Sometimes I seem to get some skepticism from people about my radical stance on my own marriage during our separation and my encouragement of others who are separated to really get single minded in saving their marriages regardless of their spouse’s attitude.

Part of me wants to say, “Yes, there are a couple of other approaches: Give up and just try to meet in the middle for a divorce settlement with your spouse.” My observation is even if they do meet you in the middle, you have a good chance for a whole lot of pain ahead.

I had a lady come into our Divorce Care group who said that she had a good divorce several years ago. No kids involved, she and her ex-husband were still friends, but she admitted she had never quite completely recovered from the divorce. In other words, just giving in and trying to do things amicably seems to lead to more pain, even if it supposedly goes well.

The other option is to be aggressive. Go get the sharpest lawyer you can find, attack first, and attack hard. Thankfully, I wasn’t on the receiving end of this kind of approach but I have observed people who have been.

One of the ladies in the Divorce Care videos got served with papers out of the blue somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s. It devastated her. I had a Divorce Care participant who got served with restraining orders at work one day, and then later their spouse served divorce papers again. If the spouse wanted to hurt them, it worked – they were devastated.

I don’t remember where I heard this during our separation, but someone said in reference to separation/divorce that you have two options, “Extreme pain if you do things right, excruciating pain if you don’t.” Based on my personal experience and observations, I think they about nailed it.

During my separation from Sharon I often asked people to pray for our reconciliation. I always winced and was somewhat hurt when they tagged something on to their prayer about “God, please heal this marriage if it is Your will.” These were Christians downplaying my desire and commitment to reconciliation and reminding me that Sharon had a free will.

I was desperately looking for encouragement and hope from my Christian brothers and sisters and sometimes it seemed like I was getting more skepticism and discouragement. I suspect some of them realized I was very depressed. They had seen so many other Christian marriages fail or been through a divorce themselves and were trying to prepare me for the very real possibility that I would be divorced so I wouldn’t go off the “deep end”.

I wasn’t emotionally with it enough at the time to really articulate what I was thinking, but I was and still am disappointed that this idea of “maybe it is or maybe it is not God’s will” to heal marriages seems to be so prevalent in the church. Perhaps I am just too simplistic in my thinking, but it seems like God is pretty clear about wanting to heal marriages.

In Malachi it says, “‘I hate divorce,’ declares the Lord”. Jesus said, “Let no man put asunder what God has joined together.” Jesus also, when asked about Moses allowing divorce, said, “It was because of your hard hearts that Moses allowed you to divorce.” Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said, “A woman must not separate from her husband but if she does, she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.”

In Scriptures unrelated to marriage, we hear things such as “Love each other deeply from the heart, for love covers a multitude of sins, Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ forgave you, and Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church, giving Himself up for her.” Jesus also promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

I could not get to a place in my mind and heart where I could say, “It is not God’s will to heal my marriage or it is God’s will for me just to give up and accept that it is over.” I don’t understand how often in the church the consensus seems to be that it may not be God’s will to heal marriages.

I do accept that with God giving us permissive will, divorces do happen, just like every other sin He allows to happen, and that He doesn’t zap the perpetrator before he commits the sin. But, it seemed to me at the time I had to go with the assumption that God’s will was for our marriage to be healed, and that even though I couldn’t guarantee that it would be healed, that I should make every effort that I could and trust Him for the results.

I am so thankful that He honored my feeble and sometimes bungled efforts, and I hope to inspire others to keep hanging in there even when it seems hopeless because “with God all things are possible.”

One of the more memorable concepts I got from Divorce Care, which really gave me a lot of hope and inspired more determination on my part, was the concept of the Line of Reconciliation as taught by Jim Talley, professional counselor.

He said marriage is like a road and that even in a good marriage people move from being together at the center of the road to being over at the opposite sides of the road because of some conflict.

In a divorce situation one party chooses to get clear off the road.

His observation after years of counseling struggling marriages is that almost always the person who so badly wanted out of the marriage, will at some point in time come back to the line of reconciliation, have second thoughts, and want to at least try on the marriage, and often reconcile.

