1000 Ways to Fall
[To the reader: This is less a story and more of a warning. Disclaimer – As I write this, I know that it is from my singular point of view. I fully realize I’m not perfect…every single day.]
I’ve lived in a bad marriage most of my life. I’m sure the signs were there early on, but I was too stupid, love struck, and starry eyed to notice. I was too impatient and just couldn’t wait to have sex; sad and pathetic, but true. It’s all my fault in reality: the blame for not waiting on God, not seeking God, and not following God’s will rests squarely on my shoulders. And so do the results.
I was saved in my teens but did not fully surrender to God until maybe a decade later; mistake #1. I followed my own will and my own way. This led me to a woman who was—or seemed to be—what I wanted. I forged ahead and married her despite being warned that I wasn’t ready; mistake #2. I wouldn’t fully realize the depths of badness until we had been married a few years; mistake #3. By then, of course, it was far past too late. I was fully engaged and trapped in a marriage that has in every way tried me past any limit I ever thought I had.
So, that’s the warning. Place God first in your life, seek Him first, trust Him with everything, most especially your mate. If He says wait, no, or yes, just trust Him.
My wife is my first and only. I have been tempted, but I’ve never strayed. But straying isn’t the only way to fall, it isn’t the only way to sin, and it isn’t the only path to misery.
A bad marriage—any marriage that isn’t God’s will—has in store a cacophony of voices that will try their best to lead the Christian off the path of faith. Marrying the wrong person will introduce you to trials that The Lord never intended for you to face. Anger, bitterness, even hatred await the saved soul that was too impatient to wait for God’s will.
A confession: I wrote “Second Chance” after seeing the woman I abandoned to seek my own will. It’s absolutely true right until the part where I knocked on her door. She never married. Not only did I ruin my life for not waiting, I also ruined hers. I’m not in lust for her, but I do live in regret.
I don’t look forward to judgment day because of my many failures. I’m writing this gloomy and doleful confession to warn anyone who hasn’t yet made my mistakes. Please don’t. He isn’t worth it. She isn’t worth it.
No marriage is perfect, and life is tough enough even if you marry God’s choice for you. Don’t create for yourself an additional 1000 ways to fall.
This is a really interesting and heart-felt post that moved me to tears, as I resonate with everything in it (and everything behind the words). Having said that, I perhaps have a slightly different take on it. My own disclaimer (or contextual reference), is that I’m writing this from a marriage that is far from perfect as well!
In short, I have a hard time with viewing anything as a mistake! True; there are times we could have waited, we could have made wiser decisions; but is that always true? Remember, you have written the post you have with the advantage of full hindsight. Moreover, its so easy to look at paths we could have taken, and to fantasise about loves that never came to fruition. True, God has plans for us, but those plans aren’t always hearts and flowers. Sometimes those plans involve being hurt, being broken, suffering, falling and getting up again, not because God wants us to fall or get hurt, but because in divine wisdom, God knows it’s the only way we can learn wisdom and strength, from the benefit of experiential lessons! Your marriage might be bad; but maybe it was sent to teach you resilience and discernment. Maybe there is something (or someone), much better in store for you, or maybe not. Either way, while I agree with your sentiment, I’d also say: be kind to yourself, and be grateful for the wisdom you now have, the lessons the Lord has taught you in this life, and for all the good that will surely find you when the time is right. My own marriage, while with its challenges, was a blessing in some respects, because it transformed a life of chaos into one of relative stability. True, over time, the flaws in our union which I had wilfully ignored began to show, and now I find myself in a position where I am often meditating on the consequential costs! All the same, I am working on cultivating an attitude of gratitude for whatever good remains and praying for what is best for both of us. What is best might mean toughing it out, regaining a closeness we never had, or going our own ways, but now that I’m older (possibly wiser, but you be the judge!), I’m happy to do the work, and wait for God to show me. I might still get things wrong, but I’ll know my intention was right and I tried, which is all we can really do in the end. You are always in my prayers, and my prayers for you mirror those for my own marriage: whatever is best, and may God’s will be done, whatever that is, even if it is in conflict with my own. May we both be courageous enough to see and follow it always.
Hi starlight,
Your comment is very thoughtful. Your insight, discernment, and wisdom are a little scary though 😂
I deeply appreciate your words and I will do my best to take them to heart. Thank you for your prayers. You are also in mine.
