Thinking of Calling it Quits?
/Do you want to walk away from your marriage? You absolutely have permission to quit, but rest assured you are breaking your marriage covenant and the security system god gave your children to grow up in. Hard truth? Yes.
When you stand before witnesses and vow until death do you part, you have invited God into the marriage. It’s not just you and your husband. God is now intertwined and is the Third Person between you, intended to HELP you, reveal things to you, comfort you and make your marriage flourish. You are not in your marriage alone.
But after living for just shy of 30 years in an almost dead marriage riddled with hurt, blame and distrust, divine revelation hit me like a ton of bricks. Trust me, I had been praying for almost that long for God to save my marriage but I was a slave to focusing my eyes on what my husband wasn’t doing instead of what I wasn’t doing.
Understand, wherever you go, there you are. You can’t run away from yourself. You can figure out every trick in the book to run away from others, but don’t be fooled, you bring all your hurts, behaviors, tendencies and frames of mind with you. So it doesn’t really matter where you end up. Walking away from your spouse may alleviate the stress and tension but rest assured, you can’t escape yourself.
“Understand, wherever you go, there you are. You can’t run away from yourself. ”
Secular websites like divorce.com say that 80% of divorces are filed by women and psychologytoday.com follows up with stating that “it’s often the woman who expresses more overt conflict and dissatisfaction about the state of the marriage. On the other hand, the man is more likely to report feeling troubled by his wife’s dissatisfaction, but pretty much “OK” with the way things are; he's content to just lope along as time passes.”
Does this sound familiar in any way? It should because it goes RIGHT back to the Garden when EVE was the one who took the apple (bait) from the serpent. STOP TAKING THE BAIT of offense, self pity, and dissatisfaction and realize you MUST Be alert and sober-minded because your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (CONSTANTLY!!) 1 Peter 5:8.
Be aware the enemy will pull out EVERY stop to destroy your unity. His tactic always has been and will always be “Divide and Conquer!” DO NOT partner with him!
I also suggest meditating on revelation God gave me in the darkest times of my marriage: intentionally walking away from our marriage suggests to our children that their dad isn’t good enough. And it’s very possible they will suffer in the area of self esteem as that message takes root inside them as a result of divorce. Secular website after website, in addition to Christian websites, display exactly that in their research. To quote only one resource from sciencedirect.com, Judith S. Wallerstein, PhD states “A comprehensive review of research from several disciplines regarding long-term effects of divorce on children yields a growing consensus that significant numbers of children suffer for many years from psychological and social difficulties associated with continuing and/or new stresses within the post-divorce family and experience heightened anxiety in forming enduring attachments at later developmental stages including young adulthood.”
The overwhelming evidence speaks for itself and we have a God-given responsibility to protect the sanctity of our marriages and families. It’s not often that non-Christian and Christian perspectives agree. However, regarding women initiated divorces as well as long-term negative divorce effects on children, the results are the same in both camps.
Further, it desperately needs to be recognized we each have garbage inside US that needs to be acknowledged and addressed because it HINDERS how we are called to walk out our marriage role. Most often, our buried junk becomes our unconscious stumbling block that forces us to blame our spouse for our unhappiness rather than asking how we are contributing to the problem. When we humble ourselves and are brave, courageous and mature enough to ask God (our Counselor!) where WE need to change, THAT is the beginning of healing. Ladies, our relationship with Christ comes FIRST. We are ONLY accountable for ourselves to Him and we will stand before Him one day to give an account of our lives. Without a doubt, we will be held responsible for how we actively loved or DID NOT love the people in our lives.
“we have a God-given responsibility to protect the sanctity of our marriages and families”
When we repeat “until death do we part,” understand that we are called to DIE to OURSELVES in marriage. We are called to look out for EACH OTHER - having each others’ backs. We are NOT called to solely look out for ourselves. Now don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely some marriages that SHOULD NOT stand. And there is absolutely NO CONDEMNATION for those who have divorced. Further, it must be stated that if you are in danger or being harmed, you need to leave immediately and get help.
God is the the Redeemer if we invite Him into our lives. If you are believing this is you and your marriage should end, get on your knees and ask God for wisdom and discernment. If YOU are NOT willing to change in order to come into the divine alignment God calls us to when you say, “I do” then chances are, you will choose to terminate the most important relationship in your life that God is just waiting to bless!
As wives, we MUST cooperate with that divine order. You are more than free to live out your marriage the best way YOU see fit, but if you do this, take heart, you are signing the death warrant on your marriage because chances are, you have removed God from it. God gave us His Word for a reason! The Bible is our instruction manual on how to win at life. All we have to do is read it and ask Him to help us walk it out!
Ponder for a moment. How do YOU treat your husband? How do you regularly respond to him when you are on fumes? Regardless of how he doesn’t esteem you, help you, honor you, forgets you, ignores you, curses you, are YOU living out your role as God has instructed you? Are you fanning the flames of strife, apathy, annoyance, disrespect or are you a deep well of life allowing his thirst to be quenched?
The MOST important, the HARDEST, and the FIRST thing in our life is to know we were created, are loved and accepted by Father God Almighty, who is intimately aware of our needs. When our husbands, for whatever reason, are unable to be the husband we need, God steps in as our husband. I have known Christian women who have won their husbands back to the marriage, securing their families, after his affair, horrible verbal abuse, and crippling indifference because these women submitted themselves to God’s mercy and walked out what His word called them to do as wives. They read their bibles and lived out what it instructs.
Worldly needs - emotions and the need for physical touch - must yield and come second to who we are in Christ. When we finally get a grasp that our relationship with Christ is most important in our life, THAT is what sets the tone and framework and then spills into our marriage. THAT relationship and the grace that flows is what you are then able to operate from. When you are tapping into the River of Life, God gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it in your marriage.
