Joel and Julia...Another Perspective

Hello...it's been a while!  In the past 10 days, I've been dealing with bronchitis, laryngitis, and a slight sinus infection.  Add to it a rough bout with Mother Nature this past week and her perimenopausal madness, and I've really had a time of it lately.  I've been coughing, moaning, and generally wishing I had a new body for so long that I don't remember what it's like to feel healthy anymore! But I didn't come here to whine (much!).  I've actually used the "down" time to do some thinking about the meatier issues I'm in the midst of in my journey and I wanted to stay accountable for my moving forward and share them.

A television program that I have loved for many years is ending its run next week.  "Parenthood" on NBC was a quick hit with me because of how it dealt with a couple parenting a child who is on the autism spectrum, something I deal with as a teacher on a daily basis, but have never had the experience of living with 24/7.  (Why that actor has never won an Emmy for his spot-on portrayal of Max Braverman is beyond me...he's SPECTACULAR!  But I digress...)

Another reason I love the show is that over the years, Parenthood has tackled some of the meatier issues in marriage through the lens of the relationships between its main characters.  Camille and Zeek growing apart over time due to lack of shared interests and poor communication was particularly poignant.  Adam and Kristina dealing with serious illness...wow!  Most of the time, I feel they are realistic, rather than always looking for the fairy tale ending.  Sarah and Crosby and their relationships and (now) marriages are just a hot mess...but isn't that how life really is?!?

One of the marriages and its particular set of crises hit close to home for me, though.  Joel and Julia. I know this program is fiction...and I do remind myself of this often so I can keep perspective...but these two have run the gamut of emotional upheaval over the past few seasons, and I can very much identify with that!  It's been a bit cathartic for me to see them work this out, actually.  But it may surprise you to hear that I'm not a real fan of how this story line is ending (the two of them are getting back together after nearly divorcing).  Let me explain by sharing some of my own journey in life and marriage.



Many of you know that my husband and I have been married for almost 27 years.  Several of you know that we also spent a year apart, questioning God's plan for our lives and marriage a few years ago after some particularly painful and difficult experiences that shook us both to the core.  That one-on-one time I spent with God at the lowest point of my life helped me grow more as Christian, a woman, a human being, than any other time I can remember.  I tackled issues of self-esteem, body image, my roles as a wife and mother, just to name a few.  A few things have been resolved, many are still a work in progress.  I still struggle to find answers, but the wrestling I did with God in that year has profoundly changed me at a values/beliefs level and impacted my outlook on issues that may be somewhat unexpected for those who know me.

That 12 months apart from my marriage was very intense.  And that's not a bad thing.  I can't go so far to say that I recommend it for all my married friends, but I will be honest and say that it wasn't all tears (though there were plenty!) and hurt (though there was much!).   In fact, in some ways, I actually miss the closeness I had with God in those days where it was just Him and me. The Bible is very true when it says that God is close to the brokenhearted.  Based on my own experience, I believe that we know His nearness in those times at a deeper level because we are keenly attuned to His presence when we are completely dependent upon it.  It's not that He wasn't there all along - we simply took it for granted. We sometimes acknowledge with our head His omnipresence, but fail to embrace His constant presence in our spirits as we go about our lives.  Desert times force our hands and move us to our knees, where we have a loving, comforting God who opens His arms and carries us when our own strength isn't nearly enough to make due.

One of the issues I faced head on with God while dealing with the train wreck my marriage had become was the question of divorce.  I believe this is a particularly difficult concept for Jesus followers to tackle because it forces us to examine things we'd (I'd!) rather leave untouched. Is it a sin to divorce your spouse? Does God truly hate divorce? If I divorce, am I somehow less of a Christian because I gave up on God working the miracle that only He could to save my marriage?  Will God ever allow me to remarry, or do I have to remain single and penitent the rest of my days, wearing my own version of the scarlet letter in the house of God, where so many who know so little about my journey have no problem seeing and interpreting it harshly through their own lens?

I've asked these questions and wondered what the answers might be.  I still do, actually.

I am a child of divorce.  Multiple divorces, actually, from both of my parents.  It was quite a stigma in a family where it hadn't happened often (or at all in the case of my mother's side of the family!).  It was also responsible for making me the odd girl out with most of my friends because they lived for the most part in 2-parent families.  I won't say they lived HAPPILY in those families...but they had parents who chose to stay together, and I didn't.  There was a profound difference in our life experiences because of this.

