# Divorce



## newcreature (Dec 3, 2012)

But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

(1 Corinthians 7:15 ESV)


Dear brothers and sisters, my husband departed from me on March 8th. The church pursued him according to biblical standards and the PCA Book of Church Order. He has now been excommunicated. My heart cries out for him and his young son. We are yet one flesh, but broken. Those of you who knew him well will remember his theological and academic mind. He plucked me out of mainstream evangelicalism and taught me what it meant to be reformed. I loved my husband dearly, but he has chosen another path, and that I can do nothing but pray. I beg your prayers for him, please call his name before the Lord that he will come to repentance.

As for our family, this has been very difficult on my children, for they have lost their dad and their brother (though not biological). I am sure it has been just as hard on his little boy as it has been for us. I miss him so much. I taught that little boy to eat with a spoon and fork, to walk up and down stairs, and toilet trained him. I love him just like my own, and he is gone forever. I have prayed many days and cried many nights, but alas, they are gone.

I will be planning to file for divorce after the first of the year. I covet your prayers that the Lord will grant me wisdom and grace.

Sincerely,
Angela Turner


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## OPC'n (Dec 3, 2012)

I'm so very sorry for you and your family's heartbreak! You all will be in my prayers!


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## PuritanCovenanter (Dec 3, 2012)

Keep looking up. I know that heartbreak.


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## Zach (Dec 3, 2012)

Prayed for you, Angela, and for your husband that the Lord would restore to him the joy of his salvation.


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## Curt (Dec 3, 2012)




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## KMK (Dec 3, 2012)

I am deeply sorry.


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## baron (Dec 3, 2012)

Praying for you and family.


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## JoannaV (Dec 3, 2012)

Praying, sister.


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## Jerusalem Blade (Dec 3, 2012)

Will pray for that, Angela. Better the Lord brought this about sooner than later. A dear friend of mine, with three children, his wife left him after some 20+ years and renounced the faith; another friend with six children, her husband left her after some 30+ years and makes a not credible profession. The devastation is greater, I think, after a long life is built around the other.

"Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned" (1 Cor 7:27,28)


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## GulfCoast Presbyterian (Dec 3, 2012)

Prayers sent.


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## arapahoepark (Dec 3, 2012)

Praying!


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## reformedminister (Dec 3, 2012)




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## Miss Marple (Dec 3, 2012)

So sorry you are going through this.


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## JonathanHunt (Dec 3, 2012)

So, so, sorry. May God bless and help you.


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## Scottish Lass (Dec 3, 2012)

Praying...


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## CuriousNdenver (Dec 3, 2012)

Angela,

My heart breaks for you in this situation. I have prayed and will continue to pray for you and your family and that the Lord will draw him to repentance.


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## SeanPatrickCornell (Dec 3, 2012)

I'll be praying for you. My wife left me for good in February, filed for divorce in April, and finalized in August.

I know your pain. I'm truly sorry.


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## Mushroom (Dec 3, 2012)

Stand strong in your Lord, sister, He will uphold you through this. Praying.


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## nicnap (Dec 3, 2012)

Praying.


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## tlharvey7 (Dec 3, 2012)

my dear sister... i am so sorry.
if you are able to look at my previous posts on the forum you will see that the same thing happened to me.
my bride of 17 years abruptly abandoned our marriage and 4 children... after church no less
i have found alot of help and godly council from members of this forum. ( PuritanCovenanter- Randy)
it makes no sense... and it never will.
my prayers are with you and your husband.... God is good, He is always good


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## a mere housewife (Dec 3, 2012)

We will be praying for your husband and son, Angela. I am broken hearted to read this, and cannot imagine your own sorrow, but can only grieve with you.

'I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments.' I pray this will be the cry of your husband's heart.


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## JMKing (Dec 3, 2012)




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## moral necessity (Dec 3, 2012)

newcreature said:


> I loved my husband dearly, but he has chosen another path, and that I can do nothing but pray. I beg your prayers for him, please call his name before the Lord that he will come to repentance.
> 
> As for our family, this has been very difficult on my children, for they have lost their dad and their brother (though not biological).
> I covet your prayers that the Lord will grant me wisdom and grace.
> ...



Praying for you, Angela. 

One never knows too well why God allows certain events to occur in our lives. I only pray that your trust in him as your Husbander will grow more than it ever could otherwise. He is also sovereign over your former husband's path as well, and knows what he needs at this moment. Apparently, no other path could take him towards God's plan for him. Your kids are safe as well, under the shadow of your Father's wings. Trust in these things with all of your heart, and the God of all comfort will comfort you. He will never abandon you nor forsake you.

Blessings and prayers...


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## Goodcheer68 (Dec 3, 2012)

I am Praying.


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## Alan D. Strange (Dec 4, 2012)

This is heart-breaking, Angela. But it is a comfort to know His never failing love and care, even as exercised in the discipline of the church with respect to the party that has departed. 

I commit you and yours to Him in prayer. Remember, nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ, the one who died, is risen and is in session at the Father's right hand. He will keep you forever in that love so that nothing can succeed against you. But hear this just now: Our Lord Jesus Christ is interceding for you (not a past or future tense), in the present. You may feel as if the world is coming apart, but the Holy Spirit takes those inutterable groanings before the throne and Christ Himself continually intercedes on your behalf (Romans 8:26, 34). We have a double advocate with the Father, who Himself spared not His own Son. It is wonderful to think of the activity of the Blessed, Holy, Undivided Trinity on our behalf even when we have no strength. Simply come with all your burdens to Him who will give you rest. Amen.