If more marriages were operating under the covenant anointing, more Christian marriages would make it and we wouldn’t be heralding the 50% divorce rate right along with secular marriages. When we choose to define our marriage by the worldly standards of “what’s in it for me, I’M not happy, he is such an…(fill in the blank),” then we have thrown out the foundational cornerstone of what God created and intended marriage to be and we’ve made it, instead, based on “what’s in it for me?” and what we can get out of it.
Now if you are a law enforcement officer wife, oh Lord, that is another enormous can of worms on top of just trying to navigate a standard 9-5 marriage. Law Enforcement wives, stop looking at Susie down the street who has that husband who dotes on her, is home at night to help with the house and kids, attends their games, and is a steadfast participant in birthday parties and holidays. THAT is NOT your life.
YOUR life is dependent on what his schedule is. You are learning to be more and more proficient at keeping the kids reasonably quiet during the day so daddy can sleep if he works graveyards. You are an amazing juggling diva! Or you work outside the home and are solely responsible for BOTH career and kids, and laundry, and errands, and events, and planning. I know you are exhausted. I know you are frustrated. I know bitterness is creeping in. I know you fall into, “but what about ME?! What about MY needs? What about MY feelings?”
Stop. I get it. Women who have married police officers, just like their husbands, are a very anointed group of women. They are independent, have their own minds, completely capable of handling what life throws at them and flexible like no other. We are single parents, jilted at the last minute because of a call and have to handle family emergencies alone most of the time. BUT, understand, those qualities and strengths are EXACTLY what your husband needs from you. When he can’t meet your needs because he is exhausted, LADIES, I implore you, remember who he encounters during his shift - if he even shares it with you. Remember the horrific things he experiences constantly and his non-stop heightened adrenelin. Remember that he runs in when everyone else is running out. Remember, his profession is his life, is life-threatening and mentally exhausting. He is littered with images and experiences NO ONE should EVER have.
He has a calling and an anointing. And if you can wrap your head around the fact that you are every equal part of bad ass as he is, then you will gain huge comfort in realizing that God created YOU to be the HEART behind his badge. YOU ARE his world - even though he doesn’t say it. He DOES take you for granted - even though he doesn’t realize it. You ARE the one he comes home to. You ARE the one he relies on. You ARE the one who allows him to function when he comes home to land for just a brief time and then get up and do it all over again. YOU are the one he thinks about and values and appreciates - even though he doesn’t verbally express it. Is that ok? Of course not, but then again, healthy marriages incorporate healthy, loving communication not blasting “YOU SUCK!” Do you want to get even or get results? Then you must learn to communicate your needs in love minus the negative pent-up emotions behind them. Those negative feelings are routinely housed in a canon ready to aim, fire and shoot which generally will only lead to yet another weave of your marriage tapestry to be destroyed.
“but what about ME?! What about MY needs? What about MY feelings?”
No, law enforcement wives DO NOT have “standard, normal” marriages. So ladies, if you’re ready to give up, consider asking God to give you HIS eyes for your husband, His heart for your marriage and HIS wisdom for your circumstances. Ask Him where YOU can change. Are you walking in pride? Are you walking in self-righteousness or self-absorption, bitter because your needs aren’t being met? If you are, you are listening to the wrong voice and it’s only going to get worse. Philippians 4:8 says…whatever is true, noble and of good report, think upon THOSE things and the peace of God will be with you.
There is an adversary, a ruler of this world, the enemy of your soul who is hell-bent on destroying marriages. If he can to that, he will be successful in destroying the safety God created to raise your children in. And he will have been once again successful in crushing yet another generation of kids caught in the middle of mom and dad. I know. I lived that life as a kid. And it created belief systems in me that only caused my marriage great destruction, which have taken me way too long to work through and get rid of.
If this is you, please pray the following prayer out loud - daily. You, your husband, your marriage and your children are worth it, desperate for it and need you (wife and/or mom) to stand in the gap.
Father, forgive me for being ugly, critical and judgmental of my husband. Forgive me for speaking about his weaknesses to others. Expose the lies I have believed about him and remove the foothold I have allowed the enemy to gain as much as it is concerned with me. Humble me and don’t let me operate out of pride, defensiveness and justification any longer. Help me to align my life to yours and turn my marriage around. Teach and show me how to actively love my husband. I realize that I have choices. And the choices I have made have only succeeded in creating more distance between us, which has unraveled the beautiful covenanted marriage tapestry You intended for us. Thank you that You are the third person in our marriage. Help me to call on Your help to create new unity between us. I give you my pain, my hurt, my lack of trust and my anger and ask that You give me Your eyes to see my husband the way You do, Your ears to hear my husband the way You do and Your heart to KNOW my husband the way You do. I recognize that once I begin to walk out my life the way that You have called me to for my marriage and my family - the sacred convented group of people you have placed in my life for me to care for and love, You will begin to heal us. I ask You to give me wisdom, knowledge, understanding discernment and self control and new levels of patience. Do not let me be that woman in the bible any longer who tears her home down with her bare hands. Show me how to build my home. Let it begin with me. I give my husband to You as well, trusting that as You do a new and lasting work in me, You will also do a new and lasting work in him as well because we are one flesh. Open his eyes to see ME the way You call him to. Open his ears to hear ME the way You do and open his heart to protect me, defend me and love me and treat me with understanding the way You call him to. I am ready to take responsibility for my part in our marriage. I invite You into it now and ask You to dwell with and within us from now on. In Jesus name, amen.