The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: Why I'm Not Staying Forever, Part 4 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from the inside of the unraveling.
As a Christian, why are you not staying forever?
Short answer: God.
Long answer: {Deep breath.}
This is going to be the messiest part to lay out for you. This will be the most intimate part, and the part that has the potential for most misunderstanding. Holy Spirit, give me the words.
It got bad enough that I finally really woke up and got serious help. And when I got that serious help, my eyes were opened to how bad things really were. No relationship should function the way my marriage was functioning. I am not staying forever because we were just beyond broken.
I was dying inside. Every day, a part of me died. With every harsh word, every lie, I couldn’t even breathe fully. You know when you want death more than life, something is dreadfully wrong. I am not staying forever because I need to choose life.
I was living a fake life. I was one person with the world and another at home and with my closest friends. The counselor that I began to see to specifically target my anger issues had asked me to list off the top of my head three characteristics about each person in my immediate family, finishing with me. If I remember correctly, about myself, I said, “Loyal, stubborn, authentic.” She replied, “It’s interesting that you think you’re authentic, because most of your life is a secret.” Busted. Wake-up call. I preached about living an honest life, and then I went off and didn’t live one. I am not staying forever because I must talk and live the truth.
I was not loved. This is a hard one to write down. And one I fear saying the most. Because many of us do not feel loved. And, I hate to say this, but not being loved is not a reason to end a marriage. That sounds harsh, I know, but it’s true. (In fact, none of these reasons on their own hold enough water to end a marriage.) So I need to clarify that it’s not “you don’t bring me flowers anymore” kind of not being loved. I’m not talking about a lack of pursuing. I’m talking about an active unloving attitude toward another person.
There were harsh words and lies. There was manipulation and control. There were ultimatums and consequences. I didn’t have a partner. I am not staying forever because I was not loved as Christ loved the church.
Abuse is not okay. This is another sensitive subject. I was never physically or sexually assaulted by my spouse. But I suffered many forms of emotional abuse documented over fifteen years of our marriage. I thought I just needed to be a better wife. I thought if I were a better wife, I would be treated better. I felt I deserved the treatment I was receiving. I no longer believe those things. I am not staying forever because no child of God should be abused or threatened by another child of God under the guise of love and marriage.
My kids. Yep, this is also on the list of why I stayed. I came to a place of realizing that my daughter has been watching me take abuse and would make choices for her adulthood based on what she saw me do. And my son has been watching me and seeing what’s apparently appropriate for how to treat a woman and would make choices for his adulthood based on what he saw me do. I am not staying forever because I need to break the cycle of dysfunction with my children.
My church leadership released me to legally separate. This one is key. I went to church leadership begging for help as my last resort. We were referred to a new couples’ counselor and a mentor couple. We walked this road with our elder and campus pastor. We were each given a lengthy list of things to do to move toward reconciliation. My plea for a temporary separation was backed up as they felt things were just too volatile for us to remain under one roof while trying to put things back together. But when assessed at the end of about fifteen months, the unanimous decision was that I had done all I had been asked to do and my husband had not. They told me I was released from pursuing reconciliation and that the ball was one hundred percent in my husband’s court to save our marriage. They then released me to legal separation which I pursued. I must say here that had my church leadership not released me to legally separate, I have absolutely no idea where I would be today. If I had to guess though, I believe I’d still be married and miserable and nowhere near on the road to emotional health. I believe I would not have wanted to go against the wishes and guidance of my church leadership because of my high respect for their wisdom and love for God. I am not staying forever because they did release me, so I moved forward.
I know I did all that I was asked to do. Staying this long has its benefits. The main one being that I know that I know that I know that I did every single thing I was ever told to do to attempt to save my marriage, and it wasn’t enough. It takes two. I can hold my head high saying and believing that I spent almost eighteen years trying to turn this thing around. I am not staying forever because I did all I could.
My husband counter-filed with a divorce. This was a surprise, I must say. When one person files a legal petition, the other party must counter-file or submit a response. My husband told me that he interviewed three attorneys and no one would represent him in a legal separation proceeding.
He told me that he didn’t want to keep interviewing attorneys. And he told me that I was indirectly forcing him to divorce me. I hadn’t seen this coming. But in retrospect, I believe it was God’s provision of fully releasing for me without me having to be the one to initiate the divorce. I am not staying forever because my husband is divorcing me.
I felt released. I read somewhere that man can release you from a relationship, but only God can release you from a covenant. Months ago, I felt Jesus say to me in my spirit, “Release is coming. It’s going to get harder before it gets better. But it’s coming. Keep your eyes on me, baby.” And that has all come to pass. It has gotten harder and uglier and messier, more so than I ever imagined. But release is coming and my eyes have stayed on Jesus. I am not staying forever because Jesus released me.
So bottomline, I am not staying forever because of God.
I am so very aware that my words could possibly be the catalyst for someone to get help, which I find huge satisfaction in. But I’m cognizant that someone else might read these words, attempt to apply them to their situation, and think I’ve just given them permission to leave their marriage.
So as I wrap up these thoughts, I cannot stress these things enough:
I believe in God.
I believe God created marriage as a covenant to last for the lifetime of the couple.
I believe God created marriage as a breathtaking picture of how Christ loves his church.
I believe God allows marriages to end when certain sins are committed.
I believe the Church is in place to protect and guide individuals and families in dark, confusing situations.
I believe God would have wanted my marriage to be healthy and remain intact.
I believe all marriages can be saved.
I believe God gives us free will.
I believe God is bringing about a different kind of miracle in my family – one of healing and resurrection and joy on the other side and reaching out to others with the comfort we have received.
I believe no one should walk away from their marriage without first getting as much help as they possibly can and trying their absolute hardest to keep it together.
But I believe, when it all comes down, only you and God can know what you need to do.
May God bless you and keep you as you walk out your relationships in his light and with his love.
End of Part 4 of 4
Monday, November 28, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: How I Stayed, Part 3 of 4
The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: How I Stayed, Part 3 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from the inside of the unraveling.
As a Christian, how did you stay so long?
The short answer: God.
The long answer: A hundred different ways.
I will be writing this to the women I have met over the years who have told me that they are in a hard marriage and don’t know if they can keep going one more day. And trust me, I have met way too many women in that situation who are followers of Jesus married to followers of Jesus. Being a Christian does not exempt you from marital problems; in fact, the downside is, we tend to keep it to ourselves and suffer in silence much longer than the rest of the world.
Prayer. I have counted on prayer to get me through. I have begged God to work in my life and marriage more than I’ve prayed for anything else. I have sobbed my way through prayers on my bathroom floor. To be honest, though, I have also prayed more than I’d like to admit that God would release me. I wanted out of my marriage for as long as I can remember, and I was honest with God about it. But I also prayed for my spouse… on my knees... begging God to heal. I stayed through a steady stream of conversations and pleas and whispers to God.
The Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit could have done the work in me that has been done so far. I have so, so far to go, but he burned raging out of me. I still yell, I’m sad to say. I still have anger issues. But the Holy Spirit worked in me to help me hold my tongue more than I have given myself credit for. I stayed through having the Spirit of God living in me, keeping me there when I didn’t want to be there.
Friends. My friendship circle has ebbed and flowed over the past fifteen years, but one thing that every woman in my life who I trusted and confided in had in common was their fierce love for me and my family. I have never once had a friend tell me I should leave my husband. They have listened, they have prayed more than I’ll ever know, they have supported, they have written notes, they have stood by me, they have pointed me back to Jesus, and they have kept me doing everything I could do to stay put. I stayed by having women around me who loved God and honored marriage helping me stay.
Counseling. I am a fan of counseling. I must be to have tried nine of them. I love digging in and trying to figure out why I feel a certain way or why someone acts the way they do. Counseling has helped me both individually and helped our marriage in some seasons. There is something to be said about an objective third party looking at a situation and being able to tell both individuals what needs to be tweaked to move forward. I stayed by knowing when to get outside help and not letting my pride stop me from getting it.
Couples’ groups. Getting plugged into small groups with other couples helped us over the years, though I must say, you only get out of it what you put in. We were in couples’ groups where the other couples had no idea how bad things were between us, which at times made it all feel kind of pointless. But at least we showed up and were hearing things that we could work on. I stayed by trying to get us involved in community.
