You are Not Alone

When you feel your marriage beginning to crumble in crisis, fragments of unresolved issues, confusion, and pain can shatter your dreams and expectations for the life you thought you had. You feel all alone. You look around and see two camps of people: One camp with marriages intact, happily moving forward in their lives; the other camp with people who are divorced but apparently stable, moving past the hurts to find new dreams.

Two camps. Two choices. This is all you see.

And then some brave soul steps forward to share a true life experience of healing. They open their life to others to tell of deep, painful times in their marriage that God turned around in their life for good.

This happened the other day on my Facebook Page.  As I told of one marriage that was beginning to reconcile, other people jumped in to share their stories of how God had healed their marriages also. One after another, people emerged from the shadows of cyberspace to share a story of hope.

Others shared struggles they were still dealing with, and once again courageous souls jumped in to encourage them.

And many hurting people began to see they were not alone. There was a third camp—a third answer.

This is the beauty of Christian lives that are honest and vulnerable, allowing God to use the encouragement He has given them to encourage others. They show us a third option, something the world doesn’t see because most people want to put the hard times behind and not look back.

Through and beyond the stories of the honest and vulnerable, is a testimony of God’s wondrous power and love. God is our healer, and when we bring our brokenness to Him, He can bathe it in a healing balm that pulls everything together through the light He sheds into our darkness.

I’ve seen God do it in my own life, and now I’ve seen Him do it in many others as well. We are not alone. Others have walked this journey before us, and many have seen God breathe new life into marriages that appeared to have died slow and painful deaths.

We are not alone. We are never alone. Whether or not that courageous soul steps forth to speak to us of the hope they found for their marriage, God is by our side, waiting for us to come to Him, waiting for us to bring Him our pain and confusion so He can comfort us and lead us on a path into the light of His healing.

He wants to walk beside you on this journey. He holds hope in the palm of His hand. When you take His hand, you take hold of the hope of Jesus. You are not alone.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you can overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Do you have a story of hope? Are you struggling? Please share your own story by leaving a comment.

Listen to Marv and Linda’s story about their own three-year separation in a three-part series on Family Life Today as they both share from the heart about their separation and reconciliation.

If you want to reconcile a broken marriage, let me walk with you through the pages of my new award winning book, Fighting for Your Marriage while Separated to help you find hope. There you will find practical help that can guide you through the complexities so you can see how reconciliation is possible for you– even if you’re fighting for your marriage alone.