Peace,
Alan


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## Calvinist of the Ozarks (Dec 4, 2012)

I went through a similar situation 18 years ago. I had a one year old son and an 8 year old daughter. It is not easy. Will pray for you, that God will give you strength.


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## newcreature (Dec 4, 2012)

Thank you all for your prayers, kind words, and especially to those of you who share similar stories. Sometimes it helps just to know that others have survived this pain, and I too will get through it by the Grace of God. Especially pray for my children and my husband. I know that if he were ever truly a child of God, then he will not be lost. I trust in God's sovereignty. My husband taught me of the sovereignty of God, for before I met him I had never heard of such a thing. It is amazing how the Lord will use us for His own glory, and for the advancement of His Kingdom, my prayer is that my husband's former profession of faith was not in vain. 

Reading all of your posts has been very comforting. Thank you all so much. 

Angela


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## J. Dean (Dec 5, 2012)

Very sorry to hear this. Definitely prayer for you.


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## LadyCalvinist (Dec 5, 2012)

Praying dear sister.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Dec 6, 2012)

Don't be alarmed when all of your equilibrium seems to be out of wack. Fall heavily upon the one who keeps you upright. It has been over a decade and I am still not fully recovered. If physical amputation is hard then let me tell you about something the soul experiences when the soul has an amputation. It is indescribable. No two people can experience or react to this situation the same way. But there may be similarities that can help you. The body and my Elders where of the utmost importance to me. God has given us Elders to keep us and it is their gifting and responsibility. Listen to them and you will receive a grace that is empowering. I did even when it didn't make sense. God gives grace to the humble. Stay in the word! Read good books. Even if it is to distract your heart from pain. They feed the soul and benefit us and keep the mind directed. Left to our vain thinking alone we grow more bitter most of the time. Bitterness is nearly impossible to avoid when we have been violated to the depth that divorce takes us to. And the tearing apart of that oneness is a violence and a violent thing to have happen. 

Mal 2:16 "For the LORD God of Israel says That He hates divorce, For it covers one's garment with violence," Says the LORD of hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit, That you do not deal treacherously." 

Also know that Christ is the author and finisher of our faith and that He will complete his work in us because he loves us. 

I learned something this past year that I didn't realize before. It is okay to still feel the pain after healing has come. I kept trying to kill the pain because I sensed and was told it was somehow unspiritual and unhealthy for me to hurt. I learned something that amazed me that I didn't see earlier in life. I crushed my left leg in 1985 in a motorcycle wreck. It would have been amputated had the paramedics taken me to the hospital I asked to be taken to or if I was in another city. Indianapolis has some of the best orthopedic specialists in the World and has had for a long time because of the trauma that the motorsports industry produces around here. I was taken to the trauma center were this team worked. Anyways, I spent 9 months on my Mom's front room floor recouping. My leg took years before it was strong enough for me to walk without a limp and excruciating pain. I still have a lot of pain. My leg is as healed as it is going to be on this side. It is healed. But I still have pain. And that is okay. I am healed. The pain is normal. God has given it to me as a grace for myself and others. I still cry over it. That is okay also. Psalm 55 became one of my favorite Psalms years ago as some of it is about being abandoned. Isaiah 41:10 and Psalm 23:3 have been my hope and stay. It is for His name sake and His goodness. 


(Psa 23:3) He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness *for his name's sake*.

(Isa 41:10) Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God:* I will strengthen thee*; yea, *I will help thee*; yea, *I will uphold thee* with the right hand of my righteousness.



I hope I have encouraged you Angela. I pray your situation will not end as mine did with your mate going to far so that reconciliation is impossible because your spouse joined himself to another unlawfully. That brings a finality that is hard to overcome also.


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## Randy in Tulsa (Dec 6, 2012)

From your last post (28) you understand what is taught in the WCF, Chapter 17, regarding the perseverance of the saints. Your hope for your husband, is stated well in paragraphs I and II, which I have copied below. Thank you for reminding me of them by the way you worded your post.

I. They, whom God has accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

II. This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father; upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ, the abiding of the Spirit, and of the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace: from all which arises also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

It also is important, though, that the men who wrote this chapter in the Confession knew all too well how those who both profess Christ and are true believers can do what your husband has done, as they described in paragraph III:

III. Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein: whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.

As one who, much to my shame as a true believer, fell into the kind of grievous sin described in III above, I can testify to the truth of I and II and to how important it was to have a strong wife that loved me in spite of my sin. God used her strength and real faith in the gospel to help save and restore me. I don't know whether your husband will be restored. If he is, the godly attitude expressed by you in your posts well may be one of the means God uses.


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## Gage Browning (Dec 6, 2012)

So sorry. Praying


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## reaganmarsh (Dec 6, 2012)

We will pray for you and your husband. You have been given sound counsel above and I pray that God encourages you by it. 

Cling to Christ, the lover of your soul. Grace to you.


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## newcreature (Dec 6, 2012)

Thanks again, I can not say it enough, to all of you for your prayers, words of counsel and comfort. Thanks for sharing your stories. I did not expect such an outpouring. Thanks for lifting me up before the Lord in my time of need. 

Angela


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