What I Learned About Love After Divorce
When two people pledge their love for one another and their futures cement together, we do this for life, right? No one marries another with plans to divorce, right? I don't know anyone who has ever been that casual about a promise — a commitment made before God, who blesses marriage. Marriage was His invention, after all!
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 "Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble."
Genesis 2:18 "It is not good for the man to be alone."
Matthew 19:4-6 "A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one."
Ephesians 5:28 "He who loves his wife loves himself."
Proverbs 3:3-4 "Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart."
There are many verses about love and our commitment to marriage, but is all love good? No — not when a marriage carries abuse and neglect, and if that does not cease, separation and/or divorce may be an outcome. Many of you will have a different view, and that is okay. We are not all the same, and our marriages were not all the same. What one chooses to live with, another cannot. However, do we break God's heart when we divorce our spouse? I believe we do. Do we break our spouse's heart when we divorce? I think that sometimes we do. At times both spouses may feel a great need to end a marriage, but so often it is one and not the other. Of all the reasons people divorce, do you think some marriages may be saved by having God in them? I strongly believe yes to that question, and it's never too late to invite Jesus in!
Interesting thought: we marry because we love a person, but we also need to forgive them after divorce happens — because that's what Jesus did for us. He forgave those who placed Him on the cross to die, as all of humanity killed Him. He forgave people who did Him wrong. Jesus had victory over death, and we are promised an everlasting love and life with Him in heaven someday — when our body dies, but not our soul. Christians will live forever with Jesus in heaven!
It's equally important, then, to forgive one another once a divorce occurs. You forgive the hurts, the unfairness, the words — all of it.
And suddenly you find that in a strange way, you love that person again. Not that you want to be married to him or her again, though some may grow into that. Others feel a love for their former spouse because Jesus first loved us: sinners, wrongdoers, naysayers, abusers, even murderers.
Shalom–shalom. Kristin Gedstad