On a cold March night in 2008, my parents called our first—and last—family meeting.
“We have something important we need to tell you,” my father began, in a low, matter-of-fact voice. “Sometimes, when husbands and wives stop loving each other. . . .”
I don’t remember precisely what he said after this. I remember my mother’s quiet sniffles as she squeezed my hand, my brothers’ quivering chins and tear-stained faces, and the darkness of the night encroaching upon our living room. The rest is a haze.
But those words—“Sometimes husbands and wives stop loving each other”—remain seared in my memory to this day. With those words, the innocence of my childhood shattered, and I awakened to the nightmare of divorce.
After all my family has been through, I would never wish the trauma of divorce on anyone. I was only ten years old when my parents announced their marital separation. My brothers were seven and three, respectively. As the three of us struggled to navigate the emotional labyrinth of our broken home, we ended up lost and confused in a tangled web of split Christmases, covert verbal abuse, and family drama.
Growing up in a divorced household drastically altered our perception of love, marriage, and fidelity. Though the trauma of divorce impacted each of us differently, all three of us wrestled with a similar fear: What if the same thing happens to me?
Till Death Do Us Part?
We all long for covenantal love. Most of us worry we will never find it. For children of divorce, the fears of abandonment and rejection are especially strong because we know firsthand that sometimes people just walk out.
Matthew’s Gospel describes this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees over the topic of divorce:
Pharisees came up to Jesus and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matt. 19:3–8 ESV, emphasis added)
Divorce was never God’s plan. He intended for marriage and family to last a lifetime. But, as survivors of divorce know all too well, because of sin, reality does not always reflect God’s ideal. People lie. They violate their wedding vows. They stand at the altar and say, “Till death do us part,” when they secretly mean, “Until I change my mind.”
God’s Faithful Covenants
Mercifully, despite the pain and suffering caused by my parents’ divorce, God has brought blessing out of tragedy. The Lord has demonstrated his kindness to me in manifold ways, but none so powerful as this: As I wrestled with the ramifications of my parents’ broken wedding vows, I came to know God as the holy covenant keeper.
Like many children from divorced homes, I spent my teen years looking for perfect love in all the wrong places. I searched for it in romantic relationships, friendships, and surrogate father figures. But no one, not even those who loved me most, could provide me with the steadfast love my soul craved.
For years, I thought my family was cursed. I feared that I would end up in an abusive marriage just like all my other relatives—that domestic violence was simply my lot in life. Capitalizing on these fears, Satan whispered vicious lies and accusations into my mind: “What makes you think you deserve better than those who came before you? You aren’t worthy of love and respect!”
But God proved my accuser wrong, using his word to patiently teach me that the sins of my family do not disqualify me from his love. Nothing—not even my parents’ broken wedding vows—can nullify his faithfulness toward me.
The LORD your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commands, to a thousand generations. (Deut. 7:9)
The steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to their children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. (Ps. 103:18)
Human love is fragile at best, but God’s love is immutable. Whenever people reject, abandon, or betray us, we can find comfort in knowing that “the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. His mercies never come to an end” (Lam. 3:22).
Nothing—not divorce, nor adultery, nor abandonment—can change that.
Hope for Human Relationships
Relationships are messy. I have yet to meet anyone with a perfect family. All of us have experienced rejection, abandonment, or betrayal at some point in our lives. In a world of broken promises, it’s tempting to became hard-hearted and cynical, resisting relational intimacy for fear of being wounded.
But we can’t live like that. We need one another. God created us for relationship, as challenging as it may be at times. God’s steadfast love gives us the courage to remain gentle, hopeful, and kind in a world of hurting and hurtful people. We need not fear what may happen in our human relationships, for our God—the faithful promise maker and covenant keeper—will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5).
