Covenant of Marriage...

I have been spending the past few weeks trying to understand what is in store for me.  Each day is a struggle, because a covenant is to death.  And right now I would rather be dead than spend another day in the same house with my husband.  So, where does that leave me?

Matthew 19 : 1 - 12, talks about #divorce.  And before you start going on about that... Divorce was a word that was banned in my world.  It was understood that if you never used the word in your life, than your mind would never consider it an option within your marriage.  I always knew that marriage was work, not some wave that you are caught up in that is full of fun.  And even now I am struggling with the word.  But that struggle is for another day...

In a constant discussion that I have been having with my pastor... we have been talking about marriage.  And reasons that you might want to walk away from a marriage, but also about how to continue to honor the covenant that you made.  

"God's best is for us to marry and to discover the oneness that God intended in marriage.  But humans sin.  They do this in lots of ways.  And humans refuse to change with regard to their sin.  That is they keep doing it.  That is the hardheartedness that Jesus talks about."

This makes sense to me.  That marriage is forever and that it is what God intended for us.  Where it became hard to comprehend is when human sin comes into play.  When you add in people refusing to change...  well that stumped me.  You see in my world we are taught that we need to admit our sin and seek penance to change how we behave in the future.  This is to avoid ever repeating the sin.  We also are required to seek out the person that our sin harmed, even years later, and pray that they are willing to forgive the sin that harmed them.  And yet in Matthew, Jesus spoke of permission to divorce, because your hearts were hard.  And here I find that the discussion comes back to sin and a person's desire to not change.

"So the unrepentant attitude of a spouse allows for divorce, when that unrepentant behavior is related to the marriage: 'for sexual immorality'."

And yes it is saying that if the behavior is related to the marriage that divorce is possible.  Not exactly the idea that I grew up hearing.  And currently has me in a tail spin.  You see, I love my husband.  And I never want to live with him again.  How do you love someone and walk away?  How do you walk away and honor God?  That answer seems to be covered in so many ways in the unrepentant behavior.  But, and yes there is always a but in my mind.  How do you know that the behavior you are seeing is "sexual immorality"?

In that question...  I was given a list.

Sexual immorality = "it may be adultery, it may be violence, it may be sexual involvement with children, adults, etc."

If you are anything like me that list will shake you up.  I always knew that if you could catch your husband in the act of committing adultery that was the only reason you could walk away.  And here is a list that is much more than catching your husband with his secretary.  The humor in me even saying that is that is how my husband came to exist.  He is the product of a office worker and the cleaner though.  

The addition to the list of violence is what took the wind out of me.  And maybe in other ways it brought me to silence.  Here we are looking at reason to end a covenant.  Reasons that I always thought were so clear cut.  I lived in a world of black and white, now to only to realize that the world is actually so many shades of grey.  The grey is creating a confusion.  And in that confusion I am struggling to take the addition of violence to the list with adultery.  I am finding that things are not so clear cut...

Sadly my confusion has raised more questions.  And I have no answers right now for myself, let alone for anyone else.  A friend of mine gave me these words...  Ask the Lord to guide.  And right now, that might be the best advice I have to share with anyone.  Seek God and maybe the grey will become clear.