The key for the reconciliation to happen is for the person who wanted to stay married to always stay at the line of reconciliation, always ready to accept their partner back and work things out. The number one way to stay in that reconciliation posture is to avoid dating others, because if you do start, you are likely to be off dating when your partner is really serious about working on things and you will miss the golden opportunity.

Jim said the longest wait he has seen was a 12-year gap until the partners reconciled. (See Separation Links and Separation Books for more info about Dr. Talley on our website.)

For an awesome story of a long term divorce and then reconciliation, see Inverse Ministries and watch the Braggs’ testimony. They reconciled after 11 years and living 3000 miles apart.

I know I may be saying the same things I have said before, but I am trying to figure out a way to really help people slow down, think, and then put their all into saving their marriage even when things don’t look good.

I am a football widower – my wife loves watching – I don’t, but I did sit and join her for the last 45 seconds of this year’s Super Bowl between the Giants and the Patriots. The Giants were behind with 45 seconds left and made a huge play and got a touchdown. The Patriots did make a valiant effort to come back.

My thoughts went to struggling marriages and how sad I am when people basically quit trying when their spouse moves out, or has an affair, or says they don’t love them, or files for divorce. It puzzles me how many who really don’t want a divorce give up long before any court decree. To me, it seems it is premature to give up until at least you are divorced and your spouse remarries, but that may even be too soon because there are testimonies of people who didn’t give up even then and still eventually reconciled, sometimes remarried, but at least often got to civilized friendship.

Just think where the Giants would be if they had just stopped trying with one minute left on the clock, put in there third string, and just hoped for a miracle. They probably wouldn’t be the Super Bowl Champs.

I didn’t see this, but just read this morning that there was a short ad on TV just before the kickoff of the Super Bowl where some Patriots players looked right at the camera and said they were going to win and they guaranteed it. Sometimes spouses who want out of a marriage say things about as brash like, “It is over and there is nothing you can do about it.”

They are not always right…..

Reading Parade magazine, Feb 3, 2008, I saw this quote:

Q. “As a fan of Shirley Jones since her goody-two shoes days on The Partridge Family, I’ve always wondered how she managed to stay married to a brash comic like Marty Ingels?”

A. “We gave our money to a marriage counselor instead of a divorce lawyer,” Jones, 73, tells us. “We just celebrated – maybe “survived” is a better word – our 30th anniversary.”

One reason I like to read different authors and encourage others to do the same, as well as study Scriptures themselves, is that even very strong, biblical Christians see things differently.

McLuhan I think emphasized more of God joining couples together by His Spirit and through the physical union. Adams more emphasized the aspect of promises. Both pointed out that until recent history, divorce was so rare in the church that not a lot of thought had been given to it nor a lot of deep Biblical study.

Both authors emphasized how the Corinthians passage being addressed to the church could really give a lot of insight into the complete picture of God’s thoughts on marriage and divorce, except for the exception clause that Jesus mentioned in Matthew.

One thing I have always been impressed with Piper about is that he has strongly emphasized marriage, especially Christian marriage, is a picture of Christ’s relationship with the church, which is the ultimate reality. The church will always be married to Christ whereas our marriages end at death. The more we understand the relationship of Christ and the Church the more we understand God’s intent for marriage and His dislike of divorce.
In Piper’s writings see:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1986/1488_Divorce_and_Remarriage_A_Position_Paper/
He makes a strong case that no remarriage is allowed following divorce. Before you throw this view totally out it would certainly be worth spending some time reading what he says and especially his point #11. His own church does not take this position, which further indicates to me how difficult of a study this is. We need to try to be respectful of various views without compromising our own convictions.

Adams reviews what marriage is. He focuses on the promises that each person made to each other before God, and reviews a lot of what is known about marriage in Jewish culture. He spends much time sharing about Moses’ regulations for divorce and what that meant. He also discusses about the legally binding nature of divorce certificates.

One thing Adams brings out about marriage is, that even more than reproduction, God’s purpose in marriage was for companionship. In discussing the Corinthians passage about divorce he points out that if a person divorces their spouse without Biblical reason they must stay unmarried or preferably reconcile to their mate. He says the word for separation in that passage is the same as the word divorce, and that in the first century there was nothing known as a legal separation.

