Five Positve And Spiritual Lessons I Learned From My Divorce

By: Matthew Robert Payne
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:25:10
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I have to say that having the wife of your youth tell you to leave and not to come back is a very hard thing to hear. I don’t really think I fully understood the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty until that tragic day and the years that followed. But this article is about the positive things I learned.

Lesson one-I learned to love myself

I learned that a half a person and a half a person cannot combine and make two people, they only make what is called a co-dependant relationship. A person that feels that they are unworthy of love suddenly finding someone that loves them, is not good fortune. In many instances its simply a recipe for tragedy.

After my wife left me and the years that followed, I went through a process of healing and addressing the pain in my heart and came to a place where I learned to love myself. One way to find this love that God allowed was that I found out what I was good at. One day I wrote a poem and then it seemed good and I wrote another and then within a year I had hundreds and then within two years I had written a novel.

After a couple of novels and two movie screenplays I was confident that I was a gifted communicator and able to get my heart down on a page both in fiction and non fiction.

Lesson two- I learned to forgive

The years that passed after the marriage breakdown was hard for me as my former wife fought with me over custody and made it difficult to see my son on a few occasions. This culminated after a number of years when she told me that I could not see my son any more. She had recently re- married a lovely guy and they felt there was no need for me to be in my son’s life any more

This hurt me very deeply as I loved my eight year old boy Brandyn. Today it’s been seven years since I have seen my son and I miss him very much. I respect my former wife and her husband’s decision and have not been in contact all this time.

This pain ate at me for a number of years and I came to a point where I simply had to let go of all the pain and forgive. I started a process of remembering all the bad things that my wife had done to me and asking God to help me forgive my wife. Through the years I have applied this process to other relationships I have had also.

Today I am happy to say I love my wife more today than I loved her at any time while we were married. Today I love myself and I pray quite regularly for her marriage, her own inner healing and for that family to be blessed.

Lesson three- I developed a better relationship with Jesus Christ

For those of you who are not of the Christian faith I don’t mean to offend you, but I encourage you to read and I will try not to preach at you but simply continue sharing my story.

Up until the time my wife told me to leave, Jesus had always been important to me but he was always an optional extra in life and not my life’s central focus or desire. When the love of my life left me, my best friend, I was lost at sea and I was drowning and there did seem to be nothing to live for.

It’s as though Jesus came to me in that moment one day on a mountain top as the sun was setting and asked me to get serious with Him. I was so very sad, very suicidal and I had no other reason to live. Jesus encouraged me by speaking into my mind and gave me a purpose to do some research into Him and His life and get to know Him the best that I could.

Without a lady in my life, Jesus has been a whole lot more important to me than perhaps the average Christian guy and He has been very faithful to me, kind to me and gentle. He is a good teacher, He is patient with my sins and my faults and He gives me purpose and inspiration.

I cannot ever express fully enough the great service my wife did for me on that day by telling me to leave her. I cannot express how happy I am that she had the courage to give marriage a second go and close the door for me and her re-uniting as this pain has made my faith very strong.

Lesson four-I came to understand how Jesus feels about His church

In the Bible God speaks though human writers and compares Jesus’ relationship with His church as a bride and a groom. Jesus was single on earth and never married so that He could in fact take the place of being the groom to all the people that placed their faith in Him and chose Him to run their life.

So many Christians live a life where Jesus has become an optional extra like He was in my life. It’s as if they take other lovers and Jesus is left to weep and wish that they would simply have a more devoted relationship with Him. My wife left me for another man because I wasn’t fulfilling her heart’s desire well enough broke my heart and over the years I have come to have empathy with Jesus Christ where we relegate Him to second or third place in our life.

So many people have no real idea how much Jesus loves them and even though He has many commands in the Bible He doesn’t give them to be a “party pooper” but He gives them as wise directions on how to live a happy and fulfilled life on earth. Taking Jesus’ commands for a test drive and submitting to obey them is really a wonderful way to live and the more you obey and do things His way the more closer you seem to get to Him and you seem to see the profound depth in His simple teachings.

We often do not obey Jesus because we really don’t think He can love us and provide for us like another human can or a career can. We spend our energies on human relationships and spend our time doing things and we all seem to get too busy to spend an hour with Jesus and He really weeps with sorrow for us as He knows just how fulfilled and how happy would be if we simply loved Him like we would a real person on earth that wanted time with us each day.

Losing a wife, seeing her fall in love with another man gave me insight into how Jesus feels when we replace His place in our lives with other people and other activities.

Lesson five- I learned how God feels about all the humans that don’t know him.

Losing my wife was such a sad thing for me and I needed some really big help from a trained counsellor so that I did not kill myself.

One day in the garden of Eden God lost his family the humans that were to populate earth. He was so filled with sorrow, that in the garden He promised Adam that one day he would make a restoration.

Losing my wife was hard and seeing my son part time was hard, but when I lost total contact with my son, that hurt me so very much. God in his grace does not allow me to think of my son every day and this is good as it tears at my heart. Imagine how God feels with humans being born each day but never coming to know Him and trust in His Son Jesus Christ.

God lost his Son one day also when his Son’s spirit left heaven and went to earth in the baby Jesus. The “dark side” knew something was happening as the current king of the day slaughtered every single baby boy in the region under a certain age, just like the “dark side” did when Moses was born.

For a few years on earth I believe God was out of touch with his Son. There is no mention of the time when Jesus could hear His Father speaking to Him in the Bible and so most preachers are silent on it, but I reckon Jesus and God were not in communication for up to six years. This would have been heartbreaking to God and then some 33 years later He lost his son again as Jesus died on a cross.

People often ask “where was God when such and such happened?”

The best answer to that I have ever heard was, “The same place He was when they hung His naked Son on a cross and had to endure six hours agony before His death.”

Conclusion of the matter

There is always good that can come out of tragedy. My Son has had the love of two fathers. I had three years with a wife I loved and when she told me to leave it, set me on a journey to become a very nice man and one that has a very strong faith. Today I write, I share my faith with strangers, I preach at churches and I deliver free messages from God to strangers over the Internet. My life is full and one day I will be a full time preacher bringing a heartfelt message to people all around my Country as well as the world via the World Wide Web.

In all my tears there has been great benefit to me and others. If your partner has left you, take the opportunity to thank them and forgive them one day and get to work on yourself so that you can become a better person for other people to know and love.

Take a chance with Jesus and invite Him into your life if you don’t know Him and if you do, love your spouse as Christ loved His church and forgave her.

God bless.

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