Thank you for opening up about your life! It's good advice to not go into marriage looking for it to solve all your problems, and I appreciate the perspective that it won't be all sunshine and rainbows. Waiting on God is important! But then I've heard a lot of differing opinions about whether or not God will lead you to your spouse, whether there is even someone in particular He has picked out for you, what can be interpreted as God's will in that situation. Certainly it's not God's will for a Christian to marry an unbeliever but beyond that the opinions start to differ.
Reading a lot of relationship books in the last year or two, what I'm being told there is that Love is a choice, a verb. Sure, it takes both parties being willing.
"I don’t look forward to judgment day because of my many failures." That seems to me like you've heaped a lot of condemnation upon yourself when we know that Grace covers a multitude of sins. I don't know the full story. But I have to ask you, is it really too late? Couldn't you give the "Second Chance" story a second chance?
Thanks F-M. I appreciate your comments. I pray that you find God’s choice for you and that your ensuing marriage will be God honoring and blissfully happy.
You’re story was mine as well for thirty years. Like you I was a believer; I came to faith at age fourteen in 1970. I went to a Christian college and kept myself pure. Since I believed then that masturbation was sin, the years were very long and very hard, and the pressure to marry was great. When my then wife and I were dating, and in only a few months determined to marry, I felt both sick and relieved inside. I knew she was the wrong choice. I was as bad for her as she was for me. We could not communicate, one of the many red flags God graciously waved, but I chose to press on. Everyone we knew, every friend, relative, pastor told us to wait a year to be sure, but the goal of sex was all I saw, so we did not listen to all the people God sent to warn us. Two weeks before the wedding, I tried to break it off, but I didn’t have the courage. I couldn’t even look at her coming down the aisle. Sex that night was horrible, a letdown that made my heart break for what I had just done. Over the next thirty years I poured myself into her, the children, and the marriage to the point that, at the end, my then wife said I had been a very good husband, but I was broken inside, nearly dead emotionally, and I couldn’t do this anymore. Ironically, or maybe understandably, I was back in grad school to become a counselor, which I have been for many years. I knew that I was in great danger though, pouring life into people during the day, going home and having what little that was left sucked out of me at night. I knew I was a set up for sexual failure. I decided to try one more time, and did for five years, but nothing came from the other end, and I finally believed I had to divorce. The parable of the talents – measures of money – was the final thing that drove me to this. I could not hide the calling God gave under the dirt of fear of divorce and all it would mean. Several of my grown children said they wondered why I had not left years ago. Children see and know maybe before we do. I lost everything financially, and lost many friends, but found who my real friends were. Lies were told, and I chose to be silent as Jesus was and leave it all to him. That was just over sixteen years ago, and I have never once regretted the decision, no matter what it meant. I had no one else, and I knew I might be alone for life, but alone was better than where I was—in a grave. Three years later I met my wife through a Christian dating site called Christian Café. She had been a widow for many years. We just celebrated our twelfth anniversary, and we are deeply in love and happy, and God is using us both in His Kingdom every day through our work – hers at a worldwide Christian ministry. You may believe differently about divorce, and I am not trying to encourage you to do anything, only to give you a story that has been a source of hope to so many we know. Don’t think life is over for you, your wife, or even the other woman. Maybe you are in the way of God giving your wife the man she needs, just as she in in your way. Just a thought. As for the Day of Judgment – brother, all our sin was nailed to the Cross. Jesus drank all the wrath of God, and there is none left for us. All our sins have already been forgiven. We may look back on a life of regret, but not of guilt or condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Rom 8:1. If you are thinking about what God says about divorce, the best book I’ve read is one that is out of print but can be easily found online. It is “Remarriage And God’s Renewing Grace; A Positive Biblical Ethic For Divorced Christians,” by Dwight Hervey Small The first part is all about what God says throughout the Bible about divorce. Whatever you decide, don’t give up. As one pastor said, “You’re not dead until you’re done.” God is not done using you or leading you.
That’s a very thoughtful post RMD. I’m sorry for the misery of your first marriage, but I’m happy for how very different these last twelve years have been.
In my heart and mind, I’ve more or less gone into a waiting period. Waiting for God to deliver me, waiting for God to show me His path, and waiting to see if there is something in this life other than misery.
“Nearly dead emotionally” resonates with me. I totally get it.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate it.
Another excellent book on divorce and remarriage from a Biblical perspective is "DIvorce & Remarriage in the Church" by David Instone-Brewer. He provides strong Biblical evidence that divorce is allowed for ANY hard-hearted and unrepentant violation of the standard marriage vows, including those "minor" ones such as honoring and cherishing.