Books. I’m a reader, and I think it’s safe to say that if a book has been written about marriage in the past fifteen years, I have not only read it, but taken notes on it. I once had a friend borrow a book, read it, and upon returning it say, “You are the only person I know who reads a book, highlights things, and then I can see you making the changes in your life that you read about.” It’s one thing to read a book. It’s another thing to try to put what you’re learning into practice. I stayed by reading as much as I could about Christian marriage and relationships, and then trying to do what I read.
Journaling. I’ve been keeping journals since high school. I have over twenty years of journals in my hopechest that chronicle the rise and fall of my marriage. Sometimes I journaled prayers, sometimes to track what God was doing in my life. Sometimes I’d write out an argument with my husband to try to figure out what went wrong and what I could do to fix it. And sometimes all I wrote, over and over again, was, “Jesus, please help meI can’t do this anymore…” And he would. And I’d have the strength to make it through another day. I stayed by getting my feelings out in written form which helped me stay somewhat sane through the years.
Twelve-step recovery group. I began attending a recovery group about three years ago that changed my way of relating in deep and practical ways. I learned to “live and let live”. I learned to get off my spouse’s back. I learned to keep my mouth shut, at least more than I used to. I learned to focus on what I could change in my own life. I learned to detach and let natural consequences play out. I learned how to make amends to someone. I learned that it was okay to admit that my life, or parts of it at least, were completely out of control and I needed help. I stayed because I learned how to live my life differently which in turn helped me be married differently.
Just plain staying. I remember reading something Beth Moore wrote on her blog in honor of one of her wedding anniversaries. She made a list of reasons she and her husband had made it so long and one of the reasons that stood out to me was simply, “We kept going to bed and waking up and staying another day until we realized it had been however-many years…” I stayed by not leaving. I stayed by staying one more day and then realizing another year had gone by.
Reminding myself that marriage is not forever, just another fifty years, and I could do anything for fifty years. I told myself this all the time. I can do this for fifty more years. It’s only fifty more years. That was my standard pep talk on really bad marriage days. I stayed by reminding myself that life is short in compared to eternity. I stayed by reminding myself that the staying-married crown would be the most treasured crown I would have to lay at Christ’s feet.
Mantras. After particularly painful arguments where hurtful things had been said, I would say to myself, over and over again, “You are precious and honored in his sight. Jesus loves you even though your husband doesn’t.” I spent a lot of time replacing lies with truth. I stayed because I knew that I was loved even when I didn’t feel loved.
I believed I had to. I’ve touched on this already, but I believed I could not leave without disobeying God. My marriage was bad, but it wasn’t biblical-grounds-for-divorce-according-to-popular-opinion bad. Our marriage fell into a grey area, and no one knew what to do with it. No one, and I mean no one, in my life ever told me to leave or told me that they thought I could leave (until recently). They felt sorry for me. They prayed for me. I stayed by believing that I had to stay.
It wasn’t time for me to go. I could have left, really, at any point. There was no gun to my head. And though I practically felt that leaving was not an option, I am a human being with free will. I could have walked away. But I never felt that I should. I had not, in years past, felt I had exhausted every avenue of potential healing or change. I did not feel released. I stayed by believing I was supposed to continue staying.
Only God knows the rest. I stayed through means that I didn’t have on my own. This has been the largest, longest, most difficult part of my life ever. It has broken me down, torn me to pieces, left me wishing for death to escape the perpetual pain. That I stayed married for all those years is a mystery to me, really. I know I just listed manifold reasons and ways, but I stayed not out of my own strength, but out of God’s.
So bottomline, I stayed because of God.
End of Part 3 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from the inside of the unraveling.
As a Christian, how did you stay so long?
The short answer: God.
The long answer: A hundred different ways.
I will be writing this to the women I have met over the years who have told me that they are in a hard marriage and don’t know if they can keep going one more day. And trust me, I have met way too many women in that situation who are followers of Jesus married to followers of Jesus. Being a Christian does not exempt you from marital problems; in fact, the downside is, we tend to keep it to ourselves and suffer in silence much longer than the rest of the world.
Prayer. I have counted on prayer to get me through. I have begged God to work in my life and marriage more than I’ve prayed for anything else. I have sobbed my way through prayers on my bathroom floor. To be honest, though, I have also prayed more than I’d like to admit that God would release me. I wanted out of my marriage for as long as I can remember, and I was honest with God about it. But I also prayed for my spouse… on my knees... begging God to heal. I stayed through a steady stream of conversations and pleas and whispers to God.
The Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit could have done the work in me that has been done so far. I have so, so far to go, but he burned raging out of me. I still yell, I’m sad to say. I still have anger issues. But the Holy Spirit worked in me to help me hold my tongue more than I have given myself credit for. I stayed through having the Spirit of God living in me, keeping me there when I didn’t want to be there.
Friends. My friendship circle has ebbed and flowed over the past fifteen years, but one thing that every woman in my life who I trusted and confided in had in common was their fierce love for me and my family. I have never once had a friend tell me I should leave my husband. They have listened, they have prayed more than I’ll ever know, they have supported, they have written notes, they have stood by me, they have pointed me back to Jesus, and they have kept me doing everything I could do to stay put. I stayed by having women around me who loved God and honored marriage helping me stay.
Counseling. I am a fan of counseling. I must be to have tried nine of them. I love digging in and trying to figure out why I feel a certain way or why someone acts the way they do. Counseling has helped me both individually and helped our marriage in some seasons. There is something to be said about an objective third party looking at a situation and being able to tell both individuals what needs to be tweaked to move forward. I stayed by knowing when to get outside help and not letting my pride stop me from getting it.
Couples’ groups. Getting plugged into small groups with other couples helped us over the years, though I must say, you only get out of it what you put in. We were in couples’ groups where the other couples had no idea how bad things were between us, which at times made it all feel kind of pointless. But at least we showed up and were hearing things that we could work on. I stayed by trying to get us involved in community.
Books. I’m a reader, and I think it’s safe to say that if a book has been written about marriage in the past fifteen years, I have not only read it, but taken notes on it. I once had a friend borrow a book, read it, and upon returning it say, “You are the only person I know who reads a book, highlights things, and then I can see you making the changes in your life that you read about.” It’s one thing to read a book. It’s another thing to try to put what you’re learning into practice. I stayed by reading as much as I could about Christian marriage and relationships, and then trying to do what I read.
Journaling. I’ve been keeping journals since high school. I have over twenty years of journals in my hopechest that chronicle the rise and fall of my marriage. Sometimes I journaled prayers, sometimes to track what God was doing in my life. Sometimes I’d write out an argument with my husband to try to figure out what went wrong and what I could do to fix it. And sometimes all I wrote, over and over again, was, “Jesus, please help meI can’t do this anymore…” And he would. And I’d have the strength to make it through another day. I stayed by getting my feelings out in written form which helped me stay somewhat sane through the years.
Twelve-step recovery group. I began attending a recovery group about three years ago that changed my way of relating in deep and practical ways. I learned to “live and let live”. I learned to get off my spouse’s back. I learned to keep my mouth shut, at least more than I used to. I learned to focus on what I could change in my own life. I learned to detach and let natural consequences play out. I learned how to make amends to someone. I learned that it was okay to admit that my life, or parts of it at least, were completely out of control and I needed help. I stayed because I learned how to live my life differently which in turn helped me be married differently.
Just plain staying. I remember reading something Beth Moore wrote on her blog in honor of one of her wedding anniversaries. She made a list of reasons she and her husband had made it so long and one of the reasons that stood out to me was simply, “We kept going to bed and waking up and staying another day until we realized it had been however-many years…” I stayed by not leaving. I stayed by staying one more day and then realizing another year had gone by.
Reminding myself that marriage is not forever, just another fifty years, and I could do anything for fifty years. I told myself this all the time. I can do this for fifty more years. It’s only fifty more years. That was my standard pep talk on really bad marriage days. I stayed by reminding myself that life is short in compared to eternity. I stayed by reminding myself that the staying-married crown would be the most treasured crown I would have to lay at Christ’s feet.
Mantras. After particularly painful arguments where hurtful things had been said, I would say to myself, over and over again, “You are precious and honored in his sight. Jesus loves you even though your husband doesn’t.” I spent a lot of time replacing lies with truth. I stayed because I knew that I was loved even when I didn’t feel loved.
