What Now?

Like so many of you, I hate separation and I hate divorce. 

So many people have spent years or even decades agonizing over a marriage that, despite their best efforts (faulty, human, and broken, but heartfelt efforts), in spite of love, commitment, sacrifice, relentless praying, and oftentimes many attempts to seek peace, mutual humility, repentance, love, respect, and renewal... crumbled. 

Christians. Jesus-followers. Some very familiar with abuse or the pall of addiction, some having discovered infidelity, some still hoping for healthy restoration, all having made mountains of mistakes.

Most having not the foggiest idea what to do with the wreckage. And all grappling with God.

On top of that, the Church, my friends, well... the Church has been known to shoot its wounded. 

That's why I'm so thrilled about my friend Beth's new book. Written in the middle of a painful separation and divorce, Unraveling is a story about the end of a Christian marriage, but it's also about hanging onto the One who will never forsake you.

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So you’re divorced. Now what? By this point, you have probably divided up all your belongings and one or both of you have moved. Your driver’s license has been changed. You have your own credit card, maybe with a new name. You’ve done the hard work of telling people. You’ve maybe even sold your wedding ring or burned some old letters. But then there’s all the emotional work that has got to be done, or else you’ll be stuck making the same mistakes over and over again. And trust me, you don’t want that. So here are some things to think through so that you can begin to move on.

It’s time to get out of bed. Yes, you can take a nap here and there. Yes, you can totally go to bed early and sleep in on the weekends. And yes, if you need to take a few mental health days, go for it. But there will come a time when getting out bed and, you know, putting some clothes on other than yoga pants will be your first step. It will take months and months (sometimes years and years) to fully recover, but the emotional breakdown part should not last indefinitely.

Your part in the marriage’s failure. Odds are, you know exactly what your spouse did wrong. You probably have a journal filled up with his faults. But you need to take the really difficult inward look and ask yourself, where did I mess up? And then, you have to be brutally honest with yourself, with God, and for your best benefit, with a trusted person.

Focus on Jesus. Our friends are great. Our counselors are amazing. Church is exactly what we need. Twelve-step groups are sustaining us. But only as we focus on Jesus and His love and grace and truth will we be able to fully heal. This is the time to cling to Him, to beg Him to make His presence more known to you, to remind you in really intimate ways that He loves you no matter what.

Help someone else. What? I’m still hurting! I know you are, honey. So am I. But there’s this great verse in II Corinthians 1:4 where Paul tells us that God “…comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” We are promised that we will receive God’s comfort in every single trouble we go through SO THAT we can offer that same comfort to others. I bet you know someone who is in a hard marriage or separated or divorced (we all do). And you now know some things that you didn’t know six months or a year ago, some things about life and God and yourself, that your friend doesn’t know yet… that your friend could really benefit from hearing from you. Even in your healing time, God can use you to comfort someone else. Listen, this will take time. Healing doesn’t happen overnight. But God is faithful. And He’s not going anywhere. And He loves you more than you can even wrap your mind around. And trust me when I say this, you’re going to be okay.

Elisabeth Klein Corcoran, the author of Unraveling: Hanging Onto Faith Through the End of a Christian Marriage, speaks several times a month to women's groups, and is a member of Redbud Writers' Guild. During her time at Christ Community Church’s Blackberry Creek Campus in Aurora, Illinois she began and led their women's ministry for ten years prior to moving to the city’s Orchard Community Church. She lives with her children in Illinois. Visit her online at http://www.elisabethcorcoran.com/difficult-marriage-divorce/ or https://www.facebook.com/ElisabethKleinCorcoran. She is the moderator of two private Facebook groups: one for women in difficult Christian marriages, and one for Christian women who are separated or divorced. Email her at elisabethkcorcoran@gmail.com if interested in joining.