Can Divorce Have A Silver Lining?

By: Matthew Robert Payne
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:25:10
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They say every cloud has a silver lining. I remember a day at a quarter to seven in the morning when my housemate woke me up by knocking at my door and telling me that there was a man at the door for me. It was a day when my college didn’t start until twelve midday and I was not due to be waking up for a couple of hours.

I stumbled downstairs in my bed clothes half asleep and a strange man was at the door waiting for me. He told me that he was here to serve court papers on me that were for my divorce. I told him I didn’t agree with the divorce and asked him what would happen if I didn’t sign for the papers. He said that would make the process longer and make the job harder but the divorce would still go through. So reluctantly I signed the papers.

Some months later I was in a kitchen cutting strips of carrot and other vegetables for a salad in college, training to be a chef. I was next to a good girl friend of mine whose name was Sara and we were busy chatting. Suddenly I remembered that it was that day that my divorce case was to be heard in court and my hands started to shake and tears started to form in my eyes. Cutting fine strips of carrot with a very sharp knife with hands that are shaking and eyes that are starting to blur due to tears is not a suggested practice for anyone and so I put down my knife.

The girl I loved with all of my heart was going before a court that day and telling the magistrate that our marriage had no hope of reconciliation and because she had not lived with me for a period of one year that he should divorce me. She was a born again Christian, a girl attending church and had a new man she was engaged to marry and she was saying in front of a court full of strangers that my God could not fix our marriage.

I was so overcome by my tears that I began to sob and left the kitchen leaving all my knives on the bench. I was on my way to the change room to get my bag when someone tugged on my shoulder and I stopped. It was my friend Sara. When she asked me what was wrong I told her the truth and told her that I had no reason to live. She had met my son at one stage and she implored me to stay alive for the sake of my son and I left her with no promises and a heavy heart.

So where is the silver lining?

Well that was the storm cloud, now let me share the good part.

Since my wife left me I have come to really depend on the love of God and most importantly the love of Jesus Christ His Son. From age eight when I invited Jesus to come and live in my heart via His Holy Spirit I have always been open to him placing thoughts in my mind and yet as I pursued Jesus after my wife left me He spoke to me more clearly and became more of a friend to me.

He set me an assignment. He told me to read the four accounts of His life on earth from four of His followers and to look at all of the writing with three questions in mind.

1. Why did Jesus do that thing that he did.
2. How did Jesus feel when he was doing that thing that He did.
3. What did He really mean when He said what he did.

I have spent many hours in the four books called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and still today I am getting fresh revelation into what happened in the life of Jesus that is recorded there.

It has taken me fourteen years and I think finally I am just getting to have a good working knowledge of what he meant in each of his parables. The stories he told seem so simple and most children can understand the stories when told to them, but the depth of wisdom in the parables is amazing.

The void my wife left in my life by divorcing me then years later entering into her second marriage to a pastor’s son has done me a tremendous amount of good and I love her so very much for her brave decision to tell me to go.

Losing the love of your life does not have to be the end of your life.

I would not swap the relationship I have with Jesus Christ here on earth even if she offered to come back to me with my child.

My wife was the prettiest girl I ever knew and she had the most lovely brown skin and she was half Lebanese Catholic in her heritage. Her mother was twice divorced and quite a bitter woman and her mother seemed to have conditions on her love for my wife Sharryn. My wife had to do things her mother’s way to earn approval and she seemed to be constantly trying to make her mother happy.

My wife’s father was a multimillionaire, was a very warm man who offered to teach us to ride Arabian horses and go for rides with him and his new wife. I only met him once and have had grief in my heart that I lost a great father in law.

But I have been to heaven five times and on one of the visits was taken by a young girl to see the stables in heaven where they keep the horses. I stood at the fence bordering on a lovely stable house and the grass that stretched in the paddock was so lush and so green. Though there were fences, I had the feeling that the horses were not constrained by the fences and they had the ability to go right through heaven according to their Creator’s wishes.

The heavenly Father loves me so much more than Sharryn’s mother loved her and even more then her earthly father could have loved me.

One time the Father in heaven requested me to sit on a throne right next to Him. That throne on His right is the throne of Jesus and when I sat down on the King of Kings’ throne, Jesus sang me a song in front of all the people in that throne room and all of the angels that I could see. My eyes filled with tears and today I cry with happiness with the fact that my wife left me and set me on a journey to see such magnificent sights.

There is joy and happiness in a close and obedient life to Jesus Christ and His teachings. My faith is very strong today and I seem to have a very good knack of praying prayers that get answered. In fact my prayers seem to be inspired by God himself and if they are His idea to start with then He certainly is going to answer them.

Each of my visits to heaven were very special to me and each touched a little part of my heart and did some inner healing. The time I met the young girl she told me that she talks to my son that I haven’t seen for seven years in his dreams and tells him about me. The joy that vision brought to my heart can only be expressed with you hearing me saying it and seeing me weep as I tell you.

I am so in love with God and Jesus now that I am becoming a better person. I have many deep rooted hurts inside me and I am still on a journey to fix up all that pain in my life, but I have found a love that simply can’t be found here on earth. I have been such a bad person on earth and running into the arms of prostitutes so long that when Jesus took me to see His Father in heaven I was full of fear as I thought I would be struck dead.

In my sex addiction I spent many years out of church, studying Jesus and His life but finding the touch and warmth of women as harlots. All the years when I have not been doing what the Bible teaches us has shown me the absolute perfect patience and love of God for me and all us humans. I have no shame in confessing that I had an addiction to the women that sell false love and I have a very deep understanding of people who don’t go to church because they think they are too bad a person for church.

I like to be honest. In one breath I tell you I have been to heaven five times in visions and within a few paragraphs I tell you on one visit I was scared of being struck dead by God because of my sex addiction. Many people think you have to be good to go to heaven, well my visits have proven that God even wants bad people up there too. The night God sat me on His Son’s throne and had His Son sing to me was one of the most earth shattering nights of my life. Twenty minutes and I was a different man.

All of this because my wife left me?

Yes, praise and glory be to God, He is the best script writer and a master story teller. His Son Jesus is very wise and He isn’t dead at all. Heaven is an amazing place and all the people mentioned in the Bible are real and I have met many of them up there.

Often times I have been walking down the street and seeing pictures in my mind and been wondering what I have been seeing and suddenly I am told I am seeing a part of Heaven. Oh my friends. Get to know Jesus. Go and have a look in those four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Jesus is not the jerk people think He is and He isn’t some bad guy that wants to ruin your life with a whole set of rigid rules. He is the wisest human who has ever lived.

He did some pretty amazing things on earth. So amazing were the things He did, people simply don’t believe the accounts are real.

I have met Jesus and conversed with him forty five times on earth when he appeared to me as a spirit. I have had him speak to me for up to five minutes through the mouth of three different homeless people at different times. They have sort of gone into a trancelike state and started speaking in the third person. And if your view of the Bible can handle it, I have met him in the flesh once for a period of forty five minutes where he did three miracles to prove to me it was really Him.

Are you losing someone you love?

Is your partner leaving you?

Take a chance on Jesus, I know if you give Him an honest chance He will prove Himself loyal and forgiving and patient with you too.

I love my former wife so very much and respect her today more then I did when I was married. I pray for her and her family and I am so very thankful she left me. She propelled me into a life I never thought possible and one day I hope to meet her again and give her a book I have written that I have dedicated to the love I have for her.

Jesus loves you heaps more then I love my wife. He dedicated his life to you and died to wash away your pain and errors. Won’t you come out from under the cloud you are in and take a peek at His words on a page and give Him some room to move in your life?

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