I am intimately acquainted with the byproducts of divorce, both the difficult consequences and the blessings.  Sure, there are the well-documented emotional pains that have to be endured as a child of divorce (though if you look at the "does poorly in school" prediction, I have to say I blew that one out of the water!)  But, there are also some positive consequences that are largely ignored.  Yes, there are actually blessings that come directly as a result of your parents dissolving their marriage, no matter what any psychologist may want to tell you.

Not only do I have wonderful relationships with amazing people in my life that I wouldn't have had access to without my parents' divorce (Love you, Mac!), but I also have a resiliency of spirit that is a positive consequence of navigating the sometimes difficult terrain of my childhood.  That has served me well as an adult.  Do I wish my parents had stayed married?  As a child, I dreamed it nightly and begged for it.  As an adult, I understand that there are elemental parts of my character that were formed in those hard times and I do not regret having to endure them.  It's simply the path my life took to bring me where I am now.

Dealing with God on the question of divorce with my own marriage, though, is difficult.  Not WAS difficult. IS difficult. Ongoing.

Now we enter that place where my views may not be in sync with what you'd expect from me, but I'm sharing them anyway and for a purpose that I'll get to later, I promise.  I don't mean to offend, and I am sorry if this does.  I don't mean to make light of the eternal commitment that marriage is.  I understand it completely, trust me.  In fact, I'd argue that I may understand it at a deeper level than someone who has not walked my path.  Go with me on this and give me a chance to explain please.

Perhaps because I came from a childhood that was touched by divorce, or just because I was a doe-eyed, 21 year old girl marrying the man of her dreams, I made a promise to myself that when I married it was forever.  Period.  Nothing would ever cause me to end my marriage. Divorce was not an option. Staying married was non-negotiable. You probably made those promises to yourself, too. We will not ever mention the "D-word" in this house.

Yet, I've been so very close to that precipice of divorce.  I've had to look right over the edge of that cliff and make the call of whether I was going to free fall into it or stand my ground shakily on the ledge.  Every marriage has that ledge. If you haven't found yours, you will.  I promise you.  You may not find yours in the manner that I found mine, but you will come to the point where you question everything you thought you knew about yourself as a woman, a wife, a Jesus girl.  The question then becomes what will you do when you encounter it?

Here's what I did.  I begged God to let me divorce my husband.  And I mean begged.  I wanted to be done with the pain, done with the ripping to shreds of my self esteem, done with the questioning and uncertainty that would continue to be part of my marriage if I stayed in it.  Just done.  The girl who swore divorce was not an option actually begged God for release from her vows with a clean slate and a new start. It was not my shiniest moment as human, I don't suppose, wailing on my knees before God - but it was real, sometimes far more real than the face that I show the world every day of a woman who has it pretty much together, living a successful life.

And God said not yet.

This is critical, my friends.  God said NOT YET.  This is where I think that wrestling with Him has changed me. In my spirit, I know that I heard this message from Him.  Clearly.  Not yet.

I have a new understanding about marriage that I didn't have prior to this struggle.  Yes, I fully understand the Biblical construct of marriage.  The two become one - inseparable.  Until death us do part - that's the promise we make.  As Jesus girls, we go into marriage with the idea that we will NEVER divorce, we don't allow it to be an option.  And I did that, too.  I WANTED that!  But it was not - is not - my reality.

Marriage exists in a fallen world, just as we do.  Marriage as God designed it was surely meant to be an eternal commitment, just as our bodies were made for eternity before sin entered the world and corrupted that.  Marriages can become corrupted, too, by so many, many things.  They are often so far from the relationship that God intended when he created marriage.  Can He redeem and restore a marriage...ABSOLUTELY!  Does He want to?  YES!!!  Does He hate divorce?  As much as He hates sin and its consequences in His creation. Is it unforgivable to divorce your spouse?  No.  Not at all.

We beat ourselves up as Jesus girls sometimes when we even consider divorce.  I did.  I used to, more correctly.  I don't any longer.  I'm not begging God for release from my marriage anymore, because He's brought me a LONG way from that day on my knees sobbing my heart out to Him.  But I'm also not absolutely sure that it won't one day happen.  What I AM is far more attuned to the work that God is doing in me THROUGH my marriage, and I am willing to let Him do the work He wants to do in my life.  I choose to yield to Him, trust Him, and let Him have the space in my heart to renew and change it.  And right now, that's happening within my marriage relationship.

