One of the saddest posts that I have seen thus far on Facebook regarding the lockdown was this:
“Dear single friends, stay positive and optimistic. After 3 weeks of lockdown there will be plenty divorces and new opportunities”
My heart literally broke. This was posted by a friend of mine who is a Believer and who is divorced.
When the lockdown was declared I heard far too many married couples commenting:
- How are we going to stand being together for so long
- This is going to be nightmare being stuck with the family with no break
- How on earth are we going to survive this
This from believers…
They have lost sight of the fact that we serve a Holy God, a God we made vows to on our marriage day. A God of love and friendship.
The whole point of marriage is to grow and develop together and to want to spend time with each other.
In Malachi 2:16 God say “I hate divorce.” Not only because it breaks one of His ‘laws’ but because God knows that divorce inflicts deep wounds on His beloved children, that pain and loneliness and guilt will destroy His children. He also knows that the generations to follow will always be touched by the divorce —as families will no longer celebrate things together. A mother or father will always be absent…
“A relationship is like a house. When a light bulb burns out you do not go and buy a new house, you fix the light bulb.” —Bernajoy Vaal
Far too many couples are buying ‘new houses’ instead of fixing the ‘light bulbs’.
We, as believers, have gone so wrong in our Biblical knowledge, our honoring of God and the dismissing of the family unit regarding God’s plan and desire for marriage.
We have started to treat marriage casually and disrespectfully.
A lot of Christian marriages have become a mockery if single people are looking for an opportunity to meet a man or woman newly set ‘free’ from their marriage? Especially in the churches.
How God’s heart must weep for us.
The other thing that has literally broken my heart is that Christian parents have had to ask this question of their children:
“We are going to be in lockdown for a few weeks—which parent do you want to spend that time with. You need to decide now.”
Imagine being the child faced with that question. How does a child decide something like that especially if the divorce was acrimonious—whichever parent they choose the other parent will be hurt and upset and may hold it against the child—that is certainly what will be going through the child’s mind. I am the child of parents who divorced, whose mother remarried and divorced twice more and whose father remarried as well. The guilt I carried into adulthood was crippling—I believed that to a degree I was responsible for their divorce. I am not alone, I have spent many hours with children, teenagers and adults whose parents got divorced and that was the common theme running through all our minds. That somehow we were to blame in some way for the divorce.
What a burden for a child to have to carry. What a burden to have to pack a bag every weekend or second weekend and move into another house with a stepmother/father, stepbrothers/sisters.
And now during the COVID-19 lockdown, these children may be trapped with people who are relatively strangers to them.
As married couples we should be rejoicing that we have so much time to spend together, time to spend searching God’s word and praying together. We have been given the gift of time for the next few weeks and we should be rejoicing in it personally.
We should also be taking this time to pray together for those whose businesses are failing and who are struggling and having to face this time in confinement in close quarters with others, or who are in abusive relationships and for those who are lonely.
As married couples we need to keep Ephesians 4:2 in our minds and hearts at all times:
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
