my wife, I chose to remain single for a few years without pursuing a relationship, to allow God to work with me alone and to heal me.
Ask Jaclyn if I brought any of the past with me into our relationship.
I highly recommend the death of a divorce.
