Lisa, 28, asks:
Is it ever okay to get divorced?
Hi Lisa,
First off, God hates divorce. I like the way the Message version of the bible describes it as, the violent dismembering of one flesh, because no one gets out of a divorce whole.
Malachi 2:16“I hate divorce,” says the God of Israel. God-of-the-Angel-Armies says, “I hate the violent dismembering of the ‘one flesh’ of marriage.” So watch yourselves. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t cheat.
I’ve read with interest a blog recently about women and infidelity. This blog coming on the heels of an article in Latina Magazine which said that 68% of college aged women cheat on their mate versus 75% of college aged men who cheat, it made for some interesting observations.
The article in Latina quoted Gary Lewandowski Jr. Ph.D who has done extensive research on infidelity. He says women tend to cheat due to dissatisfaction in their relationship. They also tend to cheat early in their marriage, the longer they’ve been married the less likely they are to cheat. When Latina did their own study on 500 readers 69% of them have cheated. Infidelity is not just a male issue anymore, if it ever was, and it seems that the numbers are staggeringly increasing.
My own personal thought on this is to look at the age we are discussing. Women in the college age group who are still finding their own identity. It makes sense to me that they would be the ones most likely to cheat as they would have more personal dissatisfaction in their relationship because they have more dissatisfaction with their life in general. These are not the women of 30 years ago who were prepared for marriage at 18. These women have been brought up with a vastly different perspective to their life. They were not brought up to go to college to find their husband as in generations past. Instead, they were brought up to find themselves. This is not a bad thing, don’t misunderstand, I like this, but mix this prematurely in a marriage and we can see where there can be issues.
What is interesting about infidelity is that once it happens the first time, it becomes easier to do it again. Lines get crossed and whether we like to admit it or not, we become desensitized to the idea. Statistically we find women who cheat live to cheat again. It becomes a vicious cycle of looking for that thrill that you can’t find in a long-term relationship. Mix this with the fact that one in five people have genital herpes and the fastest growing number of HIV/AIDS patients are Hispanics and African American women and we have a lot more issues than a broken heart. The idea that it won’t happen to me, keeps these diseases spreading.
So what is the remedy? We can’t say it’s church because even those in church cheat. We can’t say it’s God because those in church should know God and still it happens. Pastor Doug has told me over and over that those who cheat or find themselves on the brink of cheating are open to the possibility of it. I believe the real answers lie in the questions that are never asked.
What exactly are you looking for in a relationship?
How do you react when the going gets rough?
Are you run by your emotions?
Can you set clear boundaries for yourself?
Are you ready for a committed relationship?
I do the pre-marital counseling in our church. When I ask these questions, often I get the blank stares and the ‘I don’t know’ answers and only because they have never really thought of why they want to get married or if they are ready for marriage. They tend to look at the questions through the rose colored glasses of love rather than the honesty of reality that will smack them in the face quite quickly.
Then, there needs to be a clear understanding of the vows taken. What is a covenant and who did I make that covenant with? You see, that covenant although primarily with your spouse and God affects many others. Children, parents and other family members are affected by these decisions as well. When a covenant is broken those people are also indirectly affected by your decision. Sin may be personal but it is never private it affects many, even the people on the sidelines watching this all go down.
The cost of infidelity is not just the demise of a relationship, it’s the cost of a piece of a soul, the cost of those who look at the damage, the cost to your health and the opening of doors that don’t easily get closed once they are opened. Even when the relationship is saved, there is something that has been chipped away from it. We must learn to consider the cost of our actions.
Luke 14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it– 29 lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
What do you think of when you think of “The Church Lady”? Do you think of Dana Carvey doing his SNL skits? Do you think of your grandma? Do you think of your fanatic friend at work? Whenever I think of her, I think of a person who is real but not authentic. A cubic zircona is real but it’s still a fake diamond. I had very little good examples set before me in the church of authentic women. Most of the ones I met were trying to conform to their ideal of what a church lady looked like. I think that’s where people get off track and leave church because they are looking for authentic and they don’t see it.