I believed I had to. I’ve touched on this already, but I believed I could not leave without disobeying God. My marriage was bad, but it wasn’t biblical-grounds-for-divorce-according-to-popular-opinion bad. Our marriage fell into a grey area, and no one knew what to do with it. No one, and I mean no one, in my life ever told me to leave or told me that they thought I could leave (until recently). They felt sorry for me. They prayed for me. I stayed by believing that I had to stay.
It wasn’t time for me to go. I could have left, really, at any point. There was no gun to my head. And though I practically felt that leaving was not an option, I am a human being with free will. I could have walked away. But I never felt that I should. I had not, in years past, felt I had exhausted every avenue of potential healing or change. I did not feel released. I stayed by believing I was supposed to continue staying.
Only God knows the rest. I stayed through means that I didn’t have on my own. This has been the largest, longest, most difficult part of my life ever. It has broken me down, torn me to pieces, left me wishing for death to escape the perpetual pain. That I stayed married for all those years is a mystery to me, really. I know I just listed manifold reasons and ways, but I stayed not out of my own strength, but out of God’s.
So bottomline, I stayed because of God.
End of Part 3 of 4
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: Why I Stayed, Part 2 of 4
The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: Why I Stayed, Part 2 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from inside of the unraveling.
As a Christian, why did you stay so long?
The short answer: God.
The long answer: Well, there are many, many reasons.
First, Part I stirred up some controversy, so I want to reiterate that though I love God and treasure scripture, I am not claiming that what I am about to say is God’s holy word for everyone’s situation. If your marriage is experiencing a hard season, please find much wise counsel to walk you through.
So, why did I stay?
When I was a little girl, my parents divorced. I could probably stop writing right here. I was bound and determined to not repeat the cycle of divorce in my family, even if it killed me. I stayed because my childhood promise to myself was to remain married to one man for my entire life, no questions asked, no matter what.
I don’t believe life is about being happy. I believe life is about enjoying God and living a life that reflects Christ. I believe there is a deep joy that holds me up. But I do not believe that God guarantees a life of happiness, and I certainly don’t believe we deserve it. If someone bases their marriage on their happiness level, I would suspect that no marriage could stay standing. I stayed because I believe life isn’t about happiness, it’s about holiness.
I thought God would answer my prayers. I prayed a lot. I prayed for God to change my spouse. I prayed for God to change me. I prayed for God to rearrange my expectations. I prayed for God to make me more selfless. And I hoped that God would answer my prayers and heal us. Now, the natural conclusion would be to look at our circumstances, see an unhealed marriage, and therefore determine that God did not answer my pleas for help. But this is where you must take a longer, broader view and realize that God’s ways are higher than our ways. He heard me. He rescued me. But he allows free will. I stayed because I was waiting on God to perform a certain kind of miracle, but as it turns out, he is performing a different kind instead.
I was in a church. Community holds you together and holds you in place and keeps you from doing all sorts of things you might otherwise do if left to your own devices. My spouse and I began attending our current church two weeks after we got married, and we never looked anywhere else. We grew up there, basically. We had our children there. We served there. I worked there. We were known there. And when you let roots grow deep and people see inside your life and heart and you know you’re going to see those same people another one or two times that week, it’s really difficult to slide into a sin or completely walk away from what you know to be true without a bunch of people taking you to task. I knew that if I up and walked away, I’d have many people in my face – because they loved me – and if I stayed away, I’d probably lose my support system. I stayed because my church body takes care of its own and we try to protect each other from hurting ourselves.
I have two children. I believe to my core that it’s my job to show my kids how to live as adults. I have failed miserably in this respect. But I wanted them to see that what I said I believed – that marriage is for a lifetime – matched what I actually lived out, by actually staying married for a lifetime. Children of divorce have a higher marriage failure potential. I didn’t want to do that to my children, set them up for failure before they even married. I stayed because I didn’t want my children to be raised in a broken home.
I didn’t think things were that bad. Don’t get me wrong. I thought my marriage was bad. I knew deep down that there was no way God wanted this kind of marriage for my spouse, for me or for my children, and yet I didn’t think it was that bad. I liken it to the frog in a pot of water that has no idea it’s slowly being boiled to death because the temperature is going up in such small increments. I would journal things on a regular basis that seemed not quite right and I would occasionally toss them out in my circle of friends and they would sometimes gasp, but I still just thought we weren’t a good match. I’m no fool, I assure you, but I stayed because I honestly didn’t realize there was actual abuse taking place.
I’m tenacious. I ran for vice president of my class when I was a freshman, sophomore and junior in high school. I lost each year but kept going back for more. When my first manuscript was rejected fifty-one times, I didn’t give up. I’m grateful, because it finally found a publishing home with my fifty-second try, and that turned out to be one of my life’s best surprises. In other words, when the odds are stacked against me, I tend to fight harder for the thing that I think I’m supposed to have. I stayed because an intact marriage was something I was certain I was supposed to have.
I know that people are watching my life. There are people in my life – family and friends – who don’t believe in or follow Jesus. I know they are watching to see how I handle life’s ups and downs. I have readers and audience members who want to believe that what I write and say match how I live my life. I believe in marriage. I believe God wants marriages to stay together. I stayed because I didn’t want to let people down, I didn’t want to turn people off from God, and I wanted to be the kind of person who does what she says.
I promised God I would stay. I told myself innumerable times over the years that the only reason I was staying was because I told God I would. I made a promise, a vow. I entered into a covenant. I don’t take that lightly. I want to be the kind of person that people count on, that God can count on. I stayed because God is my authority, the One I will answer to, and the thought of disappointing him broke my heart on a regular basis. (It still does.)
Only God knows the rest. I suppose I could keep going. I suppose there is a reason that I stayed versus left for every day that I was married. I’d pick my daughter up out of her crib and know that I wasn’t going anywhere that day. Or I’d sit with a friend in a hard marriage and know that my staying helped her to stay. Or I’d hold the hand of a stranger after a speaking engagement and pray that she would have the strength to stay and do the hard, right thing.
Or I’d watch my son be taught how to throw a baseball by his dad and realize that he wouldn’t have this memory if I hadn’t stayed. I stayed for a thousand reasons that I know of and a thousand reasons I can’t even see.
But bottomline, I stayed because of God.
End of Part 2 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from inside of the unraveling.
As a Christian, why did you stay so long?
The short answer: God.
The long answer: Well, there are many, many reasons.
First, Part I stirred up some controversy, so I want to reiterate that though I love God and treasure scripture, I am not claiming that what I am about to say is God’s holy word for everyone’s situation. If your marriage is experiencing a hard season, please find much wise counsel to walk you through.
So, why did I stay?
When I was a little girl, my parents divorced. I could probably stop writing right here. I was bound and determined to not repeat the cycle of divorce in my family, even if it killed me. I stayed because my childhood promise to myself was to remain married to one man for my entire life, no questions asked, no matter what.
I don’t believe life is about being happy. I believe life is about enjoying God and living a life that reflects Christ. I believe there is a deep joy that holds me up. But I do not believe that God guarantees a life of happiness, and I certainly don’t believe we deserve it. If someone bases their marriage on their happiness level, I would suspect that no marriage could stay standing. I stayed because I believe life isn’t about happiness, it’s about holiness.
I thought God would answer my prayers. I prayed a lot. I prayed for God to change my spouse. I prayed for God to change me. I prayed for God to rearrange my expectations. I prayed for God to make me more selfless. And I hoped that God would answer my prayers and heal us. Now, the natural conclusion would be to look at our circumstances, see an unhealed marriage, and therefore determine that God did not answer my pleas for help. But this is where you must take a longer, broader view and realize that God’s ways are higher than our ways. He heard me. He rescued me. But he allows free will. I stayed because I was waiting on God to perform a certain kind of miracle, but as it turns out, he is performing a different kind instead.
