Divorce Recovery Lesson One Why Me? Mosaic A Divorce Recovery Program of Harvest Bible Chapel “Will This Pain Ever Go Away?” When a relationship ends in divorce, the mass of potentially depressing emotions can wreak havoc in your life and your children’s. This is especially true for the person who didn’t want the relationship to end. But for the Christian, there is a very good answer to this question. Yes! Your pain will go away in time. The Heartache Will Heal For a Christian who knows and is willing to do what the Bible says, the heartache will be healed. The more of God’s Word you implement, the sooner the anguish will stop. Through this study over the next couple of months you are going to learn specific things you can do to ease the pain and help yourself get back to the way you were before the breakup. Start With Prayer We will pray that God will change your heart. Your prayers must include confession of any selfcenteredness or failure to love God, thanksgiving to God for His attributes, and a request that He give you a greater desire to please Him than to get over your sorrow. You can continue to pray this way until you have the assurance the Lord has answered. You will know He has done so when you find in your heart a willingness to endure this trial for as long as it takes to produce genuine godliness in your life. We Will Pray For You Our prayer is that as you study with us we will keep before you the things you can do as well as those things you should not do to help you lose those lamentable feelings as quickly and righteously as possible. Yes I mean righteously, because you can battle your sorrow in sinful ways such as reminding yourself what a “turkey” your former spouse is, but you will end up in more misery and displease God in the process. My Name is Miserable You may feel pretty miserable right now, if don’t respond in a godly way to the breakup of your marriage you will face other kinds of misery later in life. If you do this God’s way, you won’t have to resort to methods that are displeasing to God. If you are a Christian, you can do it. The Bible will show you how, the Holy Spirit will lead you, and may we give you encouragement along the way. Will I Ever Stabilize Again? We pray you will learn in the weeks ahead how to deal with the overwhelming feelings that you may be carrying that are preventing you from getting on with your life. Our prayer is that God will bless you as you respond to your trial by depending on His Spirit and His Word. What Do I Do Next? We need to make a distinction between two kinds of individuals: Those whose marriages are in the process of coming to an end and… Those whose marriages have already ended in divorce. In cases where a divorce has not yet been finalized, the believer has a wider scope of responsibilities to consider. Issues such as what can be done to save the marriage. Whether church discipline is an option. To what extent one should seek pastoral, marital, and legal counsel. Keep in mind a marriage is a very difficult thing to terminate without sinning. How to minister to the children during this difficult time of transition is a predominant concern. Tearing Yourself Up The breakup of a marriage involves the tearing of the one-flesh relationship. There is no relationship as intimate as marriage. You don’t have anyone to share things at that deep level to which you were accustomed. You have not lost a close friend you have lost a part of yourself. God’s Word offers hope and help for the intense loneliness and sorrow that comes with divorce. Emotional Heartburn If you have children, your ex is going to be a continual part of your life for a long time. This continued contact will trigger all manner of temptation to sin in thoughts, words, deeds, and may even lengthen the time it will take to displace the sorrow in your heart. Routine contact with your ex will be especially painful if you do not have a clear conscience and have not sincerely forgiven your ex for all the hurt he/she has done to you. Realize, even if you have fulfilled all of your responsibilities before God your ex may try to make life miserable for you. God’s grace will enable you to endure these hostilities using all His available resources to overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21). More Difficult Than Death Divorce can be the most difficult of all relationships to loose especially if you did not want the relationship to end. It can seem more difficult than a death. The grief a person experiences when a person dies is not the long drawn out process as in the case of divorce. Before death, the hurt, rejection, guilt, and bitterness experience by the widow-to-be is not near the level that usually exists for the person going through an unwanted divorce. Divorce is not as abrupt and final as death. For a while, the divorced spouse dies in the heart every day. There will be times when reconciliation seems promising. This will give hope, but then can cause disappointment when no remarriage occurs. The Ripples In the Pond There are other issues you face that are unique to divorce that can seem like continual ripples of pain. Guilt over having failed in your marriage. Uncharitable judgments from well meaning Christians who view divorce as an almost unpardonable sin. Unloving attitudes form self-righteous individuals who treat you as a second-class citizen in the body of believers. The loss of friends as they avoid you because they can’t handle conflict. Recuperate Recuperating from divorce will require total dependence on God and His grace. If you are a Christian, you have the Lord’s unlimited resources. You have the mind of Christ (I Cor. 2:16), and He will get you through this trial. Emotional Wisdom My Energy Normal energy distribution is the equal balance of the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual. When a divorce occurs the emotional is out of balance and taking up an enormous amount of energy. Leaving you feeling tired, with clouded thinking, not able to make decisions, and leaving you spiritually depleted. What Are You Thinking? Romance Makes the World Go Round We live in a world that glorifies romance more than it glorifies God who created man and woman with the capacity to enjoy romantic relationships. The grief and emotions associated with divorce can become overly intense, if we do not run to God as the Bible directs. Scripture Has a Lot To Say Scripture gives us answers to emotions of grief, loneliness, rejection, anger, bitterness, guilt, and jealousy. It will give you what it takes to change these feelings It will give you what you can do to keep them from paralyzing you. It will show you how to turn them around. The most direct way to do this will be to learn how to to control your thoughts and behavior. Who Will Console You? Draw Near To God. Proverbs 14:14 gives us a warning of the danger associated with allowing our hearts to draw back from God’s resources. “The backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways.” If you allow yourself to be consoled with unbiblical thoughts, you will be filled with your own ways, which is, your misery will increase. You must depend on God’s solutions and resources to get you through this. Your Ways and Your Thoughts Your ways and your thoughts must become God’s ways and God’s thoughts. You need to examine your thoughts and motives so that you can be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2). Our problem is we listen to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves. When we go through trials it is easier to just put our minds in neutral and listen passively to our hearts. Are you a listener or are you a talker? Thought Pattern Inventory We are going to take some time to answer the 20 questions below. They represent thought patterns that are bound to produce misery in life of someone who is experiencing the pain of a broken relationship. After each sentence, write the number that best corresponds to the frequency the statement is true of you.