We find plenty of authentic women in the bible. Not perfect women, but authentic women. I read about one recently, whose husband had died before they could have children. In that culture, and at that time, for a woman to not have a child was humiliating. Her father-in-law sent his son to “lay” with her in his brother’s place. The brother being wicked spilled his semen rather than risk her getting pregnant because he knew if she bore a child it would be as though it was his brother’s child and he didn’t want to comply. <em>To some it’s more important to appear obedient than to be obedient. </em> That doesn’t sound like it’s very authentic. So there she sat childless. Her father-in-law promises her that when his youngest son grows up, he will send him to her but time passes and it looks as though he isn’t going to do it. Have you ever gotten to the point where it doesn’t look like things are going to happen so you get a little desperate, okay, a lot desperate? She dresses up as a prostitute and sets herself up on the road and has sex with her father-in-law! He doesn’t know its her! She gets proof of this encounter by asking her father-in-law for some personal items and she gets pregnant. When her father-in-law finds his daughter-in-law pregnant, well you can imagine the hell that breaks loose because now she’s humiliated him. Go figure! She was pretty thought out though and has proof of who she slept with! Okay, it all sounds creepy but we all know desperate women do desperate things. Let’s not judge but understand that in her world she had little choice. Who was she? Her name was Tamar and she was one of the great-great grandmothers of Jesus. She was authentic. She captured the attention of God because he saw her actions through her heart. We don’t see her nagging, yelling, pouting. There is so much to this story, the story of a deal not fulfilled and the consequence of procrastination, disobedience and the fulfillment of an end result, that I urge you to read it. It shows an aspect of the heart of a woman better than any country song could. You can find the story in Genesis 38. Being authentic requires that we be actually what we claim to be. So often I see us trying to conform to our peer group.
Have you ever noticed the new girl at the office? She comes in looking like herself and slowly but surely she begins to dress like everyone else. You aren’t called to conform. You are called to transform. You are called to leave your mark on your little piece of life. I love talking with the youth group at church. They really have a funny sense of “being themselves”. They say things like, “I don’t want to be like everybody else, I want to be myself.” Problem is, the Goths look like all the other Goths, the Preps look like all the other Preps and the Skaters look like all the other Skaters, seen one Emo, you’ve seen them all, no one is really not like everyone else. So take a deep breath and take a look at your life today. Are you authentic? Are you the Ruby or the lab created Ruby? Both are real. One is authentic.
is a great woman or so the saying goes. This is a picture of me and my husband Doug goofing off one day. Relationships tend to transform people. We all have that girlfriend who changes her entire world to be the girl her latest boyfriend wants her to be. We also have that girlfriend who sees “potential” in a guy and begins to try to change him into what she wants him to be. Neither produces a long-term transformation. It’s a fake, for the moment, change and eventually who you really are comes out. So why do we do it? What makes some women utter doormats for a man and others bossy and crowding? In a word, it’s fear. Fear that we will never find another person who will love us, fear that someone already put together will see the flaws in us and not want us. Fear that if we speak up we’ll be rejected. We need to learn to be comfortable with ourselves and to recognize that we are enough. Let that thought sink in for a minute. You are enough.
This is where faith helps. My faith has taught me that God designed me for a purpose and a destiny. With 6 billion people on the planet there is not another single person with my exact design. I am worth being treated with love and respect and so is everyone else. So, single women, be careful about who you get behind. You will be transformed to the level of the man you chose. Your life will rise or fall on that level. Choose wisely. Is the man who you have decided to get behind destined for greatness, or will you always be pushing? So many of us think we can change a person but you can’t. So that fantasy has to die. Look at who he is now and where he is going in his life right now. That place is where you will end up with long-term. Don’t miss the destiny you were given. Don’t miss the warning signs either.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat with women in counseling and they’ve said things like:
I knew he’d cheated on his last three girlfriends but he said I was different (you’re not)
He’d get angry for no reason but then he’d bring flowers and apologize (run!)
He’d had a run of bad luck with jobs (uh, huh)
His last girlfriend broke his heart and he said he was over it (then she called him)
He has two kids from his last two relationships (get ready for baby mama drama)
He called his mom three or four times a day and I thought it was sweet (mama’s boy)
He had to cancel lots of our dates because of work (he’ll be absent a lot)
The sad part about these comments is that the women knew these facts going in but they went in anyway. Now they are unhappily ever after. Don’t be a divorce statistic. Choose wisely. Be careful who you get behind. Ask lots of questions and LISTEN to the answers and above all, take your time!
Or rather, Who B Eye? As I was originally contemplating writing the profile page of this blog, I kept thinking about what it is I want to say about myself. I was looking for something clever, that would catch the eye of the reader. I began to think of how it is we define ourselves.
Men, more often than not, define themselves by their career. I’m a rocket scientist, I am doctor, I am a doorman. Whatever they DO is who they ARE. Women generally define themselves by their emotional attachments. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend. So I went looking at all of my friend’s blog profile pages.