I was in a church. Community holds you together and holds you in place and keeps you from doing all sorts of things you might otherwise do if left to your own devices. My spouse and I began attending our current church two weeks after we got married, and we never looked anywhere else. We grew up there, basically. We had our children there. We served there. I worked there. We were known there. And when you let roots grow deep and people see inside your life and heart and you know you’re going to see those same people another one or two times that week, it’s really difficult to slide into a sin or completely walk away from what you know to be true without a bunch of people taking you to task. I knew that if I up and walked away, I’d have many people in my face – because they loved me – and if I stayed away, I’d probably lose my support system. I stayed because my church body takes care of its own and we try to protect each other from hurting ourselves.
I have two children. I believe to my core that it’s my job to show my kids how to live as adults. I have failed miserably in this respect. But I wanted them to see that what I said I believed – that marriage is for a lifetime – matched what I actually lived out, by actually staying married for a lifetime. Children of divorce have a higher marriage failure potential. I didn’t want to do that to my children, set them up for failure before they even married. I stayed because I didn’t want my children to be raised in a broken home.
I didn’t think things were that bad. Don’t get me wrong. I thought my marriage was bad. I knew deep down that there was no way God wanted this kind of marriage for my spouse, for me or for my children, and yet I didn’t think it was that bad. I liken it to the frog in a pot of water that has no idea it’s slowly being boiled to death because the temperature is going up in such small increments. I would journal things on a regular basis that seemed not quite right and I would occasionally toss them out in my circle of friends and they would sometimes gasp, but I still just thought we weren’t a good match. I’m no fool, I assure you, but I stayed because I honestly didn’t realize there was actual abuse taking place.
I’m tenacious. I ran for vice president of my class when I was a freshman, sophomore and junior in high school. I lost each year but kept going back for more. When my first manuscript was rejected fifty-one times, I didn’t give up. I’m grateful, because it finally found a publishing home with my fifty-second try, and that turned out to be one of my life’s best surprises. In other words, when the odds are stacked against me, I tend to fight harder for the thing that I think I’m supposed to have. I stayed because an intact marriage was something I was certain I was supposed to have.
I know that people are watching my life. There are people in my life – family and friends – who don’t believe in or follow Jesus. I know they are watching to see how I handle life’s ups and downs. I have readers and audience members who want to believe that what I write and say match how I live my life. I believe in marriage. I believe God wants marriages to stay together. I stayed because I didn’t want to let people down, I didn’t want to turn people off from God, and I wanted to be the kind of person who does what she says.
I promised God I would stay. I told myself innumerable times over the years that the only reason I was staying was because I told God I would. I made a promise, a vow. I entered into a covenant. I don’t take that lightly. I want to be the kind of person that people count on, that God can count on. I stayed because God is my authority, the One I will answer to, and the thought of disappointing him broke my heart on a regular basis. (It still does.)
Only God knows the rest. I suppose I could keep going. I suppose there is a reason that I stayed versus left for every day that I was married. I’d pick my daughter up out of her crib and know that I wasn’t going anywhere that day. Or I’d sit with a friend in a hard marriage and know that my staying helped her to stay. Or I’d hold the hand of a stranger after a speaking engagement and pray that she would have the strength to stay and do the hard, right thing.
Or I’d watch my son be taught how to throw a baseball by his dad and realize that he wouldn’t have this memory if I hadn’t stayed. I stayed for a thousand reasons that I know of and a thousand reasons I can’t even see.
But bottomline, I stayed because of God.
End of Part 2 of 4
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: 3 Common Questions, Part 1 of 4
The Unraveling of a Christian Marriage: 3 Common Questions, Part 1 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from the inside of the unraveling.
“It is impossible for me to shake you from my mind. Everywhere I turn, everything I see, everything I hear reminds me of you. Who am I fooling? I love you. I need you.”
Cut to…
”Irreconcilable differences have caused the irretrievable breakdown of their marriage. Past attempts at reconciliation have failed, and future attempts at reconciliation would be impracticable and not in the best interests of the family.”
A lot can happen in twenty years between a man and a woman.
My situation has left many scratching their heads, and from what I can tell, a few tongues wagging as well. And I don’t blame them. Because I love Jesus with my whole heart and I am allowing my marriage to end. And I am here to say that both can coincide within the same person.
I’ve held my marriage problems so close to the chest for so long – too long perhaps -- except for my inner circle and the random counselor. But I’m now at a fresh place of stripping off the layers for more of the world to see, I feel ready to answer questions that have been asked of me, and I’m willing to do so for a more public forum.
Oswald Chambers said, “There is no such thing as a private life, or a place to hide in this world, for a man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. God divides the private life of his saints and makes it a highway for the world on one hand and for himself on the other.” So since my life is apparently not my own as a follower of Christ, I am finding that the entire point of my struggles is to share with others how I made it through with the help of Jesus.
One woman wanted to know why I stayed in my hard marriage so long, because she doesn’t understand why God wouldn’t want me to be happy, and why I didn’t just do what was “right for me” a long time ago.
One woman wanted to know how I stayed in my hard marriage for so long, because she’s in one too, and sometimes feels like she can barely make it another day, let alone the rest of her lifetime.
And one woman wanted to know why I’m not staying in my marriage forever no matter what, because she believes there are a select few biblical reasons for divorce and she thinks my circumstances don’t fit the profile.
I have a feeling that there aren’t only three women who might like to ask these questions of any woman who calls herself a Christ-follower and is at the same time ending her marriage. I know I would. For every Christian divorce I’ve known about in the past fifteen years, I would’ve given anything to corner the wife for an hour and hear her story.
How did they get from point A to point B?, does she feel she’s doing the right thing? Can she still look God in the eye? All of that and more.
These are fair questions. And they deserve thoughtful, authentic, in-depth answers. In this four-part series, I will put forth my most honest attempts at answering them.
Please keep in mind before I begin that I can only speak for myself and not for anyone else. And though I love God and treasure Scripture as my personal truth source, I am not claiming that what I am about to say is God’s holy word for everyone’s situation. Only God can deem that for you, and my hope is that he does.
Before I jump in with answering those three questions though, I’m going to give some background on my marriage so you can see where I’m coming from.
My husband and I are both followers of Christ and have been since we were teenagers. Our courtship was rocky, filled with a lot of arguments, tears and long-distance phone calls. I had no less than a half-dozen dear friends suggest gently that he and I weren’t good together, but I was scared and needy and stubborn.
I loved my husband but love was not the reason I married him. I married my husband because I was afraid that God would not provide me with the life that I longed for – a husband, home and children – if I didn’t marry the man in front of me at that time. I didn’t think anyone else would ever love me. I also was under the impression, growing up as a child of divorce, that two other truths were foundational. One, arguing is part of any relationship, and lots of it; and two, it is normal to have to beg for the affection of a man. And our relationship fit the bill. So I moved forward into marriage, even after giving myself the once-over in the mirror, wedding gown and all, and telling myself I could still walk away.
But I stubbornly walked that aisle on October 15, 1993, in front of family and friends and told God and my husband that no matter what, I would stay married to him for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no idea what would fall under the heading of “no matter what”.
We had one good year, maybe. I was happy. I felt secure. Our fighting had practically evaporated. I even remember telling people that the problem must’ve been the distance, because now that we were married, we almost never argued. But that couldn’t last forever, and it didn’t. Our honeymoon phase lasted about nine months. Then arguing ensued. And I was a yeller. I would go into rages that would leave me lying on our bed until I would sob myself to sleep. I felt controlled. I felt trapped.
I say this only to illustrate the depth of my pain, not to garner pity, but I began praying that God would kill me because I knew I could never leave my marriage. I knew I could not get a divorce. In my mind, it wasn’t that I was choosing not to, I literally felt it was not an option of mine. I prayed for my death. Daily.
Around the five-year mark, I began meeting with two women from church to go through a book on marriage. It was during this time with them that I shared not only the depth of my marriage pain and the frequency of our arguments, but the knowledge that alcohol was becoming the third party in our relationship. I thought they would be able to help me. I thought this was my answer. But as it turns out, people – through no fault of their own – do not always know how to handle this kind of thing. So I was given, repeatedly, a list of things to do to be a better wife. Pray more. Serve more. Have sex more. Cook more. Praise more. Respect more. Keep my mouth shut more. I felt patted on the head and sent back into the room after being told to try harder and keep taking on the chin whatever was being dished out, because I probably deserved it.
