My husband and I have been married in our first marriage for over 40 years now, and have been against divorce and remarriage all that time. However it is sad when I hear from people who say "you must have had a wonderful marriage to be able to stay together that long." NOT!!!
We love each other very much but we have had problems over the years that seemed overwhelming. Each of us came from ungodly families, that didn't teach us what a good marriage looked like, so we floundered for several years and learned many lessons, because of our commitment, we did learn, the only other option was to live in turmoil until we die.
We were not always godly, but through it all we could not divorce. Now we share a great marriage, it has it's ups and downs, but we have chosen to love one another as Christ commanded, it was not always so for us.
We should not be teaching young people how to have a perfect marriage, we should be teaching them how to work through problems with the underlying foundational truth of "no divorce, no matter what."
So many people could have made it through the marriage, had they been determined to resolve rather than run and most importantly of all, give their troubles to the Lord. If only one person in the marriage does this, there can be peace even if the other will not.
One person once said to me that it is better to divorce than live in a marriage where there is always fighting. My response was "there is another option....one of you stop fighting." That would only be the beginning. After that there is prayer and confession of sin.
It can be done, both sets of parents in our families were married 60 and 65 years and our aunts and uncles before them 65 and 75 years. YES, it can be done, we just have to chose it.