One point I struggle with that he makes is that in Deuteronomy Moses said that if a couple got divorced and one of them married someone else and then that marriage ended in death or divorce the first partners couldn’t remarry, and he seems to believe that applies to today. I would think that since we are not under Mosaic law those instructions would not apply today. Adams makes a strong case that both Jesus and Paul forbid Christians to divorce, except for what Jesus called fornication.

He talks about how to utilize church discipline procedures to encourage reconciliation, which I think is a good thing to review and it is seldom used.

In the case of a believer being married to an unbeliever, Adams makes a good case that it should not be the Christian pursuing any divorce; only if the unbeliever departs and is unwilling to reconcile should the marriage end.

The author does a good job of trying to tie together a lot of the threads between the Old Testament and what Jesus and Paul said. He has some helpful insights into how God looked upon Israel as a wife, divorced her, then took her back. (Hosea)

Another insightful chapter was about circumstances for remarriage.

I think overall this is a good book to have to really spark some serious thinking and study about issues of marriage and divorce.

Yesterday, I just spent a half hour or an hour in the bookstore and pulled some divorce legal books off the shelf. First off, I am so thankful that Sharon and I didn’t get into the court system.

My purpose in looking at all of this is so I have a good overview of what people I know who are involved in legal proceedings are going through. I also want to be prepared, if I meet people who have found themselves in an unwanted separation or legal proceedings, to help them calm down and sort out the forest from the trees, because they may be as clueless as I was about legal issues.

The other issue with which I am wrestling is how to articulate to people that they really don’t want to go the divorce route if at all possible. Several things I have learned that I don’t think most people contemplating divorce have really considered:

If you have minor children and get divorced, things are not permanently settled legally as long as the kids are minors, and sometimes even until they are through college. People can lose jobs and have to reapply for reduction of support payments; sometimes you may want to move and need to check with the court. If you just up and quit a good paying job because you don’t like it, your support doesn’t automatically change, and if you can’t get an equal paying job you may have some explaining to do. If schedules change and you can’t agree with your spouse about changes in visitation, or even if you do agree in some circumstances, back to court you go.

Basically, because you haven’t been able to work out your marriage with your spouse, you now have the court as your ultimate judge. I think lots of people think that getting a divorce will finish off the relationship with their ex-spouse and they don’t have to learn how to get along. In reality, if you have kids, you have a choice – learn somehow to communicate and make decisions with your ex-spouse in a civilized manner – or be prepared to spend alot of time, money and effort to let someone else – a judge -make those decisions for you.

What I realized in my mediation with Sharon was that we either had to agree on issues concerning finances, children’s education, children’s visitation, where the kids would go to church, who would make medical decisions, etc. etc. or the court would make them for us.

I realized these were all the kinds of issues we struggled so much to agree upon during our marriage. I thought to myself, if we truly get to where we can agree on these issues we will have solved a high percentage of our marital struggles. It actually gave me hope for our marriage in that we were going to be getting help one way or the other resolving issues, either with a mediator, attorneys or a judge.

The author M.G. McLuhan, has been in ministry for over 50 years and has been married over 50 years. He has now retired. Over the years he has been exposed to and believed a very strict interpretation of the Bible about divorce that tended to look down on and marginalize divorced people.

He has counseled enough hurting people to realize that maybe he had been too strict, so he has really dug into Scripture trying to show both God’s high standards for life-long marriage and God’s compassion for those who don’t live up to the ideal.

Several key points:

Up until recent years divorce was so rare in the church that the church really didn’t spend lots of time thinking about the various ins and outs and nuances of divorce. Those that did were primarily at the seminary level and disconnected from everyday counseling situations.

The Bible can be divided into three segments as far as God’s view on divorce. The first segment is from Adam to Moses. God didn’t say much except the Genesis account of the man leaving his father and mother and becoming one flesh with his wife. Various books of the Bible mentioned marriage but really gave no regulations.

The second segment is primarily the Mosaic law.

The third segment is what Jesus and Paul taught about marriage and divorce.

