Let me start with a confession. I am on my second marriage. For many reasons, I don’t consider my first marriage as valid. It wasn’t a covenant of man and woman with God, but rather an empty covenant with tradition. The other party wasn’t even sober during our ceremony. I didn’t know that at the time. And what is even more important… I did not know God and Christ and had no idea what marriage was. What we did was not what God designed, and it fell apart quickly. I fought to save it, but human efforts weren’t enough to transform an artificial bond into a lasting covenant. And later, when I was saved by Christ, the other party already moved on and there was nothing to reconcile or redeem but rather to forgive and be at peace about it.
Obviously, there are many stances about marriage after divorce. I personally know people who looked down on me because I remarried, and I also know people who believe that God gave me new life and I could remarry as a new creation in Christ. I tend to stand in the middle of it. Not fully understanding some scripture, I am convinced that if my second marriage was a sin, it was unknowing, and I asked God to forgive me. But more than anything, I am grateful because the circumstances of my second marriage and the fruit of it let me see my husband as a gift. Not only a gift of companionship but a gift of sanctification. Already in so many ways just during the couple of years we were together, my husband helped me to be more like Christ. We experienced what it means to rejoice together and carry the burden together. I know we only have a couple of years, but I dare to have confidence about our marriage because it is not built on hope or the amount of time we spend with each other. It is not stronger because of our efforts to be together but by our efforts to abide in Christ.When we met, we connected about our dreams and goals, we shared and did our best to be honest. We hoped this would turn into a meaningful friendship and we rejoiced when it happened… Yet, we knew that it wasn’t enough to build our marriage on who we were, and what we wanted or even all that we had in common. We both knew from the beginning that even if we loved each other perfectly we live in such an imperfect and decaying world, that there is no amount of human love that could sustain our marriage. But Christ could and will.
Why do I say that? During the 16 years of not being married, I witnessed wonderful marriages falling apart because people grew apart or fell out of love, or discovered they never really knew each other although they met in high school. Sometimes it was the mundane every day that killed the sparkle, and other times it was a crisis or unexpected challenge that broke the marriage down. And there is also that magical phrase of irreconcilable differences, a phrase that apparently should make everything better and simplify the heartbreak of a broken family. And since my first fake or not fake marriage ended in so much hurt, I was personally determined to never go through it again. But even that determination wouldn’t be enough to have our marriage grow and be as healthy as it is now. We knew, and we are so grateful that we knew it together, that our marriage needs to fully depend on Christ and His love for us and our love for Him. Otherwise, we will fail. You may wonder, why did we start our marriage talking about failure. Did you check the statistics? Almost 50% of all marriages in the USA will end in divorce or separation. Researchers estimate that 42% of all first marriages and 60% of second marriages end in divorce. Statistically speaking, our marriage had a higher probability of falling apart than surviving. But Christ… so we made it about Christ. And with Christ, we are a cord of three strands.
Christ and His Word are our foundation. The more we abide in His truth, the closer and stronger our marriage becomes. We pray and read the Bible together. We have a loving body of believers and godly counsel. We serve together at the church. We have also divided our responsibilities and roles based on our common understanding of God’s design, and we feel absolutely fulfilled by that. I love being my husband's helper and a homemaker. He loves being my protector and provider. There is so much we are learning about each other through this process, but most importantly – we are learning the love of Christ. The goal of our marriage isn’t to make each other happy but to be more like Jesus, and our happiness is the byproduct of it. We are at the beginning of this journey, as we only celebrated our first anniversary, and we don’t have any advice for anyone. What we have is prayer for all of us.Why? Because those statistics are not better for Christian marriages. The world gets only more broken and ungodly, and marriages are not only not supported or celebrated by our culture, but they are openly redefined, undermined and attacked.
How can we survive this? Instead of some advice, I want you to look at this painting below. Can you see those flowers in full bloom growing somewhere on a rocky hill, with a little bit of sunlight? One symbolizes a husband, the other symbolizes a wife, but the third one is the Word of God, and that is the reason it lasts. And this is my prayer for all our marriages… Our dear Father, I pray that you will turn husbands' and wives' hearts towards you first and help them become not a power of two but of three. Even if it is dark and the ground around us is rocky, we will grow, thrive, and bloom if we grow together in Christ. It is the strength of three strands that makes us withstand all the trials of time, difficulties, and disaster. "Two are better than one…" and "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." - Ecc. 4:9,12. I pray that this is the truth about your marriage. Don’t try to do your marriage on your own, do it with Christ. Especially in this world, being attacked and tempted, let us keep our focus on Jesus. Blessed are all who read this!