Furthermore, he shows that Jesus did not actually say that divorced people who remarry are committing adultery, and that remarriage of divorced people is permitted.
True in every way starlight. Thank you
I think you are far too hard on yourself. We will always have regrets about roads not taken and the things that we have 'done or left undone.' But we don't have to dwell on them as failures and beat ourselves up over them.
Hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to look back and spot our mistakes and where we went wrong. But it's a lot healthier to review why you made the decision you did, based on the information you had at the time – not the information you have _now_. Perhaps there were times when you ignored your own instincts or common sense. But many of our big 'mistakes' didn't feel like mistakes at the time, so don't beat yourself up too much about them. In fact, like you, before I married I also ignored some wise advice that turned out to be pretty true. But frankly, if I was that young man today, I probably still would have ignored it, because of who I was at the time and the way the advice was delivered.
Same thing with projecting "what could have been"…especially with a different partner. It's super-easy to project from your past connections how this woman could have been your true soul mate, with all the qualities that your actual spouse lacks. Maybe. Maybe it could even work out like your story. But that's a big "maybe." Instead you've projected this to a crazy extreme…that you "ruined" both your life and hers. Again, you're just setting yourself up for agony. You don't know what would have happened, so don't just project a big rosy scenario and assume you missed out on it.
I am sorry that you are in a bad marriage and a difficult life. But my advice is to stop beating yourself up for past decisions. Focus instead on how to make better decisions going forward and how to best manage your present, rather than dwelling on your past.
Thanks AM. You have some wisdom there, and I’ll try to take it to heart. I appreciate your comment.
To put it bluntly, I was ten years into my life after adolescence and was starving for sex with a woman, which I had never experienced. The culture pounded at my hormones, trying to tempt me into it, but Grace, fear of pregnancy and STDs, and my duty of finishing school kept me out of trouble.
Eventually, I met the woman who would be my wife at work, and we started out as colleagues. Then we became friends, and then it was sex. Then we started living together and I was very happy with my situation. I was no longer starving.
About ten months later, I was offered a temporary job assignment overseas. I had two decisions to make: 1) Do I take the job? and 2) Do I take her with me? The first one was easy, but the second one was harder.
I decided to take the job, but would go alone. She remained silent and let me make my own decision.
The next morning, I woke up beside her to the song "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" by Laura Branigan. I wept. We got married and were together for 38 years.
They call it "making love" for a reason. I am in my third year of widowerhood, and the Lord has been helping me reconcile what happened between us. I adore my wife. We were actually perfect for each other, but I could not fully see it without hindsight.
I loved my wife and our relationship was good, but I prayed to the Lord that he would help me love her even more. And he did. Then I prayed for him to do it again, and he did. And again, and again, and again… Repeatedly.
I was in love with her more than I had ever been, and then the music stopped. Going from 100 mph to 0 in a moment will literally destroy someone's heart. It was awful. But then, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Thankfully, that is very true.
God doesn't make mistakes, and believe it or not, he is in full control of everything. Go read the first two chapters of Job, if you are in doubt. He is fully capable of handling any problem we may have, and as we all know, we have plenty.
My additional suggestion is to be careful about what teachings you follow. There is much error out there. When I hear people say they were "saved" at some point in their life, I wonder what they think they were "saved" from. Does what they believe actually line up with what The Book says? Lay everything at the feet of Jesus and let Him sort you out. It has worked for me.
Blessings.
The more I dwell on KM's post and some of the responses here, the more I wonder how much harm comes out of couples marrying too early and perhaps with the wrong partner because they have no other way to fufil their natural sexual drives. Is it realistic to always wait for sex until marriage? What heartache and wrong decisions might be avoided? Might make my own discussion post on that.
That is a very real question in the minds of many Christians, and I'm sure such a discussion post will have a lot of thoughtful comments. All should keep in mind, though, that MH does stand for keeping sex within an exclusive marriage, so the guidelines for story posts won't be affected.—Missy, MH
There's something to say for people that aren't well-matched sexually, but also just the way that Christians are taught. I'd also encourage you to start that discussion and I'm looking forward to arguing different aspects with you!
Waiting for marriage is fine but its important not to rush into anything. During that time, it is an opportunity to get to know the person. Affection is shown in other ways besides sexual intercourse. Chemistry is not a myth. Sex shouldn't be something that we can't wait to have as an individual. It should be a mutual feeling that both can't wait to have. Normally, that's because there's been a lot of hot and heavy make out sessions.
Sometimes it is more of a fear of being alone and having to start all over again. The moment I stopped having the fear the easier it was to find the right one.