They described themselves as wives, moms, coffee drinkers, etc… So the internal questions began. Was where I was born significant? Doubt it, as my parents lived hours away and I was born there only so that my mom could have a female doctor. I’ve never lived there and have only visited the town once, well twice, if you consider my entry into the world. What else? I am a wife but is that significant? Sort of, I mean it means I have a husband, a partner, a friend and obligations my single friends don’t have. I also have the benefits my single friends don’t have and the liabilities my single friends don’t have.
I am mom but is that whole of my being? I am madly in love with my kids and I remember when they were born, all scrunchy and wrinkled and red, but in them I saw greatness and beauty and my heart was never the same. I am a follower of Christ. It’s the basis for which everything I do all day long flows. Not to say that everything I do edifies Christ, because sometimes I snap at people, and well, to be honest my driving leaves the Christ following thing at home most days, as speeding is breaking a rule and we are not rule breakers so, I have a long road to go there.
My career! I work at our church. My husband is a Pastor. I am a Pastor as well, but well in the world of Christianity there is lots of debate as to whether or not a woman can be a pastor. I love my work. It’s varied and you never know what you are going to do each day. I can’t honestly say that it the sum of who I am though.
Back to the core question, who am I? When I begin to write my profile I wrote things like, I am a human being, I am tired, I am authentic, I am a geek, which by the way I need to clarify. At one time, I was cool but your kids let you know that those days, well they are gone forever, I am overwhelmed by laundry. These definitions are all in fact true. So who eye b is all of the above, and then some! In my mind though I am so much more than the sum of all of that. Yet, maybe that is just flattering myself and maybe I am slightly delusional. I am a reader. I am a thinker. I am a leader. I am called in this time and space on earth, to a purpose, to which no one else on the planet was called to fulfill. I have yet to reach my full potential but I know it’s coming!
What do you say defines you? What do you say when people ask you to tell them about yourself? What would your profile look like? And in your heart of hearts what would you want to say? Think about it and post a comment, because honestly, you were called to be part of the flock, but not one of the crowd.
I read this a few days and thought it worthy of reprinting. It was written by a columnist named Lorrie Goldstein of the Winnipeg Sun in Canada. I thought the first paragraph was profound in a world where we think we are all going to be okay without daddies to help raise children. The article was titled Families Need Defending. Who would have thought we’d be here and yet here we are!
As the authors of a new study on family breakdown in Canada suggested yesterday, in any rational society the state would have a vested interest in promoting traditional, legally married, two-parent families.
In Private Choices, Public Costs: How failing families cost us all, Rebecca Walberg and Andrea Mrozek of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, add to a growing body of literature that has reached exactly the same conclusion.
That is that on average, children living in traditional, two-parent families, where the parents are legally married, fare better in life in every conceivable outcome, compared to children who come from single-parent or common-law marriage homes.
And further, that when marriages break down, it’s the women and children who are most likely to end up in poverty.
Indeed, “marriage breakdown” today essentially means absentee fathers.
Walberg and Mrozek estimate the cost of family breakdown to taxpayers at $7 billion annually and argue if we could cut that rate in half, society would save almost $2 billion a year.
They use $2 billion, rather than half of $7 billion, or $3.5 billion, to account for the fact that even if the family breakdown rate was cut in half, many of those still-intact families would remain below the poverty line.
Cost savings
In other words, the authors are being very conservative about the potential cost savings.
Further, as they note, lower crime and school drop out rates among the young, less drug abuse and fewer unwanted pregnancies would result from lowering the rate of family breakdown.
Walberg and Mrozek argue our falling marriage rate (in 1961, 92% of all Canadian families were headed by married couples, compared to only 69% today) isn’t a neutral statistic, but a negative one.
What’s interesting is that you almost never hear this painfully obvious point being made by governments themselves these days.
In other words that while, yes, there are many wonderful single parents and, yes, many couples are trapped in unhappy marriages, on the whole, it is far better for society to have more families headed by married parents, than fewer.
Why? Because the children in those families are far more likely to grow up to be well-adjusted, law-abiding and productive citizens, who will carry those values forward into the families they create for themselves.
Similarly, in the absence of strong families, the reverse is also true — there will never be enough public money to adequately cope with the aftermath of family breakdown and all the problems it creates.
As Walberg and Mrozek observe: “There is evidence that long-term reliance on welfare has detrimental effects on individuals and society. Take England, for example, where decades of family breakdown and poor social policy have led to children being raised in homes where they’ve never seen a functioning marriage, or a working adult.”
