Writing this posting about marriage is not easy for me, but I also know that when I am being called to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, I will receive the help and strength that I need from Christ. There are so many thoughts and emotions that get stirred up inside of me as I share what this word has meant to me. When I got married in 1975, I saw marriage as a life long commitment between my husband and me. I believed in the vow that we proclaimed; for better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. And despite the fact that I had very serious concerns about entering into this marital relationship, just 4 weeks prior to the wedding, I was too scared to say anything to anyone. So I remained silent with a secret that kept me in denial and turmoil for more than 20 years. Though I constantly reminded myself of the vow I had made, and my commitment to that vow, I still ended up being divorced.
Marriage took on an entirely new perspective for me as I now associated it with the word divorce, and for me that meant failure, shame, guilt, and brokenness – broken vows, broken dreams, broken family, and broken hearts. It was also about betrayal, anger and confusion. It was the confusion of not knowing what love truly was, and therefore, not knowing who I was, or who my husband was. As I said, marriage is not easy for me to talk about.
In those early stages of going through my divorce, I remember the one common response that well intentioned friends often expressed to me, “Things will get better, Colleen. Just follow your heart!” Little did my friends know that those words were not at all comforting to me. In fact, they were a piercing arrow to my heart. That’s because there was this one big question that kept lurking inside of me: How can I follow my heart when it is my heart that has deceived me? Well gradually, I eventually began to comprehend the answer to that question.
It actually started with a day that I will never forget. It was the first time that I experienced God’s Word speaking directly to me and my circumstances. I had been sitting at the kitchen table, and I was wrestling with who I was in terms of my own sexual identity and how that had been influenced by my husband and what he struggled with. It was so hard to understand who I was separate from him, and consequently, I felt very lost and alone. As I sadly fixed my gaze at that kitchen table, I caught sight of my Bible. It was staring at me and calling out my name. So I picked it up and I “randomly” opened it. The words I saw became God’s hand print on my life as He taught me about who I was and what He intended marriage to be for me. It was in Genesis 2:18,23-24, “And the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion who will help him. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of a man. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united as one.”
Of all the verses I could have read, God spoke the words I most needed to hear regarding my identity and my marriage. God was simply saying to me,
“Colleen, I created you to be your husband’s companion. I created you to help him and compliment him. I realize those plans have gone astray, but you can not change him. You can only change yourself, and even then, you can only do it with My guidance. I realize that you are confused about who you are. But be clear on this - you are who you are because of Me. You are the woman that I created you to be. You are not man’s creation or what man tells you to be. You are who I say you are! My ideal for both you and your husband was for you to be his woman and for him to be your man. Your husband was designed by me to leave his father and mother and be joined to you so that the two of you would become one. I am sorry Precious One, that your free wills did not line up with my will for you. I know you are having difficulty separating who you are from him, for you have learned to become one, and now you need my help to become separate. I know you feel lost and alone. But I will not abandon you. I am with you, I will not betray you, and I will not forsake you. I am with you always. I will be your husband! I love you!”
No one can really appreciate the comfort I felt when I read God’s Word and heard His Holy Spirit speaking so intimately and loving to me. It was healing!
Today, I can tell you that my friends were right. Things did get better and I have been able to follow my heart once again. But this time it is with confidence and trust, and it is because of the decision that I made many years ago when I asked Jesus to come into my heart. Until that relationship with the Lord was established, I could not follow my heart without it being deceived. A heart without Christ is a heart with a hole in it. It is a heart that will always feel a void. We try to fill it with anyone or anything, but the only one who can ever fill it is Christ!
There is no subject matter that is more near and dear to my heart than this theme of marriage, and as a society, we have become a cluttered and confused mess because of the thinking that we are buying into! The order of our relationships is based on a model that puts man, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and politics first, instead of God. Our concept of marriage has become based on a media model of Desperate Housewives and the endless reality TV shows, such as The Bachelor, that focus on choosing our sexual orientation and life styles that center on lusting, cheating, drinking, cussing and fighting. I realize that all of these shows may seem very entertaining and appeal to our fleshly desires, but ask yourself - Do you really want to live with the bondage, pain and hurt that these situations will bring if you choose to imitate their suggested life-style? My children and I have lived through the reality of our own “Desperate Housewife” show and “Modern Family”, and I can tell you that our lives have been drastically altered by the cluttered lies that we have had to confront.
Here is the bottom line and question that I always have to ask myself, whose plan do I want to follow? Is it the plan of man or the plan of God? Whose plan will you choose?
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