A Marriage Dying

A Marriage Dying

By

Mike Hamilton

I once sat in a marriage seminar and heard the speaker say something that I couldn't let go of after hearing it.  He said "Your marriage is either growing or dying, there is no in-between….now what are you going to do about it?"  What followed was a list of things that couples could do to breath life back into their marriage.  Notes, lists, love languages, dares, 10 steps, 12 steps, celebrating recovery, couples devotionals, a seemingly endless mass of tools at a couple's disposal to save their marriage.  The problem I have with this is that it supposes that we should keep a bad marriage or a stagnant marriage alive.  It would be like a doctor who keeps adding medicine to a man who is clearly on his way to death, each medical device and pill prolonging the pain of what will eventually be the outcome.  Sometimes a marriage dying needs to do what is inevitable and die.

Am I suggesting divorce?  No.  I am suggesting that God isn't interested in what we have built in his stead.  I am suggesting that God brings many, many, many couples to a place where they say, honestly, "I do not love you".  I am suggesting that God is a God who brings dead things back to life and that sometimes He is waiting for someone to be brave enough to say "Enough is enough", "I can no longer do this", "I will no longer sit and watch this happen".  As a child has to eventually put away childish things and grow up, we in our marriages need to truly ascertain where we are in reality and own up to what we have built on our own, apart from Him and move towards Him in hopes He will help us grow up.  And then decide right there to let it all fall down around us for the sake of a real marriage based in real love with real intimacy.

Here is the scary part, you may have no idea that your marriage is slowly dying.  But if God is interested, and He always is, He will wake you both up to what is really going on in your marriage.  And trust me on this one, He is not interested in helping you limp along by figuring out how to enslave your spouse with your "love language", He isn't interested in a love dare for 30 days, He isn't interested in you and your spouse having sex 30 days out of 30 days to find a good marriage again.  He is interested in real growth that will be about something so far beyond ourselves that the only thing we can do is scramble into some marriage version of door to door combat.  We will be and should be gripped with fear, we will be and should be clueless and confused about any direction other than things can't remain the same and that what we are about to do is from a God who loves to watch old things die away and new things spring forth from ashes and bones.

I can't tell you the number of people I have seen in my office who have been surprised by an a terrible turn in a marriage, out of the blue and have been fully incapable of finding their feet again.  And it's usually because finding their feet amounts to things they can do to patch, repair or smooth over wounds that can't be undone and I think God is not interested in those things working….He is a redeemer and a Redeemer is just that, THE ONE WHO REDEEMS.  A redeemer isn't one who is looking for a rebellion to stay stuck in Egypt.  He doesn't negotiate with what He is about to make His own.

This place is not a place where we can participate in small ways.  If my marriage has gotten to the point of affairs taking place I can not redeem this by writing my wife notes that tell her I love her.  I can't give her gifts that will change her mind about meeting her lover.  The marriage needs a complete reset.  Pushing that button isn't small.  And this post isn't just about affairs, it's about any marriage that has been found dead on arrival and has no chance if something doesn't substantially change.  There has to be a time where you refuse to do what you have always done and do all new things done unto Him.  It isn't about quitting, it's about quitting what you have been doing to be a party to killing your marriage.  Let that old relationship die and begin to live in reality inviting your spouse there.  Refuse to be a party to old patterns inside and outside the marriage.  This takes long hours, arguments and discussions instead of sleep and a hope that all of it is something that God will redeem once you have found the ground of reality.  It is hard work to watch what we have built fall into a dirt heap and to have no idea if it will ever be anything again.

It is hard work dying.  It is harder work over longer time resuscitating what will never be able to breath on its own.  If you stop doing what you have always done what will be waiting for you will either be the reality of a dead marriage that has always been dead….or a dying marriage that God is waiting to redeem.  Walking into this can be scary and sad and lonely, seemingly never ending….but if you find this place you will realize it is the only place where He is waiting and the only place where dead things come back to life.