One thing that McLuhan does well is review the different segments of the Mosaic law about divorce. One thing that he really points out is that through the Mosaic law God was protecting women. The Mosaic law talked about situations where the wife was a captive, where she wasn’t loved, where a woman could demand a divorce. What I forgot was that adultery wasn’t a reason for divorce because the punishment for adultery was death.

Even though the Mosaic law doesn’t apply to us today as Christians, I feel his analysis is helpful in understanding the culture that Jesus was later speaking to later on.

He does a good job helping us to understand God’s ideal for marriage; that it is joining two whole persons in spirit, soul, and body.

I think McLuhan made a good point that Paul’s treatise on divorce was addressed to a culture very similar to ours – Christians who had come out of a very pagan culture. Paul quoted Jesus, but also addressed concerns that Jesus didn’t because Paul was talking to mostly Gentile people.

Another very strong point McLuhan makes is that divorce is not the unforgivable sin. He does explain a lot of the Greek behind Paul’s teaching.

Although he is very strongly supportive of marriage, some of his examples of when divorce was justified, I didn’t agree with. I think he may have unwittingly given people more possible reasons to divorce than what he realized.

I think this is a good book to read to get an over all big picture view of marriage and divorce in the Bible. If you are a person going through divorce, or contemplating one, or if you are helping people in deep marital struggles, I think it would be wise to read some other views also as you wrestle with what is appropriate in the situation you are facing.

For a primer about legal issues see related blog “Overview of Legal Issues”. Thankfully, during our 16 month separation my wife never filed any legal papers, although she did retain an attorney. I decided very early on that I would not file any petition for divorce, separation, or dissolution. Jesus said, “Let no man put asunder what God had joined together.” The Apostle Paul also highlighted this concept when he talked about not taking believers to court.

I believed that I had two major Scriptural admonitions not to institute legal procedures either against Sharon or on my behalf as a favor to her. I had no suspicion of adultery on her part, and I totally accepted that she was Christian. The other stance that I took was that I would not sign a voluntary dissolution because I believed that would be me participating in putting asunder what God had joined together. The only option Sharon was going to have for legally ending our marriage would have been to file divorce papers with the knowledge that most likely I would contest them.

I didn’t know the legal system well enough to know all of my eventual options, but my understanding was that eventually, whether I wanted it or not, the judge could end my marriage. But I had decided if it came to that, he could do it, not me, and if that cost a whole lot more money for both Sharon and I, hopefully that would be a deterrent to her pursuing divorce. My understanding of Ohio state law was that there was an option to request a judge to order more counseling. I would have probably pursued that option. He might have granted it, he might have turned it down, the counseling might have worked, it might not have, but it would have been something to try.

I think now in some states courts are ordering some sort of training for spouses with children, even if a divorce is granted, because they realize that for the children’s benefit, parents have to at least get civilized. I have heard of judges in California ordering couples to go to Retrouvaille. I don’t know if that was an option in Ohio.

When I was convinced that Sharon was most likely going to file for divorce, I begged her to meet with a Christian mediator. She reluctantly agreed. We immediately got between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She was absolutely insisting that she only wanted to mediate a divorce/dissolution, I was absolutely not willing to do that based on what I just said above. My desire was to mediate a reconciliation. She was absolutely unwilling to do that. What we finally agreed to was that we would make good faith efforts to mediate a legal separation. I obviously was reluctant to do this, but I believed that was the only thing we had to mediate since she would not mediate a reconciliation and I would not mediate a dissolution. We did have a a couple of meetings. The first was to understand the process and to agree on the ground rules. Basically we agreed that any issues we couldn’t resolve would be turned over to a panel of spiritual leaders and friends. Amazingly, we got that much agreed to.

We started in on the issues I think involving the kids. We hit impasses right away, then I had an out of town meeting, and for whatever reason, we never got back to mediating our issues. Everything just sort of sat until we went to the PAIRS training where we started reconciling (See that story elsewhere). As tough as it was in mediation, I was glad for it at the time because I was having some contact with Sharon, and in trying to discuss and make decisions about issues we were getting to know one another better. I was hoping to show her how much I cared and that my behavior was changing for the better, but I am not sure I accomplished either goal.