Maybe if I did all these things I’d become the kind of wife he wanted and needed and he’d stop drinking. That was my hope. Be the good wife, and he’ll choose me eventually. And if he doesn’t, it’s because I’m not a good enough wife. I felt that deep down for years.
More years passed of the same. Our two children grew. We were in and out of counseling (nine counselors all together). We were in and out of couples’ groups. I read practically every book on marriage ever written. I tried to do all the things I was told to do. But the arguing continued. The drinking would stop and start. The lies would sustain me for awhile. I would cry myself to sleep more nights than I can remember. And I died a little more each day.
This cannot possibly be what God had in mind for a Christian marriage, I would write in my journal time and again.
I filled in the gaping holes of my emotional life by pouring myself out into raising my children, writing books, starting a speaking ministry, and beginning the women’s ministry at my church, which I would go on to lead for ten years feeling like a hypocrite all the while. My life was full. I looked the part of the fulfilled (read: busy) Christian woman, wife, mother and servant, except for my dirty little secret… that my marriage was disintegrating. I was desperately sad and lonely almost all the time, and nothing I did to fix it was working.
Add to that, I felt trapped by my faith. I would beg God to help me and heal us, and it would feel like he wasn’t. And yet, in my heart I felt that to walk away from my marriage would be to disobey him, to fail him, to be in sin.
A fairly standard belief in Christian circles is that there are only two biblical reasons for divorce: if your spouse is unfaithful and if your spouse is not a believer and he abandons you.
My situation did not fit those criteria. I was stuck. So I resigned myself to make the best of the next fifty years. I would stay married for the rest of my life, and I would simply try to fill up my life the best I could and serve others and change the world and raise my kids and write some books and having a good marriage is overrated anyway.
In January of 2010, I took the bull by the horns, finally tired of my own pity party, and visited a new counselor with the express purpose of working on my anger. I don’t want my children to think of me as an angry woman, I told her. I explained my life circumstances, told her they wouldn’t be changing, so I needed her to teach me to not be angry all the time.
But that next month something changed in me through two pivotal conversations.
The first was with that counselor who introduced me to the Power & Control Wheel, and I quickly discovered that our relationship had been largely tainted by many forms of emotional abuse. This was brand new information for me. I felt like a fool, and yet I felt free all at the same time, watching pieces fall together in a way that finally made sense to me.
The second conversation was made up of one sentence that sealed my heart’s door firmly shut, even if I didn’t notice the depth of its impact at the time. I had felt it was time to tell our pre-teen children about their father’s drinking. One, I felt they needed to know it was genetic and they should stay away from alcohol; two, they were at the age that Alateen would be available to them if they wanted to try it; and three, they needed the tools to know they could choose not to get into a car with their father if he had been drinking. When I told my husband it was time, he said that if I told the kids about his drinking, going against his wishes, he threatened me. Though he was not threatening me physically, he broke me that day. He broke us.
If I have given the impression for even one moment that my husband was one hundred percent at fault for the brokenness we endured, I apologize. I was a broken little girl who more than likely had no business getting married in the first place and I hurt him in myriad ways every day of our marriage. I was not empathetic, I was not a support. I did not call out his dreams. I sat on the sidelines and cried and whined and criticized, more than I want to admit. Our marriage broke because we were both broken, bottomline.
End of Part 1 of 4
By Elisabeth Corcoran
Note: When a Christian marriage unravels, many questions rise to the surface. In this four-part series, Elisabeth Corcoran attempts to provide answers from the inside of the unraveling.
“It is impossible for me to shake you from my mind. Everywhere I turn, everything I see, everything I hear reminds me of you. Who am I fooling? I love you. I need you.”
Cut to…
”Irreconcilable differences have caused the irretrievable breakdown of their marriage. Past attempts at reconciliation have failed, and future attempts at reconciliation would be impracticable and not in the best interests of the family.”
A lot can happen in twenty years between a man and a woman.
My situation has left many scratching their heads, and from what I can tell, a few tongues wagging as well. And I don’t blame them. Because I love Jesus with my whole heart and I am allowing my marriage to end. And I am here to say that both can coincide within the same person.
I’ve held my marriage problems so close to the chest for so long – too long perhaps -- except for my inner circle and the random counselor. But I’m now at a fresh place of stripping off the layers for more of the world to see, I feel ready to answer questions that have been asked of me, and I’m willing to do so for a more public forum.
Oswald Chambers said, “There is no such thing as a private life, or a place to hide in this world, for a man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. God divides the private life of his saints and makes it a highway for the world on one hand and for himself on the other.” So since my life is apparently not my own as a follower of Christ, I am finding that the entire point of my struggles is to share with others how I made it through with the help of Jesus.
One woman wanted to know why I stayed in my hard marriage so long, because she doesn’t understand why God wouldn’t want me to be happy, and why I didn’t just do what was “right for me” a long time ago.
One woman wanted to know how I stayed in my hard marriage for so long, because she’s in one too, and sometimes feels like she can barely make it another day, let alone the rest of her lifetime.
And one woman wanted to know why I’m not staying in my marriage forever no matter what, because she believes there are a select few biblical reasons for divorce and she thinks my circumstances don’t fit the profile.
I have a feeling that there aren’t only three women who might like to ask these questions of any woman who calls herself a Christ-follower and is at the same time ending her marriage. I know I would. For every Christian divorce I’ve known about in the past fifteen years, I would’ve given anything to corner the wife for an hour and hear her story.
How did they get from point A to point B?, does she feel she’s doing the right thing? Can she still look God in the eye? All of that and more.
These are fair questions. And they deserve thoughtful, authentic, in-depth answers. In this four-part series, I will put forth my most honest attempts at answering them.
Please keep in mind before I begin that I can only speak for myself and not for anyone else. And though I love God and treasure Scripture as my personal truth source, I am not claiming that what I am about to say is God’s holy word for everyone’s situation. Only God can deem that for you, and my hope is that he does.
Before I jump in with answering those three questions though, I’m going to give some background on my marriage so you can see where I’m coming from.
My husband and I are both followers of Christ and have been since we were teenagers. Our courtship was rocky, filled with a lot of arguments, tears and long-distance phone calls. I had no less than a half-dozen dear friends suggest gently that he and I weren’t good together, but I was scared and needy and stubborn.
I loved my husband but love was not the reason I married him. I married my husband because I was afraid that God would not provide me with the life that I longed for – a husband, home and children – if I didn’t marry the man in front of me at that time. I didn’t think anyone else would ever love me. I also was under the impression, growing up as a child of divorce, that two other truths were foundational. One, arguing is part of any relationship, and lots of it; and two, it is normal to have to beg for the affection of a man. And our relationship fit the bill. So I moved forward into marriage, even after giving myself the once-over in the mirror, wedding gown and all, and telling myself I could still walk away.
But I stubbornly walked that aisle on October 15, 1993, in front of family and friends and told God and my husband that no matter what, I would stay married to him for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no idea what would fall under the heading of “no matter what”.
We had one good year, maybe. I was happy. I felt secure. Our fighting had practically evaporated. I even remember telling people that the problem must’ve been the distance, because now that we were married, we almost never argued. But that couldn’t last forever, and it didn’t. Our honeymoon phase lasted about nine months. Then arguing ensued. And I was a yeller. I would go into rages that would leave me lying on our bed until I would sob myself to sleep. I felt controlled. I felt trapped.
I say this only to illustrate the depth of my pain, not to garner pity, but I began praying that God would kill me because I knew I could never leave my marriage. I knew I could not get a divorce. In my mind, it wasn’t that I was choosing not to, I literally felt it was not an option of mine. I prayed for my death. Daily.
Around the five-year mark, I began meeting with two women from church to go through a book on marriage. It was during this time with them that I shared not only the depth of my marriage pain and the frequency of our arguments, but the knowledge that alcohol was becoming the third party in our relationship. I thought they would be able to help me. I thought this was my answer. But as it turns out, people – through no fault of their own – do not always know how to handle this kind of thing. So I was given, repeatedly, a list of things to do to be a better wife. Pray more. Serve more. Have sex more. Cook more. Praise more. Respect more. Keep my mouth shut more. I felt patted on the head and sent back into the room after being told to try harder and keep taking on the chin whatever was being dished out, because I probably deserved it.
