A Personal and Honest Conversation of Marital Struggle
There are places we find ourselves in life that, no matter how hard we try, that in the moment we just cannot understand. That’s the reality I’ve been existing in recently. My whole life has been turned on its head. My wife and I had made it to almost five years of marriage; struggling, but happy, and with seemingly no end in sight. And then (the dreaded “and then”) it happened. It was like a sneak attack; like someone planted a time bomb and then decided to drop an atomic bomb, and as if dealing with the mushroom cloud and subsequent aftermath wasn’t enough, then the time bomb decided to detonate in the middle of it all. In a story that is too long to tell here, between a miscarriage, a lost job, lack of steady income, and childhood PTSD, what had felt like was a solid marriage with its own unique flaws became a radioactive wasteland.
At the time of my writing this, I really don’t know just what she or I or we together could have done to prepare for this. There are simply some things that two people who love each other just cannot predict or expect. The short story is this: we haven’t been the same since, and as things have continued to build and pressure continues to rise, misunderstanding, miscommunication, hurt, anguish, and anxiety have taken the place where deep love, joy, and intimacy once thrived. Now, instead of sharing a bedroom, bank accounts, video games, and favorite tv shows, instead, we’re living separated in hopes that we can heal this, but also in fear our marriage may have seen its final days.
As I write this I am aware, as you should be, that this is only my half of the story; but from where I stand, in the brokenness of my own humanity, I feel like a man exiled from my own home, left in silence with nothing more than memories, fears, and questions — and hopes, but with little else to act on but my vowes and the condition of my heart, which is admittedly broken and hurting. It should also be said that I am by no means placing sole blame on my wife. There are things we have both contributed to, and things completely and solidly out of our control. I have no interest in pointing fingers. I’m just wrestling through the grief of it all.
Speaking of grief, nobody told me how all of the stages of grief can hit all at the same time or how they would intermittently reveal themselves in the most inconvenient of times. Try having an emotional meltdown before walking into Walmart. It’s fun, I promise. Denial — I will always vividly remember weeping into a pillow before God, and then again with streaming tears emptying myself before my wife with the phrase, “I cannot believe this is even happening.” Sadness, anger, fear, acceptance — I’ve become more acquainted with these emotions than I am with some of my closest friends. I am so afraid of this road that I’m on, but I have no choice — I’m on it, and I’m terrified about where it seems to be leading, namely, divorce. It’s like a river that you know ends in a hundred-foot drop — you can try to swim the other way, but you’re powerless to change where that water is destined to go. You need someone to rescue you before heading over the edge to your death.
I have several concerned friends, my wife included, who love and care about me and who know that I am struggling, who just want this to be over. “God doesn’t expect you to suffer,” I’ve heard. “I just don’t want you to keep hurting.” “You’re wounded — come home.” I appreciate those sentiments. I really do, because buried in them is the understanding that I’m hurting and I’m going to continue to hurt until this is either resolved or it’s over, and being over is the simplest, quickest way to end the suffering and to begin to heal the wounds. I won’t attempt to minimize how tempting or comforting the idea of ending the daily suffering and attending to my own wounds actually is — divorce makes things a lot simpler in a way, and could perhaps shorten the road to recovery. But is that what I want? Moreover — is it true that God doesn’t expect me to suffer?
This is a lot easier to answer if you don’t believe in God or if marriage is just one in a litany of human relationships that are simply the result of chemicals, words you recite on a special day, or a certificate the government gives you for tax purposes. If marriage is just two people who have agreed to share living spaces, finances, and sex for an indeterminant amount of time, the incentive to suffer through massively difficult times together with your spouse may be nothing more than child support or pressure from family or culture. This is not to say people who reject a belief in God don’t have meaningful, long-lasting, hardship enduring relationships with their spouses; and with those people I share the very same sentiments about my spouse that continually brings me back to her — I love her — but there’s more to my marriage, and to marriage in general than what our world and our culture would like to bring to bear upon it. Interwoven into marriage is an image unlike any other that is on display for the entire universe: an image of the Gospel.
Either knowingly or unknowingly, husbands and wives for all of human history have had the privilege and great responsibility of modeling out the redeeming nature of Christ’s love for His church. Regarding our relationships with other people, Paul says in Ephesians 5:1–2, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Expanding on this thought he says particularly about husbands in verses 22–33,
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”
and in verse 32 Paul writes about the ‘mystery’ of marriage,
“‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
As a husband, whether my wife is near to me or far away, my position, privilege, and responsibility is to love her the same way Jesus loves me — and that includes suffering. Paul later writes in Philippians 2:5–8
“Have this mind amongst yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant…and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Our husband, the church’s husband, Jesus, counted the redemption of his erring children, people who had rejected and become enemies with God, and bringing them back into fellowship with himself worthy of wedding himself to our sin, bearing the weight of that cross, and suffering to the most bitter end. This is the Gospel — the very same gospel that marriage was designed to image and emulate; an institution crafted by God to remind the whole world what His Son had done and continues to do: desperately loving and reconciling sinful people to God. Let’s just sit under the weight of that for a moment. God allows us to imitate that and to share in the redemption of the world. It’s both universal in its application but deeply personal at the same time. This Gospel is worthy of husbands and wives suffering together through some of the most difficult things life will throw at them. It’s rehearsing a love the world doesn’t understand — agape love — a love that is self-sacrificing and worthy to endure, even to the most bitter of ends.
This is why God hates divorce — it’s a denial of God’s unending faithfulness to His covenant people. Divorce and separation are more than just painful ideas for me to contemplate or go through; they’re hard for me to fathom because this woman who I love deeply, who I enjoy, and whose soul I desperately care for — she was given to me by God to be my gospel pursuit, someone I am called to suffer and struggle with, and whenever is called for, to pursuit reconciliation to. Because of Christ, she is worthy of endurance, patience, and longsuffering through vast amounts of personal struggle and anguish for the hope that we can be together once again. I find it difficult to imagine a day when I have to sign my name to a document that basically for all intents and purposes says, “my faithfulness to you ends today.” I want to be faithful to her because God has been faithful to me.
But despite my deep love for her and my longing to bring the Gospel to bear in our marriage, there is nothing either she or I can do to heal the deep wounds we both feel right now. I can only speak for myself in saying that even if we do somehow survive this, we have a long road ahead and a lot of work to do to move past what has happened. But that’s a road I am willing and desire to walk with her, hand in hand. Our God is more powerful than any miscarriage, mental illness, trauma, financial difficulty, miscommunication, or any other brokenness the world has to throw at us and he is mighty to heal even the deepest wounds that shame and fear can ever create.
I’m writing this just twenty-four days before our fifth anniversary. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t really see past today right now, but I’m trusting in our sovereign God and His steadfast love toward us to see both of us through the whatever lies before us. Even if ultimately divorce does happen, there is still limitless grace, there is still healing, and there is still hope for reconciliation. My prayer is, that whatever the outcome, the cross and Christ are magnified beyond measure. I’m resting and waiting on the only one who has all of the answers; our only rescue is Christ.
