The question of marriage and divorce is one that evolkes strong emotions in many people. In order to better understand divorce we must first understand the nature of marriage.

Marriage was designed by God to be a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman. In Genesis 2:18, when referring to Adam, God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him an help meet for him." God saw that man, Adam, needed help, so He created a woman, Eve, for this purpose. Marriage was never intended to be a 50-50 partnership. It is intended to be 100-100, with both the husband and the wife giving their all to make the marriage a success. God instituted marriage as a way for us to love and be loved, and He intended for it to be a marvelous, beautiful thing. In a prophetic sense, marriage is a wonderful picture of the church and Jesus Christ. The church is the "bride" of Jesus, whom he readily laid down his life for.

The world that we live in is very different from the Garden of Eden where God first gave his commandment regarding marriage, however the nature of marriage has not changed. Satan knows that the heart of the church is within marriage and family so that is where he attacks. He knows that if he can detroy marriage and the family he can gain a lot of ground in destroying the church.

When two people are married their lives become intertwined. Imagine two different colored sheets of construction paper being glued together. That is a good picture of what happens between two people when they are married. The two have become one. If you try to rip those two pieces apart it makes a huge mess. Neither piece is whole and there are different colored bits of paper on each sheet, with many holes and torn spots. Once you have joined two lives you can not just "unjoin" them without pain and suffering.

My own parents divorced when I was so young that I have no recollection of them ever being married. My father remarried soon after the divorce and they had a daughter. My mother got remarried many years later and also had a little girl. This is where things can get very tricky. I love both of my younger sisters very much and would not want to be without them. If my parents had never gotten divorced, my two younger sisters would never have been born. Perhaps though, if they had stayed married, I would have had other siblings whom I would have also loved. There is no way to know.

Their divorce caused a lot of pain, but not in the typical ways you would expect. My parents are very different people. I can not imagine them being married and I don't intend to presume that had they stayed married they would have been happy. To the contrary, I think they would have been miserable. That being said, the divorce still hurt. My father remarried while we were very young, so my older sister and I were raised, at least part of the time, by a step-mother who had no maternal affection for us. My mother did not remarry until we were in our early teens. The man she married is a good man, a nice man, but he never really considered my older sister and myself to be a part of "his" family. He had no paternal affection for us. He was always very nice, but in a stand-offish kind of way, as though our welfare did not concern him outside of the fact that our mother loved us. Neither step-parent ever loved us in the way that a birth parent would. Once we graduated from high school and moved out of the house I think our step-father breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to do things with his family, and that did not include us. He was very anxious for us to be on our way. Even today, 15 years after I moved out, my mother feels the effects. I live on the opposite side of the country as my mother and do not get to see her as much as I would like. My step-father does not like to use his vacation time to come and see us. He would rather go somewhere with just "his" family. This hurts not only me and my mother, but also my younger sister who wants to come visit, and my own children, who do not get to see their Nana as much as they would like. If my mother was still married to my father they would want to come visit together and it wouldn't even be an issue.

A very good friend of mine was married to a very emotionally abusive man. He had several affairs and was bringing illegal substances into their home. To protect herself and her children she made the decision to go through with a divorce. She wanted to make sure her children were in a safe environment. Her husband ended up getting custody of their oldest son, who at age 14 really needed his father. In the years that followed her husband systematically turned all of her children against her by buying their love and telling them lies about her. Her main concern and reason for getting a divorce was to protect her children and she lost every single one. Two are currently sreving time in prison. Now married to a loving, loyal, devoted man, she told me that if she could go back in time and do it all again she never would have divorced her husband. The cost of her children's lives was too high a price to pay.

Is divorce always bad? That is something you have to answer for yourselves. Divorce is the ending of a dream. Marriage joins two lives together and you can not tear them apart without causing a lot of pain and detruction in the process.