The following is a very personal element of my life.  I’m not sharing because I think we deserve “kudos” or have earned a place on any kind of pedestal, but because eighteen months ago, I was confident that by 2014, I would have a new marital status.  There was a disturbing trend and through reading the increase of a few social media statuses, I anticipated my marriage was on the fast-track to becoming another statistic. Even prior to my own marriage having problems, I was discouraged.  I watched several Christian friends’ marriages failing and the alarming nature was that those numbers were higher than non-Christian friends’ divorces.  I watched several couples, whom I had somehow elevated to be the example to strive toward for my own marriage, fail.  Divorce is failure because when God brings two together, they become one flesh.  God is our Creator and God created marriage, therefore, God desires every marriage to be successfully Christ-centered.

My assessment is not the end all be all, but the level of selfishness that I saw in my own marriage as well as witness in some friend’s marriages was off-the-charts.  It’s no wonder Christian marriages are just as high in divorce as those marriages that are not faith-based.  It is offensive to hear married people claim, “But I met my soul-mate,” when they are already married.   Wrong!  When a couple marries, THEY are soul-mates and “discovering” a different soul-mate when one is already married is not from God.  People  tread dangerous waters when they believe that kind of message because only Satan tells people what they want to hear that will enable them to justify their sin.  God does not bring two people together only to set them up for failure and God also does not bring already married people together.  It gets tiresome to hear people claim they can’t help with whom they fall in love.  Yes.  Actually they can.  Begin a relationship based on lies and it’s accurate that it will likely end in the same way.

The latter half of 2012 and most of 2013 marked the most difficult time of my marriage, that according to “experts,” would end with divorce.  Consistent arguing, name-calling, condescension were a few of our chosen tactics.  There had been so much hurt dealt from both of us that I could not see how our situation would change.  I said and did terribly hurtful things toward my husband.  He said and did terribly hurtful things toward me.  Suffice it to say that what was said and done on both sides was inexcusably devastating, however, the smaller details of the infractions are irrelevant at this point.

I want to caution people to consider their use of social media.  It’s innocent enough, but start adding old flames to your “friends” list and sometimes a door is inadvertently left open.  I believed I was progressive toward the idea of being friends with a couple of previous boyfriends, but that attitude was so very misguided, when one attempted to rekindle what was 20 years ago.  There’s a reason why when we “move forward,” the trick is to not look back at what was or may have been because we cannot move straight forward when craning our necks to look backward at the past.  In Genesis 19 NIV, angels guided Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family toward safety with the simplest instructions.  In verse 17, “Flee for your lives!  Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain!  Flee to the mountains or you’ll be swept away!”  But we also read in verse 26 that Lot’s wife disregarded the angel’s instructions by taking a final look at what remained of their home and she became a pillar of salt.  The consequences for ignoring God’s instruction to not look back were obviously permanent for Lot’s wife, but for the rest of us, there are no negative consequences when we do what we should to begin with. 

A scripture that I often hear both Christians and non-Christians take out of context is, “…God will never give me more than I can handle…”.   For example, many reference that scripture when trying to encourage friends who are battling an illness.  The scripture they’re referring to I Corinthians 10:13.  The scripture has everything to do with resisting temptation and nothing to do with battling an illness.  In order to understand any scripture, we must also read the verses before and after.  Beginning with verse 12 NIV, “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!  No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful;  he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”    

Being tempted by people or events from the past is dangerous.  I failed to see that the contact with an old flame was a risky temptation.  Fast forward a few years to what happened when my husband also dealt with temptation at work.  His coworker was blatantly pursuing him, but he didn’t see that possibility because, “She knows I’m married.”  When the fog cleared, my husband cut off contact with the individual.  It was another tempting situation that could have turned out worse than it did.  Fact:  Temptation happens to everyone, whether it’s minute to minute, or daily.  Because of this, I want to encourage wives and husbands to be open-books.  Don’t take each other or accountability for granted.  Make your emails, texts and phone usage statements available for each other to view.  Being an open book is mandatory for building trust.  This was an issue in our marriage because my radar went up to hyper alert when I saw flirty texts to my husband and when I verbalized the observation, he was no longer an open book.  

Upon my discovery, I should have immediately prayed for guidance, but the inner voice said call her, smile during the call, be assertive, but professional and nice so she can’t complain.  She still lied about the call when she tattled to my husband that, “Your wife called me!”  I walked away feeling satisfied that I’d planted seeds that I was not about to give up on my marriage because of her.  I still must laugh about the fact that she thought she would sell her sense of being a victim to the organization’s HR department.  She failed to explain to HR that she was “harassed.”   Wives be aware that harassment is apparently defined by a 2.5 minute friendly phone call.  The coworker got into a snit after our chat, but HR left me alone after I “cleared things up” by explaining that she was relentlessly pursuing MY husband.  Yes, the part of placing boundaries was my husband’s responsibility, but remember he failed to recognize that she was a problem.  Again, I should have left that to God, but I’m still a work-in-progress and learning to exercise management of my inner-control-freak.  Fast forward through several weeks and months of turmoil within our marriage.  Again, I failed to immediately give the entire situation to God and my husband was not actively following the Lord.  This was the way in which my husband explained his attitude to our small Bible study group, “I put God on the bench because I told him, I got this, Lord.”   I can laugh about that now and I hate to admit this, but there was one positive that came out of the co-worker situation, which is that our marriage is stronger than ever in accountability, which equates to mutual respect, which also ensures that we do not allow our relationship to become stagnant.       

Only by God’s grace am I able to say that, we successfully “made it to the other side” of the hurt   It’s been work.  A lot of work.  And an ongoing mindset to remain committed to the marriage healing process.  Monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, etc.  You get the point.  When we married 17 years ago, we promised to never utter the word divorce, but with everything that transpired, divorce seemed a reasonable option.  I went through a lot grief, hatred for my husband’s choices and anger toward God for allowing things to occur.