It is quite common if you are separated from your spouse for many friends and family, even Christians, to encourage you to get on with your life, ie. get a divorce and find a new partner, even if your desire is to reconcile. This can be quite discouraging especially if you are looking for that slight ray of hope that your marriage can be restored.

Even though it is painful you just have to decide that you will not listen to others’ negativity and that by God’s grace you are going to believe for a miracle in spite of the evidence. You are the one who has to live with yourself the rest of your life and a divorce is too big of a decision to make hastily and then later regret not trying several more things.

People who had known Sharon and me a long time were both directly and indirectly telling me that “Sharon was done” and hinting that I needed to quit being so depressed, quit moping around about her, and start looking forward to the future with someone else.

If you read inspiring biographies of people in history who did great things, or sports heros that overcame incredible odds, one key theme is that most of them faced people saying that whatever they wanted couldn’t be done, but some way, somehow, something deep inside them kicked in and they just didn’t stop in pursuit of their dreams.

Short of telling you to ask for God’s help, I can’t give you a formula about how to get to that place of deep determination that some way, somehow you are not giving up on your marriage. However, I can tell you that for most marriages that have come back from the brink of divorce one partner or the other just got to the point of stubbornly not giving up.

There have been times in life that I have gotten stubborn about the wrong things, which has been painful, but I have never regretted being stubborn that one way or the other Jesus could heal our marriage and that if I didn’t give up He just might do it. I am so thankful that He did.