An Excerpt on the Church and Divorce and Grace

I woke up before the alarm went off, but only by 15 minutes. I glared at my phone and resented it. I contemplated strongly turning the alarm off and rolling back over and going to sleep. Today was the first time in a week I’d slept in my own bed, and it felt good. Not only that, after a weeklong ski trip and traveling all day the day before with a family of five, losing one hour due to time zones and another hour to Daylight Savings, I felt totally justified in going back to sleep. I also knew no one but me wanted to wake up and go to church – it would be a fight all the way – and I really didn’t want to go either.

When the alarm went off, I only hit snooze once, and grudgingly rolled out of bed and sent the family down the It’s Time To Get Up and Take A Shower and Get Cute No Writing on Your Shirt You Have to Look Decent Put a Smile on Your Damn Face No We Don’t Have Any Groceries Hurry Up So We Can Buy Donuts Trail. By the time I walked into church, maybe I was ready to pick a fight. I started thinking about an email I’d sent to someone asking them to make our blended family correct in the computer system, and I was guessing no one had fixed it. When we went to sign the girls in, my suspicions were confirmed, but the youth pastor was standing there, so I casually mentioned that our family needed fixed in the computer system, and that I had sent an email. He knew JUST who I needed to talk to, and summoned her right that second. We all stood around while I explained that Edith and I had come here years ago and decided not to make this our church hoe, and now we had decided to come here, so everyone but Edith was under one family, and she was under another. Some jokes were made – it was actually fun and funny – and we were promised that it would get fixed. On the way up to the sanctuary, two people said “Hi” to us, and I thought, this might be getting better (we have only attended this church since August). It felt good.

But then, as we sat in the pew, and praise and worship started, I started wondering what those people down at the kid check in thought about us now. Obviously, we were remarried. So obviously, we are probably divorced – maybe widowed – but probably divorced. And it was like in that moment a huge scab was yanked off of a huge wound, and my tears started just flowing, and I could not stop them. My brain started sifting through all the painful memories, one after another. My heart cried out to God, “God, I am so tired of being rejected by Your Church. Why do You let Your Church reject me?” And I heard or knew or felt God in the very heart of my soul, and knew that He does not reject me. Jesus loves me, this I know. I said, “I know God. I know you accept me. But Your Church rejects me, and it hurts.”

I’m going to tell you about a few of my memories that my brain sifted through. This is not to throw anyone under the bus, but just to explain. In that moment this morning, I knew I was going to blog about this. Why? Not for attention, not so that I would be accepted at my church (I probably actually already kind of am), but hopefully to (A) let people who feel the same way know that they are not alone and (B) maybe raise a little awareness to people who have never been divorced of how much their judgement hurts.

I found myself going through a divorce at 21. It was a mistake. My dad told me not to do it – my best friend told me not to do  it – but I was stubborn and hell bent and wrong. A lot of what was fueling me was being raised in the church, and knowing that sex outside of marriage was a sin. 11 months later, I was in a world of hurt. I knew that divorce was a sin – not only a sin, but an unacceptable sin – and I believed I had to decide between divorce or death, because I could not live with where I was. I’m not going to get into all the nitty gritty, but for a while I chose death as my way out of my marriage. With some help and soul searching and a little medication, I wrapped my head around choosing divorce instead of death. It was a hard fight.

I went in to tell my childhood pastor – not only my pastor, but my swim coach, a father figure, my employer (I babysat his kids for years) – what I had to do. I felt I owed it to him to tell him, since he had married us. He made it clear that day that if I did not stay in the marriage, I was not going to Heaven. I tried to tell him this was life or death, but he argued yes, it was more than life or death – it was Heaven or Hell. After I had some time for this to settle in my heart and mind, I finally came around to the conclusion that if that’s what God was – if that’s what Heaven was – I didn’t want it anyway. I rejected my faith. Honestly though, my faith had already rejected me, or so it seemed.

(Years later I revisited this church and talked to the pastor. He was cold like a fish when he shook my hand. I decided to write him a letter and begged him to tell me that I had misinterpreted his rejection – to please tell me that I had been a child and misunderstood him. I told him how much the rejection had hurt me. It was a letter that was never answered.)

Fast forward four years. I met a pastor and somehow I was just drawn to him. We started conversating about God and church and rejection and faith. He talked me into giving church a try again, once I moved to Texas. He also asked me not to tell anyone that he talked to me or met with me – which was a huge red flag that I ignored. My heart started to heal, I came back to church; I even started teaching Sunday school. And then again, short version here, but he told me that he was going to leave his wife and reverse his vasectomy, and we were going to get married and have children and this was God’s will for our lives. Again, my world spun all over the place. I quietly finished teaching the Sunday school year (there were only a few weeks to go anyway), and left the church. Again, feeling very done with church and God and faith.

I got married again. I did not marry a believer. I wasn’t sure I was one at that point myself. I got divorced again. If you think I felt like a failure after one divorce, I felt like the scourge of the earth after two. What is it, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?” I mean, there’s just no excuse for that!!! But again, I found myself making a choice between what was likely leading to death or divorce. Maybe that’s dramatic – maybe it wasn’t leading to death – but maybe it wasn’t dramatic and maybe it was – I decided not to continue to find out. I had a child to protect, a child that was my entire world. During this time, I got convicted about her not being raised in the church. We started shopping churches and finally found one I fell in love with. At first I was just going for her, because I knew that I had already made choices (twice now) that made Heaven not available to me.

