For some who have had divorce forced upon them this act of violence is going to change everything for them. A double-income household will have created at least one single-income household, someone may be thrust back into the workforce, and often times a wife who has been a faithful homemaker and mother finds herself looking for a job to make ends meet. A person who has experienced the trauma of a cheating spouse will want to crawl into a proverbial hole and hide from life and the world with a heart so racked with pain and disillusionment they don’t know how they can even go on let alone have hope, joy and peace restored to their lives. Divorce is not something to treated flippantly or even like a societal norm, it hurts people, it often wounds the innocent and unaware, it impacts children, it breaks hearts, it damages people and culture.
I want to address a few things here for those who have suffered the violence of divorce as a Christian. One of them is to remember that you have an identity in Christ that is separate from marriage and distinct only to you. God has a plan for your individual life regardless of marital status. Embracing that calling and plan will help turn the wound of divorce into the scar of divorce and while there is a season of emotional and mental incapacitation, pain, and sorrow, there is still a purpose for your life in God’s economy that you need to pursue and embrace. Remember, every person will give an account someday of what they did with their life as an individual. What they did for God’s kingdom and glory, not just as a wife, husband, mom, or dad but as a Christian individual. Divorce does so much to wound a person’s soul that this becomes easy to forget and a sense of value can often be denigrated to a sense of personal worthlessness. There is also an area to be mindful of and that is a state of continual anger that overshadows the desire to serve God and fulfill your role as an individual in His plan. Much like when a person experiences the trauma of losing a loved one there are normal and natural reactions to the trauma. However, if someone fails to progress from the initial stages of grief and move from denial, anger, depression, guilt, and yearning to the final stage of grief which is acceptance after some time has passed, then the normal reaction of early grief and trauma has taken over and progress in transition froma wound to scar is halted. As it pertains to divorce denial and anger are normal initial responses but you must guard against them becoming dominant life-long prisons that keep you incapacitated and unable to Dance with the Scars of divorce. Divorce is violent, it hurts like few other things in life, it is brutally unfair often and often puts the victim of unfaithfulness into the double jeopardy of having to not only deal with the anger and grief but also make unwanted adjustments to personal life goals and dreams. This can fuel a perpetual state of anger and must be avoided.
Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing.Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. – Psalm 100:2-3
I am all for support groups and the efforts of this who have targeted areas of ministry. I also believe that as a Spirit filled Christian there is a connection between serving God and gladness or joy. The divorce support group has it’s place in dealing with wound care but the goal must always be to transition to scarred living and as a Christian living includes serving. This is not to say that doing something for God will keep you pain free but it is to say that letting the devil isolate us into a lack of service compounds an already painful situation. Remember, this book is about getting through the wounds of life and living a life that is able to Dance with the accumulated Scars we all endure. The specific details may be different but the one common denominator among them all is that God is your help, He has given you, through His word, all things pertaining to life and godliness and those very things are applicable in all circumstances that create wounds in our lives. We would all readily recognize how good it feels to do something selfless, to meet the need of a desperate person, to feed the homeless, clothe the poor, all of these things “feel good.” I was talking with a man in my office who was enduring terrible emotional pain and sorrow due to a family situation and he had come to me to tell me he was feeling like he couldn’t serve God anymore as his heart was too heavy, too sorrowful. I had the opportunity to remind him that we serve God because He is worthy and while we all need seasons of rest and moments of reflection and even time to heal of physical and emotional suffering, completely ceasing our service to God is the worst thing for our spiritual health. We could well say that “Serving the Lord with gladness” tell us that gladness comes through serving the Lord.
As we have mentioned repeatedly everyone handles the stages of grief differently some move through five stages quickly, others more slowly, some repeat phases they moved out of and others move through one phase quicker than another. there is no right way to do grief including the grief of divorce. There are, however, wrong things that can be done when life inflicts its wounds upon us and the hope of this and every chapter is to avoid compounding already painful circumstances that can cause someone to stall out in the grief process and remain wounded and never become a functional, though scarred, person. These are tools we are discussing in each chapter, they don’t always feel good or make sense or to some, might even seem foolish or useless. Listen, hurting friend, I have not sought out the latest and greatest cultural gurus to tell you how to feel better or move forward. We are looking to the creator of all things through His word to find present help in times of need. Self-help gurus can be wrong, but God never is so I will strive to share with us all the counsel of God on all matters that create wounds and scars.
Excerpt from “Dancing With the Scars” now available on Amazon.