Maybe if I did all these things I’d become the kind of wife he wanted and needed and he’d stop drinking. That was my hope. Be the good wife, and he’ll choose me eventually. And if he doesn’t, it’s because I’m not a good enough wife. I felt that deep down for years.
More years passed of the same. Our two children grew. We were in and out of counseling (nine counselors all together). We were in and out of couples’ groups. I read practically every book on marriage ever written. I tried to do all the things I was told to do. But the arguing continued. The drinking would stop and start. The lies would sustain me for awhile. I would cry myself to sleep more nights than I can remember. And I died a little more each day.
This cannot possibly be what God had in mind for a Christian marriage, I would write in my journal time and again.
I filled in the gaping holes of my emotional life by pouring myself out into raising my children, writing books, starting a speaking ministry, and beginning the women’s ministry at my church, which I would go on to lead for ten years feeling like a hypocrite all the while. My life was full. I looked the part of the fulfilled (read: busy) Christian woman, wife, mother and servant, except for my dirty little secret… that my marriage was disintegrating. I was desperately sad and lonely almost all the time, and nothing I did to fix it was working.
Add to that, I felt trapped by my faith. I would beg God to help me and heal us, and it would feel like he wasn’t. And yet, in my heart I felt that to walk away from my marriage would be to disobey him, to fail him, to be in sin.
A fairly standard belief in Christian circles is that there are only two biblical reasons for divorce: if your spouse is unfaithful and if your spouse is not a believer and he abandons you.
My situation did not fit those criteria. I was stuck. So I resigned myself to make the best of the next fifty years. I would stay married for the rest of my life, and I would simply try to fill up my life the best I could and serve others and change the world and raise my kids and write some books and having a good marriage is overrated anyway.
In January of 2010, I took the bull by the horns, finally tired of my own pity party, and visited a new counselor with the express purpose of working on my anger. I don’t want my children to think of me as an angry woman, I told her. I explained my life circumstances, told her they wouldn’t be changing, so I needed her to teach me to not be angry all the time.
But that next month something changed in me through two pivotal conversations.
The first was with that counselor who introduced me to the Power & Control Wheel, and I quickly discovered that our relationship had been largely tainted by many forms of emotional abuse. This was brand new information for me. I felt like a fool, and yet I felt free all at the same time, watching pieces fall together in a way that finally made sense to me.
The second conversation was made up of one sentence that sealed my heart’s door firmly shut, even if I didn’t notice the depth of its impact at the time. I had felt it was time to tell our pre-teen children about their father’s drinking. One, I felt they needed to know it was genetic and they should stay away from alcohol; two, they were at the age that Alateen would be available to them if they wanted to try it; and three, they needed the tools to know they could choose not to get into a car with their father if he had been drinking. When I told my husband it was time, he said that if I told the kids about his drinking, going against his wishes, he threatened me. Though he was not threatening me physically, he broke me that day. He broke us.
If I have given the impression for even one moment that my husband was one hundred percent at fault for the brokenness we endured, I apologize. I was a broken little girl who more than likely had no business getting married in the first place and I hurt him in myriad ways every day of our marriage. I was not empathetic, I was not a support. I did not call out his dreams. I sat on the sidelines and cried and whined and criticized, more than I want to admit. Our marriage broke because we were both broken, bottomline.
End of Part 1 of 4
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Sleeping Together and Christ's Global Cause
Note: Here is a great article on a subject lots of people are asking. Although the answer is simple, the way the answer is given is what makes this article worth the time invested to read it.
Sleeping Together and Christ's Global Cause
Ray Pritchard
Keep Believing Ministries
I received an email from a man who asked a very particular question. He is a Christian, divorced, and in his forties. He met a Christian woman who seems to be an answer to prayer. Over time they have fallen in love and hope to get married eventually. But they can't marry right now because of financial reasons. Meanwhile they have started having sex together. He used the term "being intimate" to describe it.
"We have been intimate and are feeling guilty that we DON’T feel convicted by the Holy Spirit that it has been wrong."
He goes on to say they waited to have sex until they knew they were in love. Here is his question put another way:
“Why do we not feel convicted by the Holy Spirit but do feel convicted by people? People make us feel guilty but at the same time, the Lord has blessed us and used us in some truly amazing ways."
He wants to know if there is a different standard for premarital sex for those who are divorced. After all, they aren’t virgins anymore. They’ve both been married before so their sex is not “premarital” in the literal sense of never having had sex before. They don’t want to lose the intimacy they have enjoyed.
So why would God forbid sex before marriage when you’ve
been married in the past, had sex, and have children? And why don’t they feel guilty?
The email says (and I do not doubt) that they have struggled with this issue. He says they are not just young adults looking for a free pass to have sex. For the first time they both feel they have found a partner that they love and enjoy in every way.
So why shouldn’t two adult Christians who happen to be divorced and have fallen in love—why shouldn’t they sleep together?
There are many ways to answer that question. My own answer begins in a way that may surprise you, but I hope you will read through all the way to the end.
My Answer to This Question
Dear Friend,
Thanks for your note. I appreciate your forthrightness in writing so openly. Many people would not be as honest as you are. I thought a great deal about the question you raised and decided that I would answer you the same way I would answer an old friend. I want to shoot straight with you and say exactly what I would say if we were old and dear friends and had gone to high school together. Please know that I am not upset with you nor do I have a frown on my face. You have asked a good question that deserves an honest answer.
If we were lifetime friends, I would say something like this:
1) It doesn’t really matter whether or not you and your lady friend (for lack of a better term) sleep together. In the great cosmic scheme of things, it just doesn’t matter. Compared with the economic crisis, Russia’s invasion of Georgia, a national election coming up, and soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, on one level, it just doesn’t matter whether or not two people sleep together. It’s not a big deal. The world goes on spinning whether you guys sleep together or whether you don’t. Odd place for me to begin, but it is undoubtedly true.
2) The world certainly expects that if you love each other, you will sleep together. People assume that in some discreet way, having fallen in love, two people in their forties will have sex.
3) And even in the Christian world, there is a great deal of winking at this point. I am not naive about this. I understand that Christian singles sometimes date and then have sex. I don’t approve of this nor do I think it is wise, but I cannot deny the reality. Not that every Christian couple in your situation sleeps together, but it does happen.
4) And that leads to the point about your friends making you feel guilty. How do they even know? Do the two of you talk about it? This isn’t a spectator sport.
5) I’m not surprised that the two of you enjoy being intimate. “Being intimate” makes fornication sound romantic. Words mean something. “Being intimate” seems a lot more acceptable than “fornication."
6) There is a great deal of biblical support for regarding sex as a gracious gift from God, meant for procreation and as part of what it means to become “one flesh." God designed sex for our enjoyment—but only within marriage (Genesis 2:24-25; Hebrews 13:4). Fire in the fireplace is a good thing. Outside the fireplace, that same fire will burn down the house. It’s not wrong to have sex and it’s certainly not wrong to enjoy it. And of course, if you have sex with someone you care about, you’ll enjoy it and feel good about it. That’s how God wired up the situation.
7) But your feelings don’t matter in this case. They just don’t matter because they will always lead you back to the bedroom.
8) I gather that your real issue is, “Why don’t we feel convicted by the Holy Spirit?” But I think you do or else why would you write me? And why would you take the time to justify yourself? You don’t write and say, “I am convicted that I spent too much time cheering for the US team to win the women’s water polo gold medal.” No, the very fact that you write is more or less the answer to your question.
9) Here’s something you may not have thought about. You say the Holy Spirit hasn’t convicted you but maybe he has. God often speaks to us through the witness of the church. And it sounds as if the church—the great Christian church—has spoken through your friends who have made you feel guilty. God often uses others to speak to us when we can’t clearly hear his voice any other way.
10) If you are truly in love, then get married and make it legal. Those are basically the rules we all have to follow. Not just the Bible rules, but the common rules of the Christian faith. To be sure, lots of people break the rules but they remain in force.
11) Don’t say, “Hey, I’ve got money issues so I can’t get married now but I still want to have sex.” It doesn’t work that way. You can’t rewrite the rulebook to satisfy your own desires.
