What Healing from Divorce Looks Like

And What it Doesn't

It’s hard gluing your arm back on after an explosion. Pesky bleeding won’t stop, glue won’t set, and it’s turning green. Green’s good, right?

Stumbling around like zombies in a blast zone, they lurch around hoping to piece together fragments of a destroyed marriage. You keep waving toward the getaway car as they wander in a daze, digging up hope and staring at a sun that isn’t there.

You see self-destruction, struggling to verbalize it, watching them scratch through the dirt for a landmine to dance with. Clumsily jerking through a one-way two-step, they hold the explosive up high for all to see. Don’t they see the danger?! Why aren’t they chucking that thing as far as they can?! Don’t they know how expensive arm glue is?

You can’t speak clearly to someone living in a fog.

You may have heard the phrase “I’m standing for my marriage.” For many of us, it’s a rallying cry to get behind and cheer on. It looks a lot like faith. We clap along for this noble cause unaware of the dangers below as they fumble around in fantasy. We’re not cheering them on; we’re endorsing false hope.

A woman was allowed to attend Divorce Care classes for ten years in her local church as she ‘stood’ for her marriage. Church, you are enabling them to live out a fantasy, not moving them forward in reality. Say something.

“Faith sees what’s not there yet!” True, but there can’t be faith without an admission of current reality. God doesn’t part oceans they don’t believe exist. Coming to grips with divorce is agonizing. Refusing to feel the sting of divorce, they numb it instead. That’s why they’re out there hugging hand grenades in hopes their spouse will come back. Their “faith,” might be destroying them and your high-five isn’t helping.

Admit it Christian, you caught yourself immediately going to the comments to speed type how God can heal and repair anything. Yes, God can heal anything. He’s God. But healing may look different than what you envisioned. Healing comes with scars, and churches struggle staring at scars.

We love what looks good on a Sunday stage. An affair ripped apart a marriage that God restored five years after divorcing. Tears are flowing, hands are held tighter across the auditorium, ending in a standing ovation. We’re addicted to that stuff. But the crowd isn’t around on Monday. Later that year they’re in counseling. Why?

Consequences from rushing reconciliation are like gluing arms back on. We tend to fast-forward healing without properly bandaging the wounds. We applaud restoring unions still bleeding under the veneer.

Nobody likes being told they’re broken. Some are hell-bent on getting back to the way things were, unwilling to examine how unhealthy it was. Divorce doesn’t happen by accident. Divorce fairies don’t leave dissolution papers at your door. It’s a result of unhealthy patterns and practices compounding. Divorce is messy, and loving someone to the realization of their part in it is messier.

Before rushing to reconnect an index finger, point people to healing. It’s the only way out. It’s the only way of releasing death’s grip on their fantasy.

The biggest blessing they’ll hate is helping officiate the funeral of memories that will never come to life again. This creates the space for Jesus to heal them from a trauma left ignored, making room for a miracle.

The healing of the blind man happened because he knew he was blind. Why ask for a miracle they don’t think they need? Why ask for deliverance from a pain they refuse to feel?

Scars tell stories. We just don’t like scabs. They’re itchy and we pick at them hoping the itchy goes away. It temporarily subsides, returning 10 times worse. We fixate on relieving the current discomfort, crippling long term relief. We don’t view scars as healing, but as permanent reminders of pain. Scars wave the white flag of surrender. This is where miracles happen though. Where pointing people to Jesus sets them free.

In Revelation chapter five, verse six, the scene in heaven turns to Jesus and John describes Him as being “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.” Jesus could have removed any sign of His sacrifice. Erased any recognizable mark of what He endured. But He chooses to stand in heaven, brightly displaying His scars as symbols of His eternal victory.

Scars are not a reminder of the worst season of their life; they’re the stamp of victory going forward. They bear the mark of freedom now. That’s the miracle. That’s victory.

Just ask someone where they got that scar from and buckle up. What once was a place of pain so intense they couldn’t even feel it, is now the scar of how Jesus healed them through it. That’s a story worth telling.

Stories in real life don’t end the way we think. You’re still reading hoping this couple gets back together. Fight that urge. After a divorce, it’s the individual who needs healing, not the marriage.

Maybe what your Sunday stage needs is a divorced person with a missing arm singing about the goodness of God. That’s a testimony. That’s powerful. That’s healing.

We need more stages showing more scars.

Let scars display God’s victory.

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This was the second installment on our series Life After Divorce. If you know of someone struggling through a divorce, would you please share this with them. Right now, they need voices speaking life, truth, and hope into them. It would be an honor to be one of those voices.

If you’re divorced, there is hope. There is a future. Let Jesus write your story.