I'm aware that it's not a popular position to say that I don't know if I'm going to stay in this marriage forever.  I understand that.  Perhaps we judge each other harshly on this, though. Maybe there is this place in the back of our minds that fears that one day it could be us in this place, staring down what we swore we'd never do.  I certainly never imagined myself here...but here I am.  Friends, we need to stop doing that...stop looking in from the outside and questioning the judgment and faith of our friends...and that's why I'm sharing my experience on this so openly.

We need to be real...and we need to love each other, the way God wants us to as His dearly loved children.  Yes, there are lovely, wonderful moments in marriage. Good marriages have loads and loads of those.  But every marriage is work...hard work...and it takes two partners who are willing to work it out together with God guiding each of them.  You and I both know - that doesn't always happen.  We need to be OK saying our marriages aren't  perfect because we are not perfect and we screw them up with multiple bad decisions.  We need to not pretend that marriage is a fairy tale that always has a happy ending, and we need to stop beating up our already-hurting friends when the ending they choose is divorce.

This is where I wish the Joel and Julia story in "Parenthood" had taken the different turn. I am not glorifying divorce as the best alternative to hurting, but I do believe that the issues that separated Joel and Julia are weightier and far more complex than they had the opportunity to explore as fictional characters.  And sadly, it is those gut-wrenching, difficult to overcome problems that are often the ones that sink marriages. In some ways, I like seeing them together, working it out, because it offers hope that the hard work can actually be done, that no marriage is ever so far gone that it can't be redeemed.  But really, they are not even scratching the surface of what Joel and Julia face ahead of them in restoring that relationship, and that's a shame.  I'd have far rather them end this series with this marriage up in the air and struggling, rather than showing them smiling and sharing the same bed again.  THAT would feel more real to me.

Please note that even if it may come across differently, I am in NO WAY encouraging myself or any of my friends who are also facing some tough times in marriage to consider divorce as their first and best option and to use it as an "easy out" to go find their personal path to future happiness.  Not at all! I haven't been divorced myself, but I have watched quite a few happen.  The path to happiness doesn't easily run through a divorce!  You've got to do a lot of hard soul-searching and recalculating to get on that path to joy after a marriage dissolves. Happiness, though, really isn't the goal of marriage...or divorce.

What I believe about marriage is that it is an intimate relationship, mirroring Christ and the church, and that God uses it to transform us into the image of His Son, which is His ultimate purpose in our lives, whether we are married or not. We learn more about how to love as Jesus loved when we are married...mostly because it is sorely tested on a daily basis!  I believe God desires for marriage to be permanent, and that He divinely holds marriages together in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

But I also believe that we as people sometimes screw marriage up so badly by infesting it with sin, as it is our nature to do, that we leave no room for God to do His work in our lives via that relationship any longer.  In those times, I do believe that God let's us move on.  Does he "bless" divorce?  No...but He blesses His children, those who are married, those who are single, and yes, those who are divorced.

Ultimately, at the end of our year apart, my husband and I each decided that God was not done with the work He was doing in our lives through our marriage and we moved back together about 18 months ago to give Him space to keep working.  Life is not wine and roses. We are not Joel and Julia. Far from it!

Some of the key issues that separated us have been dealt with and resolved, praise God!  Many have not.  Some days are happy and fun!  Many are not.  There are days when I still look up to God and say, "Why are we doing this?"  And then I wait - listen for His answer. That is the difference in me, and it is directly attributable to my time of wrestling with God for years over this issue.  I listen and wait.  Sometimes, more patiently than others, admittedly.  But I'm here...and I'm listening.

Ultimately, I try to have faith that God's purposes for me will prevail, whether I remain married or not.  I don't want to carelessly toss away a 27-year relationship where God has done a lot of growing in me, unless I truly believe that He is allowing me to move on...and that it is a move FORWARD for me, not merely a retreat from the pain and suffering that come along with this marriage at times.

So...there you have it.  My last word is simply this.  Love each other.  And then love some more.  Let your love lead you to support and pray for and with your friends who have difficult marriages.  It's hard to be this girl, trust me.  Life doesn't wrap up as neatly as the writers of "Parenthood" make it appear when they wrote these gut-wrenching scenes to end this ground-breaking television series. But life is good...and real...and it moves forward.

Moving forward...
Angie
:-)