No Time to Mess Around
But there is a deeper issue at work here. When I read your note, I was reminded of a book I read 25 years ago. It was a story about how many Jews in Romania were saved from the Holocaust by some Romanian friends who spirited them out of the country at great personal risk. Here is the part I recall most vividly. The heroine of the book was a beautiful young woman, well placed in the country, a friend of powerful people, who took up the cause of the Jews as her own. Time and again she risked everything to save them. Somewhere along the way she met and fell in love with a gallant young man who joined her in her mission. They were nearly caught and captured again and again. It was clear that they were falling in love with each other. And on some level, you kept thinking they would sleep together. But they never did. Not once. And the reason given was something like this. “Our work in saving the Jews is so important that our own desires must never interfere.” And it never did. They never slept together. Not even one time. The cause they served captured all their attention, and they knew that they had no time to have sex. And that’s why they didn’t. It wasn’t biblical at all—their reasoning, I mean. Yet it was immensely biblical.
I thought of that book for the first time in many years when I read your note. I think the meaning is, “As long as you and your friend have time to think about sleeping together, you aren’t serving the right cause.” I dare to venture that Christ and his Kingdom simply have not captured your heart. When Christ’s global cause and serving others in his name becomes your priority, you won’t have time or energy to think about sleeping together. Or you may think about it, but the higher calling will overrule your desires.
There is a huge truth for you to consider. I can say, “Don’t sleep together,” and you either will or you won’t. I don’t have the power to compel obedience. You and your lady friend have some important decisions to make. As I said, I have spoken to you this way as if we were lifetime friends because among friends you can be blunt. When I said, it doesn’t matter, I meant it. Who’s going to know if you sleep with her tonight? Not me. I don’t know and don’t want to know. The world rolls on, assumes that two people in love will sleep together, and the church sometimes looks the other way and too often shrugs its shoulders. I simply say, find a higher cause and give your energies to that cause so unreservedly that you will prize that cause above your own earthly desires.
Symptoms vs. Root Issues
We need to distinguish between causes and symptoms. Sleeping together is a symptom. It’s not the root issue. The deeper issue is committing yourself unreservedly to Christ’s great global cause to bring Good News to everyone, everywhere. Last week one of the presidential candidates said that America’s great failing is that we have lost the concept of giving ourselves to a cause greater than our own self-interest. He’s right. And in the church somehow we have lost sight of the incredible adventure of serving Christ with nothing held back—to be so consumed in the Lord and his holy cause that lesser things fall away.
It comes down to this. Do I believe that the rules of life were made for my ultimate benefit? If so, then I’ll find a way to live by those rules and wait until I get married to have to have sex. And no one—not the teenagers who fool around on a date nor the divorced guy and gal who feel very attracted to each other and enjoy “being intimate”—will successfully say no unless they have a higher reason to do so. My advice is, find that higher reason in Christ and his great global cause. Give yourself with unrestrained passion to helping others in Jesus’ name.
I do not doubt that you and your lady friend truly love each other. If that is true, my counsel is, Don’t wait!
Don’t wait to serve the Lord.
Don’t wait to give all that you have for a cause greater than yourself.
Don’t wait to follow Christ wherever he leads.
When your heart is captured by a higher calling, you won’t have to write and ask me, "Should we be sleeping together?" You just won’t do it.
Nothing Better to Do
There is much more that could be said about setting proper boundaries, building hedges, finding accountability, and so on. I am putting all that aside to stress the central issue of your heart. I leave you with one final thought.
We sin because we don’t have anything better to do.
Ponder that for a while. This applies not just to sexual sin but to gluttony, pride, sloth, envy, bitterness, and every other evil inclination. We sin because we are bored and can’t think of anything better to do. As long as we are bored, we will justify anything we can think of simply to keep us occupied. Remember that David sinned with Bathsheba precisely because he had nothing better to do. He stayed home when it was the time of year when kings go out to war (2 Samuel 11:1). We focus on the adultery, but that was the result of his own boredom. He didn’t have anything better to do that night, he took a walk, he saw Bathsheba, and the rest is history.
We sin because we don’t have anything better to do.
Right now you don’t have anything better to do so of course the two of you sleep together. But how can you do that when the world is dying, millions are suffering, and people everywhere need the Lord? Why do you lie in bed with your lady friend when the King has called for you?
Many years ago we used to sing the old campfire song, "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus." One verse in particular comes to mind:
The world behind me, the cross before me.
The world behind me, the cross before me.
The world behind me, the cross before me.
No turning back, no turning back.
If the cross is before you and the world behind you, there will be no turning back. When your heart is consumed with the pleasure of knowing Christ supremely, sleeping together won’t seem so appealing. Until that happens, until the eyes of your heart are opened, nothing I say can make much difference.
I started off by saying that it doesn’t matter. And I stand by that—in the sense that the world isn’t waiting to find out whether or not you are sleeping with a woman before you are married. The world thinks you are—and doesn’t worry about it. But on a deeper level, it matters greatly because what you do or don’t do sets a course for your own life. We don’t have two different standards—one for our teenagers and one for our divorced adults who fall in love with each other. It’s one standard across the board. What you do impacts your walk with God, your relationship with each other, the standard you set for your own children, and your testimony to other believers who may struggle in this area.
Finally, it matters to the world because the world is waiting and watching to see if what we believe makes any difference in the way we live. If we live like the world, how will the world ever see the true life-changing power of Jesus Christ?
I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t date your lady friend or that you shouldn’t someday get married. But for the moment, that is not the issue. The greater matter is the state of your own heart and your commitment to Christ’s cause in the world. Ask God for a new vision, new eyes, a new heart and new desires. Ask the Lord to replace the boredom of your heart with an unquenchable passion for him.
I have actually quoted any Scripture verses because it’s not about this verse or that verse. But if you want one, here it is. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33). I urge you to join the great band of Kingdom-seekers who for the sake of Christ have committed themselves to his global cause. Do that and in his time, everything else will be yours.
I have spoken to you as a friend to a friend. I hope these thoughts are helpful.
Sleeping Together and Christ's Global Cause
Ray Pritchard
Keep Believing Ministries
I received an email from a man who asked a very particular question. He is a Christian, divorced, and in his forties. He met a Christian woman who seems to be an answer to prayer. Over time they have fallen in love and hope to get married eventually. But they can't marry right now because of financial reasons. Meanwhile they have started having sex together. He used the term "being intimate" to describe it.
"We have been intimate and are feeling guilty that we DON’T feel convicted by the Holy Spirit that it has been wrong."
He goes on to say they waited to have sex until they knew they were in love. Here is his question put another way:
“Why do we not feel convicted by the Holy Spirit but do feel convicted by people? People make us feel guilty but at the same time, the Lord has blessed us and used us in some truly amazing ways."
He wants to know if there is a different standard for premarital sex for those who are divorced. After all, they aren’t virgins anymore. They’ve both been married before so their sex is not “premarital” in the literal sense of never having had sex before. They don’t want to lose the intimacy they have enjoyed.
So why would God forbid sex before marriage when you’ve
been married in the past, had sex, and have children? And why don’t they feel guilty?
The email says (and I do not doubt) that they have struggled with this issue. He says they are not just young adults looking for a free pass to have sex. For the first time they both feel they have found a partner that they love and enjoy in every way.
So why shouldn’t two adult Christians who happen to be divorced and have fallen in love—why shouldn’t they sleep together?
There are many ways to answer that question. My own answer begins in a way that may surprise you, but I hope you will read through all the way to the end.
My Answer to This Question
Dear Friend,
Thanks for your note. I appreciate your forthrightness in writing so openly. Many people would not be as honest as you are. I thought a great deal about the question you raised and decided that I would answer you the same way I would answer an old friend. I want to shoot straight with you and say exactly what I would say if we were old and dear friends and had gone to high school together. Please know that I am not upset with you nor do I have a frown on my face. You have asked a good question that deserves an honest answer.
If we were lifetime friends, I would say something like this:
1) It doesn’t really matter whether or not you and your lady friend (for lack of a better term) sleep together. In the great cosmic scheme of things, it just doesn’t matter. Compared with the economic crisis, Russia’s invasion of Georgia, a national election coming up, and soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, on one level, it just doesn’t matter whether or not two people sleep together. It’s not a big deal. The world goes on spinning whether you guys sleep together or whether you don’t. Odd place for me to begin, but it is undoubtedly true.