Never form
Actually, you don’t have to go to England. You can find that in the giant urban housing ghettoes of Toronto or any other big city, where the problem isn’t so much family breakdown as that “families” never form, because none of the adults know what a functioning family is.
And contrary to what your modern liberal politician will tell you, the kids who are the products of these non-families, don’t need more basketball courts to help them grow up right.
They need fathers who stick around.
lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca
Psalm 103:8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. 9 He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever. 10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; 12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. 13 As a father pities his children, So the Lord pities those who fear Him. 14 For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
God deals with our human nature. Sometimes though it’s hard to accept. Sometimes forgiving yourself is hardest form of forgiveness. Often it’s because we know what is inside of us. We know what we are capable of and if we are honest we know what we harbor in our heart. There is a song by Casting Crowns that so speaks to what I sometimes feel. I love the line in the song that says, I can’t live by what I feel, but by the truth Your word reveals. It’s a powerful line because it’s not what God is saying that condemns us but rather by our own thinking that seems to get us fixated on the problem (sin) rather than the solution (repentance). If we can get past the problem to the solution we’ll be blessed beyond imagination. It requires taking the problem and instead of wallowing in it and letting it consume us we must take a step back and look objectively at it. We need to make no excuses or justifications but just simply looking at it. Then allow the plan to form for the solution and begin to walk towards the solution rather than sitting on the problem. The obstacle that most often gets me is the guilt that the problem is there in first place and that it’s become as big as I think it has. Sin is personal, you opted to make an incorrect choice but sin is never private, it affects many.
Nothing that we do is greater or less than any other person on this planet as there is no sin better or worse than another. We all sin and we all fall short. The last thing God wants is to send us all to hell but rather his goal is to see us learn from our sin, turn away from it and keep walking forward to what he has in store for us. The guilt we feel only traps us in place. That feeling that the next time we mess up that God will say to us, “That’s it! I am so done with you!” Intellectually I think we know it’s not the case but sometimes we let that doubt creep in and it robs us of our life.
Here I am, Lord, and I’m drowning in your sea of forgetfulness The chains of yesterday surround me
I yearn for peace and rest
I don’t want to end up where You found me
And it echoes in my mind, keeps me awake tonight
I know You’ve cast my sin as far as the east is from the west
And I stand before You now as though I’ve never sinned
But today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from You leaving me this way
Chorus:
Jesus can You show me just how far the east is from the west
‘Cause I can’t bear to see the man I’ve been come rising up in me again
In the arms of Your mercy I find rest
‘Cause You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other
I start the day, the war begins, endless reminding of my sin
Time and time again Your truth is drowned out by the storm I’m in
Today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from You leaving me this way
I know You’ve washed me white, turned my darkness into light
I need Your peace to get me through
get me through this night
I can’t live by what I feel, but by the truth Your word reveals
I’m not holding on to You, but You’re holding on to me
You’re holding on to me
Just how far, east is from the west
Just how far, one scarred hand to the other
You know just how far, just how far east is from west
Just how far, from one scarred hand to the other
I learned about the 80/20 rule in Tyler Perry’s new movie Why Did I Get Married? It makes perfect sense and so I want to blog about this rule today.
In the movie the men are talking about why two of the men cheated on their wives. The men who don’t cheat gave the reminder that they needed to remember the 80/20 rule. So here it is in a nutshell for you.
If you are married, you are probably getting about 80% of your needs met. The other 20% don’t get met for whatever reason. You’re tired, he’s tired, kids, too much work the possibilities are endless but that 20% seems like a big gap.
Suddenly a person comes around and begins to give you that 20% of the attention that you needed and it FEELS GOOD! That 20% was missed so much that you are just enthralled with that 20%. You can’t get enough of the 20%. What happens though is that you begin to neglect the person who is giving you 80% and therefore risking losing 80%. In the end it comes down to a simple math equation. You lose 80% to gain 20% and you lose more than you gain. It doesn’t seem worth it doesn’t it?
Now, apply the 80/20 rule to the rest of your life. In sales, 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your sales staff. In ministry 80% of your problems will be caused by 20% of your members. In life 80% of your time can be consumed by the 20% of those things we think of as fires.
It’s time to do some backward thinking here. Let’s begin to make the equation more like 20/80. To cause the 80/20 rule to work in reverse make it so that 20% of your time can be used to do 80% of your workload! It’s called working smarter and I know you can do it!
Pastor Susan 