So I’m waging an inner battle right now and it might surprise you.  

Was I wrong not to contest, in court, the petition for divorce served against me? 

What if I’m wrong?  What if I’m in sin right now over what I’ve done (or not done), and therefore will be for the rest of my life?  

If I were wrong in how I’ve handled myself in this, something terrifies me. 

If I’m wrong and I was supposed to stay put no matter what, then that means that God has no allowances for what was going on in my marriage.  That means that he not only wanted me to stay in pain, intertwined with sin, dying a slow death, he wanted me to fight to stay in it. That means that though he, of course, cared that I was desperate and hurting, he still expected me to sit in it, to not stand up against evil, to allow things to continue with no consequences, natural or enforced. 

(Side note: and this is huge – though I know the heart can be deceitful, I didn’t for one moment feel God telling me to contest it, nor did anyone in my large circle of wise and godly counsel. Not one person told me they felt I should contest it; in fact, what I heard instead was that this seemed to be God’s protection of me.) 

However, if we were all wrong, and if this is what God expected of me – if he expected me to fight in court {and really, it would have been an ugly, ugly fight and therefore an absolutely backwards effort to win someone back who didn’t want to be with me} – I don’t know what to do with God in all this. That God would make me cry every day for the rest of my life. That lack of grace and compassion would leave me curled up in the fetal position until my dying day.  

I couldn’t care less if I’m right for rightness’ sake, but if I’m wrong, this will upend me and what I believe and who I am following and what every other godly person in my life who walked me through that season said to me and what I think is good and true in this dark, harsh world. And I will be undone. And I won’t know what to think anymore.  

But with all this said: I very well could be so very wrong.  Butsince I cannot turn back the hands of time and since I have no intention of attempting to beg any longer and since there is not some kind of magical communication where I can straight up ask God a question and hear an audible answer on something as grey as this, there is not one thing I can do now but move forward. And so that is what I must do.  

End of discussion, what’s done is done, wrong or not.  Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.


I’m not going back, I’m moving ahead
I’m here to declare, in You old things are made new
Surrender my life to Christ, I’m moving forward

What a moment You have brought me to
Such a freedom I have found in You
What a Healer, You make all things new

You have risen Wwth all power in Your Hands
You have given me a second chance

You make all things new…I will follow You forward
©Free Chapel

 

If this post encouraged you, you would benefit from “Unraveling: Hanging onto Faith through the End of a Christian Marriage”, found here or “Living through Divorce as a Christian Woman”, found here.