2) The world certainly expects that if you love each other, you will sleep together. People assume that in some discreet way, having fallen in love, two people in their forties will have sex.
3) And even in the Christian world, there is a great deal of winking at this point. I am not naive about this. I understand that Christian singles sometimes date and then have sex. I don’t approve of this nor do I think it is wise, but I cannot deny the reality. Not that every Christian couple in your situation sleeps together, but it does happen.
4) And that leads to the point about your friends making you feel guilty. How do they even know? Do the two of you talk about it? This isn’t a spectator sport.
5) I’m not surprised that the two of you enjoy being intimate. “Being intimate” makes fornication sound romantic. Words mean something. “Being intimate” seems a lot more acceptable than “fornication."
6) There is a great deal of biblical support for regarding sex as a gracious gift from God, meant for procreation and as part of what it means to become “one flesh." God designed sex for our enjoyment—but only within marriage (Genesis 2:24-25; Hebrews 13:4). Fire in the fireplace is a good thing. Outside the fireplace, that same fire will burn down the house. It’s not wrong to have sex and it’s certainly not wrong to enjoy it. And of course, if you have sex with someone you care about, you’ll enjoy it and feel good about it. That’s how God wired up the situation.
7) But your feelings don’t matter in this case. They just don’t matter because they will always lead you back to the bedroom.
8) I gather that your real issue is, “Why don’t we feel convicted by the Holy Spirit?” But I think you do or else why would you write me? And why would you take the time to justify yourself? You don’t write and say, “I am convicted that I spent too much time cheering for the US team to win the women’s water polo gold medal.” No, the very fact that you write is more or less the answer to your question.
9) Here’s something you may not have thought about. You say the Holy Spirit hasn’t convicted you but maybe he has. God often speaks to us through the witness of the church. And it sounds as if the church—the great Christian church—has spoken through your friends who have made you feel guilty. God often uses others to speak to us when we can’t clearly hear his voice any other way.
10) If you are truly in love, then get married and make it legal. Those are basically the rules we all have to follow. Not just the Bible rules, but the common rules of the Christian faith. To be sure, lots of people break the rules but they remain in force.
11) Don’t say, “Hey, I’ve got money issues so I can’t get married now but I still want to have sex.” It doesn’t work that way. You can’t rewrite the rulebook to satisfy your own desires.
No Time to Mess Around
But there is a deeper issue at work here. When I read your note, I was reminded of a book I read 25 years ago. It was a story about how many Jews in Romania were saved from the Holocaust by some Romanian friends who spirited them out of the country at great personal risk. Here is the part I recall most vividly. The heroine of the book was a beautiful young woman, well placed in the country, a friend of powerful people, who took up the cause of the Jews as her own. Time and again she risked everything to save them. Somewhere along the way she met and fell in love with a gallant young man who joined her in her mission. They were nearly caught and captured again and again. It was clear that they were falling in love with each other. And on some level, you kept thinking they would sleep together. But they never did. Not once. And the reason given was something like this. “Our work in saving the Jews is so important that our own desires must never interfere.” And it never did. They never slept together. Not even one time. The cause they served captured all their attention, and they knew that they had no time to have sex. And that’s why they didn’t. It wasn’t biblical at all—their reasoning, I mean. Yet it was immensely biblical.
I thought of that book for the first time in many years when I read your note. I think the meaning is, “As long as you and your friend have time to think about sleeping together, you aren’t serving the right cause.” I dare to venture that Christ and his Kingdom simply have not captured your heart. When Christ’s global cause and serving others in his name becomes your priority, you won’t have time or energy to think about sleeping together. Or you may think about it, but the higher calling will overrule your desires.
There is a huge truth for you to consider. I can say, “Don’t sleep together,” and you either will or you won’t. I don’t have the power to compel obedience. You and your lady friend have some important decisions to make. As I said, I have spoken to you this way as if we were lifetime friends because among friends you can be blunt. When I said, it doesn’t matter, I meant it. Who’s going to know if you sleep with her tonight? Not me. I don’t know and don’t want to know. The world rolls on, assumes that two people in love will sleep together, and the church sometimes looks the other way and too often shrugs its shoulders. I simply say, find a higher cause and give your energies to that cause so unreservedly that you will prize that cause above your own earthly desires.
Symptoms vs. Root Issues
We need to distinguish between causes and symptoms. Sleeping together is a symptom. It’s not the root issue. The deeper issue is committing yourself unreservedly to Christ’s great global cause to bring Good News to everyone, everywhere. Last week one of the presidential candidates said that America’s great failing is that we have lost the concept of giving ourselves to a cause greater than our own self-interest. He’s right. And in the church somehow we have lost sight of the incredible adventure of serving Christ with nothing held back—to be so consumed in the Lord and his holy cause that lesser things fall away.
It comes down to this. Do I believe that the rules of life were made for my ultimate benefit? If so, then I’ll find a way to live by those rules and wait until I get married to have to have sex. And no one—not the teenagers who fool around on a date nor the divorced guy and gal who feel very attracted to each other and enjoy “being intimate”—will successfully say no unless they have a higher reason to do so. My advice is, find that higher reason in Christ and his great global cause. Give yourself with unrestrained passion to helping others in Jesus’ name.
I do not doubt that you and your lady friend truly love each other. If that is true, my counsel is, Don’t wait!
Don’t wait to serve the Lord.
Don’t wait to give all that you have for a cause greater than yourself.
Don’t wait to follow Christ wherever he leads.
When your heart is captured by a higher calling, you won’t have to write and ask me, "Should we be sleeping together?" You just won’t do it.
Nothing Better to Do
There is much more that could be said about setting proper boundaries, building hedges, finding accountability, and so on. I am putting all that aside to stress the central issue of your heart. I leave you with one final thought.
We sin because we don’t have anything better to do.
Ponder that for a while. This applies not just to sexual sin but to gluttony, pride, sloth, envy, bitterness, and every other evil inclination. We sin because we are bored and can’t think of anything better to do. As long as we are bored, we will justify anything we can think of simply to keep us occupied. Remember that David sinned with Bathsheba precisely because he had nothing better to do. He stayed home when it was the time of year when kings go out to war (2 Samuel 11:1). We focus on the adultery, but that was the result of his own boredom. He didn’t have anything better to do that night, he took a walk, he saw Bathsheba, and the rest is history.
We sin because we don’t have anything better to do.
Right now you don’t have anything better to do so of course the two of you sleep together. But how can you do that when the world is dying, millions are suffering, and people everywhere need the Lord? Why do you lie in bed with your lady friend when the King has called for you?
Many years ago we used to sing the old campfire song, "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus." One verse in particular comes to mind:
The world behind me, the cross before me.
The world behind me, the cross before me.
The world behind me, the cross before me.
No turning back, no turning back.
If the cross is before you and the world behind you, there will be no turning back. When your heart is consumed with the pleasure of knowing Christ supremely, sleeping together won’t seem so appealing. Until that happens, until the eyes of your heart are opened, nothing I say can make much difference.
I started off by saying that it doesn’t matter. And I stand by that—in the sense that the world isn’t waiting to find out whether or not you are sleeping with a woman before you are married. The world thinks you are—and doesn’t worry about it. But on a deeper level, it matters greatly because what you do or don’t do sets a course for your own life. We don’t have two different standards—one for our teenagers and one for our divorced adults who fall in love with each other. It’s one standard across the board. What you do impacts your walk with God, your relationship with each other, the standard you set for your own children, and your testimony to other believers who may struggle in this area.
Finally, it matters to the world because the world is waiting and watching to see if what we believe makes any difference in the way we live. If we live like the world, how will the world ever see the true life-changing power of Jesus Christ?
I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t date your lady friend or that you shouldn’t someday get married. But for the moment, that is not the issue. The greater matter is the state of your own heart and your commitment to Christ’s cause in the world. Ask God for a new vision, new eyes, a new heart and new desires. Ask the Lord to replace the boredom of your heart with an unquenchable passion for him.
I have actually quoted any Scripture verses because it’s not about this verse or that verse. But if you want one, here it is. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33). I urge you to join the great band of Kingdom-seekers who for the sake of Christ have committed themselves to his global cause. Do that and in his time, everything else will be yours.
I have spoken to you as a friend to a friend. I hope these thoughts are helpful.
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