Small Swift Birds

Does God bless second marriages?

29 May 2008 Leave a Comment

by happywoman in God is love, marriage, natural disasters

“I don’t have a husband,” the woman replied. Jesus said, “You’re right!” You don’t have a husband- for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!” -John 4:17-18 (NLT)

I feel like the Samaritan woman sometimes. Not that I’ve had five husbands- this is my second marriage. Today is our fourth anniversary. This might seem like funny timing to come out of the closet as a divorced and remarried person. But this is my life, and my life is messy.

Sometimes, when my husband and I are going through rough times, I ask myself- does God bless second marriages? Does that really happen? Or are we just playing house here?

The first time I was married, I followed all the rules. I saved myself for marriage. I got married at age 18, because I was being taught in our church that it was so terrible to have premarital sex, that it was much better to get married to a teenaged boy who didn’t even have a job and was nowhere near ready to be a husband. Following the rules to the letter, at the expense of all wisdom and good sense. Wisdom would have said, wait till you’re married, and wait till you’re both ready to get married.

Anyway. So my first marriage happened at age 18. I tried to be a good little wifey. I worked full-time, and still came home and made casseroles every night. He played his guitar and worked on an old car all summer. His dad, a union man, had told him not to work until he had to, so he didn’t, although he continued as worship leader at our church. It was pretty darn clear within the first month that he did not want to be married, that he felt like an animal in a cage, but I spent the next two years trying to convince him to love me and to stay with me and work things out, even though he was miserable.

After three months, we went away to college and lived in an apartment. For a while, we stayed very involved in the church. Three services or more a week, with him filling in as worship leader at our previous church now and then. At some point that first year, we got lazy and stopped going to church, telling ourselves that we could have church in our own living room, and that was just as good. Where two or more are gathered, you know. It wasn’t long before we got lazy about the living room church, just as we had about the regular church.

We ran away to a little town in the Rockies to live with his old high school buddy, thinking that all our problems would be solved if we could just make ourselves over as new people, in a new place.

The roommate was a cook in a little restaurant-bar that was staffed by alcoholics and drug users. Nice people, very generous. They all knew they were alcoholics, and joked about it. The restaurant owner never let anyone drive home drunk. My ex worked there, learning to cook Italian. I worked in a fast food place, and later as a hotel housekeeper at the local run-down resort. At first, we convinced ourselves that we could be witnesses for Jesus by hanging out with this crowd and not partaking. At some point, we rationalized that we could not be good Christians if we just learned from others’ mistakes. We should make our own mistakes, even if we knew they were mistakes at the time we made them. So we started going to some of the parties when the roommate invited us. I drank quite a bit that year; he indulged in other substances.

Things got really bad. My ex hated me, blamed me for his misery, and went weeks on end without even looking me in the eye. If I tried to kiss him, he turned away. I had no friends, while he had his buddy’s skater crowd to hang out with. Most of them didn’t even know we were married; he did his best to hide this fact from his new friends. I was the dirty little reminder of the past that he was trying to forget. I stopped participating in the partying. I remember one of many nights when he was out all night, without telling me where he was. I lay in bed and cried and cried, knowing the roommate could hear me through the wall, and not really caring. Finally, I told God, “I can’t do this! I can’t do this anymore!” I guess that was probably the moment when I handed my life back to God. Sort of. I started praying for God to fix the marriage: everything I was trying on my own sure wasn’t working.

We moved back to the Midwest. One night, he left to go back to the Rockies. His car broke down on the interstate, close enough that he was able to walk home. I helped him tow it home to fix it. A few days later, he left again in the patched-together car. He ran away for a few weeks, then came back for a few months. I would find little notes when I got home from work, in which he used Scripture to justify why he was going to leave me. I would respond with my own little notes about how marriage is for life. Then he ran away again, leaving me a very poetic, very nasty note which I immediately threw away, but which I still remember almost word for word. My dad showed up as he was moving his stuff out, and tried to talk him out of leaving, to no avail. This time he stayed gone.

I talked him into going to a few sessions with a Christian marriage counselor. The counselor told us our situation was so bad that we should start with separate, not joint, sessions. The ex stopped going, but I continued for several months. Eventually, the counselor advised me to file for divorce. So did all my friends at work. The counselor assured me that divorce papers are usually the wake-up call that is needed in this kind of situation. I was 21. Four months seemed long enough an opportunity for reconciliation, to my young eyes. Four months seemed like forever. He had his chance, I reasoned.

The wake-up call didn’t work. The divorce papers went through uncontested. He went on to finish art school. He now has a motorcycle and a blossoming music career on the underground punk scene. He writes happy music. He is much happier now. He sent me a long apology letter last summer, which was nice of him. After not talking for five years, we made our peace.

I went back to school too, and along the way I met and married the son of my lovely coworker at the grocery store. We shacked up for a year first. I didn’t much care if anyone approved; I was more than a little cynical about following the rules for marriage the second time around. I had done everything by the book the first time around (pre-marriage, anyway), and still had my heart shredded. So why pretend to be pure, as many of our friends who were getting married pretended, when we weren’t? If we weren’t saving ourselves, we may as well be honest about it and shack up, right?

In the four years since my remarriage, I have gradually let go of my grudge against God. I have come to understand that you can mess up, and pray and pray for God to repair your life, and still have something horrible happen. Life is not perfect. God is not some little idol that we can order around. Just because we ask him for something doesn’t mean we will always get it. Not always in the form that we expect, anyway. Sometimes broken marriages can be fixed, sometimes they fall apart. I no longer judge divorced people the way I did when I was younger. It drives me up the wall when I hear people who have never been abandoned by a spouse say, “It takes two to tango,” when speaking of divorce. I would like to point out that, while it may take two to mess something up, it also takes two to fix something. If one person has no desire to be married anymore, how is this the abandoned spouse’s fault?

But if the husband or wife who isn’t a believer insists on leaving, let them go. In such cases the Christian husband or wife is no longer bound to the other, for God has called you to live in peace. – I Corinthians 7:15 (NLT)

For the record, I do believe that God blesses second marriages. We all mess up sometimes. We live in a fallen, imperfect world. Jesus does not say, “I will forgive lying and murder and adultery and- wait, you’re divorced? Ew, get away from me, you nasty sinner! And you had the nerve to get remarried? That’s unforgivable! You must hang your head in shame for the rest of your life! No forgiveness for you! Sinnie Sinnerson!”

We have had a rocky year, but I am falling in love with my husband again, for the third time. That’s one of the best things about marriage, how you can fall in love again and again with the same person. The first time was when we talked on the merry-go-round at the park. The second time was when he changed all the newborn diapers for the first two days, when I was too weak to stand for long. I am so blessed to be married to a man who loves me, stretch marks and all, and who wants a houseful of children as much as I do. He loves me even when I do my best to make him miserable. He cooks dinner almost every night.

I love you, Mike. Happy anniversary.