Pray. Play. Laugh. Stay.

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Ray and I continue to be heartbroken as we hear about one separation or divorce after another among younger people we know. As of one night this week, we have now heard of four in the last few months and two of them were during this week. All of these couples have children.

I know firsthand that marriage can be hard. I know very few and possibly zero couples who don’t also know that marriage can be hard. In some cases, marriage is (or at least quite desperately feels) impossible. I also know that in our case, marriage has been worth praying about and working through every hard spot. I don’t write this to put even more pressure on any of you who may be hurting very deeply. I write to encourage every one of you who possibly can not to give up.

I know that some of you who read my blog have been through a divorce, or you have watched parents, a sibling, a child, or a close friend go through a divorce. My heart breaks for you. I simply want to encourage all of us, wherever we are now, to do whatever it takes to make our marriages a blessing to our own families and to those around us. It is worth everything we can do to make our marriages stronger and more joyful. Our marriages matter to many people.

In the first book of the Old Testament, God created families, declaring:

Then the Lord God said,
“It is not good for the man to be alone;
I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
Genesis 1:18

God made a woman to be that helper and brought her to the first man. Genesis then declares:

For this reason a man
shall leave his father and his mother,
and be joined to his wife;
and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 1:24

In the last book of the Old Testament, God shared His heart about families. He spoke of restoring:

. . . the hearts of the fathers to their children
and the hearts of the children to their fathers . . .
Malachi 4:6

And God shared His feelings about broken families:

“For I hate divorce,” says the Lord, the God of Israel . . .
Malachi 2:16

When some Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, He reminded them of what God had declared in Genesis, saying:

“But from the beginning of creation,
God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave
his father and mother
and the two shall become one flesh;
so they are no longer two, but one flesh.
What therefore God has joined together,
let no man separate.”
Mark 10:6-9

We may think that marriage is something individuals and governments do, but Jesus said that marriage is something God does.

Marriage can be painful at times. Some marriages are painful all the time. Divorce hurts, too. It is a pain that keeps on hurting. What may feel amicable and freeing to one spouse often feels like a knife through the heart to the other and to their children. What feels like a step in the right direction to take care of one person’s current pain can become the portal to a lifetime of pain for many. Spouses get sick and have no one to care for them. Children never get to celebrate Christmas with both of their parents again. Children’s weddings become awkward events with hurt feelings on every side.

As I finished getting ready yesterday morning, I thought about what to write to you about this tragic issue. These are the words that came to me: Pray together. Play together. Laugh together. Stay together.

As most of you know, Ray and I have been living through a very stressful time for two years. One of the most wonderful blessings of this time is that we have experienced it all together. We’ve had excessively lonely times, but we’ve been lonely together. We’ve had terrible grief, but we’ve grieved together. Maybe we were grabbing lunch after a doctor’s appointment rather than going on a date, but we were eating together. Maybe we were driving to a medical test instead of taking a day trip, but we were sitting side by side. While I am grateful for Ray’s much improved health and his ability to do errands on his own and spend time at home alone now, I will always cherish the times when we had to stick together like glue. We are so used to it now that we do almost everything together. What a blessing.

“It is not good to be alone.” Ask any divorced person who is there through no choice of his or her own if that is not true.

Maybe I have said enough at this point. I am not secretly condemning anyone or trying to address anyone specifically. I only want to help someone who needs to hear this particular message at this particular time, and I want to help prevent any pain related to this that I can.

Let me only repeat: Pray together. Play together. Laugh together. Stay together.

When I looked for an illustration for today, I found Portrait of Philippe Coypel and His Wife. Philippe was the brother of the artist. I like this double portrait very much. Though both subjects are nice looking and they are dressed in elegant clothes, they seem like ordinary people. Every marriage is a pair of ordinary people with the very special trait of being made in the image of God.

Portrait of Philippe Coypel and His Wife, 1742
by Charles-Antoine Coypel
Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago,
Regenstein Endowment

One more time: Pray together. Play together. Laugh together. Stay together. Pray about that. Think about that. Give that a good, honest try. Please.

Nevertheless, each individual among you
also is to love his own wife even as himself,
and the wife must see to it
that she respects her husband.
Ephesians 5:33

 

 

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