Slowly, this church taught me about grace. I had heard the word grace, but I’d never really understood what it meant. It took me months of intense conversations with the pastor to wrap my brain around grace – I had definitely always been firmly footed in legalism. Grace is getting something we don’t deserve – forgiveness in my case. I cannot explain how life altering this was when I finally understood. I had great healing. For a while I felt accepted, kind of, mostly. Kind of depends on who, honestly. I was the only single parent I knew of in the entire church, and that felt ostracizing. I’ll never forget taking a parenting class – I was all excited about meeting some other people with kids my age and getting to know them – and on the day of class realized there were twenty-ONE participants. One guy gave me some compassion and said he admired me as a single parent and that someone should mow my lawn or something, but no one ever did. It was a nice thought though.

In this church I wrestled with God about re-marriage. I can tell you I know every verse in the Bible upside down and backwards about what the Bible says about divorce and adultery. I have read blogs and articles, aside from the Bible itself, and sought council from a few men of God whom I respected. I can even make a strong case that the Bible never says that divorce is a sin (GASP). I can also make a strong case that remarriage is indeed adultery and adultery is sin (GASP from the other side). There are a lot of opinions and arguments on both sides, but at the end of the day, what it really boils down to is that it’s between me and God. Or you and God. Whatever, you know what I mean. After years of wrestling (and celibacy -  TMI I know), I decided that I was going to remarry. At first, I didn’t know who, but I decided (with God) that I was going to remarry. I finally rolled with 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 which states “For it is better to marry than to burn with sexual desire.” I went through one relationship in the process that was a Complete Wheels Come Off the Truck Blow Out. A Blow Out that happened before marriage, praise be to God.

But during that Blow Out, I found The Limit of (my Church’s) Grace. Getting remarried was a sin, and my pastor would not perform the ceremony. I was devastated – I thought of him like a 2^nd father. We were very close – very good friends. Now, I understand his side, and I’m not throwing him under the bus. He believes remarriage is a sin, and it goes against his beliefs, and he does not want to be a part of committing that sin. I get it – my brain gets it – my heart was shattered though. When I finally did find my spouse, and we decided to get married, I had to leave that church – the church where I had found so much healing and learned about what grace was had ultimately rejected me, and my new spouse, without ever even meeting him. I realized bitterly that they probably had rejected me all along, and I just wanted to believe that I was accepted. That’s harsh though – the truth is probably somewhere in the middle – part of the church’s people loved me unconditionally for who I was and part of them judged me.

So that was all what was circling my brain this morning and I could not get it to stop. The kind lady behind me handed me the Kleenex. That’s when you know it’s bad! “God, Your Church HURTS. I know you want me to be here, but I don’t want to be today anyway.” I just knew that either the sermon was going to be tailor made for me today and it was going to have nothing to do with me today. Because that’s how sermons work on days like this.

The sermon was about lepers and tax collectors and Roman centurions, and how Jesus loved them. Divorcees were never mentioned specifically. (Sidebar – it reminded me of a sermon I heard years ago where the pastor said that Jesus loves all sinners – “even murderers and rapists and divorcees” and I thought to myself oh my oh my oh my. I’m in quite the company!!!) It was about inclusiveness.  The leper in Matthew 8 was completely shunned by society – Jesus touched him and healed him and made him feel included instead of shunned. Then the Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant just by the power of his words alone, and Jesus says he has greater faith than anyone in Israel (including the Jews). And the verse I loved the most this morning was Matthew 9:13. “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I have come not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus loves me. Jesus wants me. And His Church should spend some time learning “what this means.”

BAM.

It really was an amazing sermon, and one I needed to hear. If you need to hear it too, I’m sure it will be available at www.rcnb.org sometime soon (March 8, 2020). It was not about divorce. But it was about inclusiveness and dropping your judgments at the door.

I do have to say that through all of this, I have learned so much, and God has softened my heart. I don’t think without going through this personally that I would have ever wrapped my heart around LGBT issues within (and with-out) the church. I will not get into all of that, but this group is also rejected very strongly by a huge portion of the church, and it isn’t right. It isn’t Christian. And we should knock it off.

That was my little LGBT soapbox.

Our church says every Sunday, “We are badly broken. We are deeply loved.” That is very true. I know this is true. I want this to be true. But I’ll be honest, I have a hard time trusting that. I generally hold back now more and more in religious settings, even though that isn’t my nature. When I do reach out, I often feel rejected. I know my life choices are obvious and not acceptable to many. I read rejections probably often where it isn’t – I know that. But I also have felt firsthand open, blatant rejection, so I am highly attuned to it.

I write this not for sympathy. Again, I hope through my story that others in my shoes find some solidarity. And I hope others not in our shoes can re-examine the love of Jesus Christ. 

Disclaimer. The image I used is taken off of the internet and is in no way mine. I cannot draw, let alone do computer graphics. It is an image of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I feel that I am wearing one often when in a church setting! I might get one made ha ha ha.