Don’t Let A Good Marital Crisis Go To Waste

I stole the title from politicians. They have a saying about never letting a crisis go to waste, and they usually mean using a market crash or a hurricane to clobber the other party. That’s not what I mean. I couldn’t find a better way to say it, so I’m borrowing it and putting it to more honest work.

This is for any woman in the middle of a marital crisis. I’m writing to women, but men, you can listen in, it all applies to you too. My point is going to sound like it came off a church bulletin: experience the unbelievable strength and power of God. I know, it sounds so worn out. But the truth is, it’s strangely missing from a lot of Christian counseling today, so I want to resurrect it.

I’m not a marriage counselor. I’m a doctor who got a private, unexpected, tuition-free education from the Holy Spirit in the middle of her own marriage blowing up. What I learned could keep a woman from failing a test God has handed out to her. It could keep her from doing everything humanly possible and nothing divinely possible. Or from quitting before God gets a word in.

The email

Fifteen years into my marriage, I was a medical resident working about 80 hours a week. My two toddlers were at home with two nannies working in shifts, the way you staff an ICU. Then one day I came across a love email between my husband and one of those nannies.

My world shattered. My husband wasn’t just my husband. He was my friend, my support, and the only family I had in this country. And in their messages, the two of them talked about me in a way that, let’s just say, wouldn’t make my highlight reel.

I read those emails over and over, the way you keep poking a sore tooth with your tongue. It made me a little insane. I lashed out. I said things. I lost my dignity one sentence at a time. Pain does that, and it’s perfectly human.

But not for a Christian.

Wait, what?

The rebuke

An older woman from my church, my godmother, had become a close friend through all of this. One day she looked at me and said I was being jealous and wasn’t acting Christlike.

Duh. Of course I wasn’t acting Christlike. My best friend betrayed me. He and the other woman mocked me behind my back, and it cut deeply. Who on earth would expect me to be Christlike right now?

Christ would, actually.

He was betrayed all the way to death. Most of his friends ran. He was paraded half-naked through Jerusalem, spat on, jeered at and stripped of every scrap of human dignity, and he was a far better man than I ever was a wife. If that’s the example of suffering we claim to follow, ours looks pretty small next to it. So why do we give ourselves a license to act like the world while saying we follow him?

And here’s the part I liked even less. I had cast myself as the victim, and him as the villain. But I’m made of the same stuff he is. I may not have betrayed my husband physically, but given the right provocation, the right loneliness, the right nanny-shaped opportunity, I’m perfectly capable of it. We all are. Once I stopped pretending I was the good one and he was the bad one, I could finally see where God wanted to take me.

The impossible command

“The command is to love your husband,” my godmother said. “You never know. You might save the marriage.”

I understood right away that the way I was acting was the surest way to end it. But love him? My lying, betraying, indifferent husband?

Impossible.

Yes. Exactly. It is impossible. And that’s where I found God’s strength and his completely miraculous power to love. Day to day, it looked like cooking his favorite meal, buying him a nice birthday present, and not bringing up his faults every single time they marched through my mind, which was roughly every eleven minutes.

Here’s the secret, and it’s the whole article: don’t love your husband for his sake. He probably won’t reciprocate. You’ll be disappointed and bitter faster than the deviled eggs disappear at a church potluck, and you’ll quit before you’ve started. The only strength that holds comes from doing it for Christ. You obey, and you wait on him for the strength, the power and the reward. Christ loved us when we were completely unlovable. Following him means doing the same.

Did my husband deserve my love? He deserved one swift kick in the behind. It was God who deserved my obedience. The minute I decided to trust Him, and started doing it that same day, it got strangely easy. It felt like God himself had moved into our house and handed me powers I’d never had.

Let me be clear about one thing: I’m not discussing your right to leave an unfaithful husband. That’s a separate question. I’m talking about tapping into God’s strength before you quit. Pushing all your chips onto the table and betting that God will do more for you than you could ever do for yourself.

And as long as you’re negotiating with God, telling him “this far and no further,” you won’t feel that power. It only shows up when you actually give in to his Word.

What it was like

I’ve read about the peace that passes understanding my whole life. I’d never had it. Then, in the middle of the worst season of my life, at a time when most people are angry, bitter and desperate, I was peaceful. Joyful. Happy, even. As a doctor, I can tell you there’s nothing in the pharmacy that does that. I’ve checked the formulary.

As I walked with God, He revealed more of his truths every day. Sometimes he corrected me, more often he encouraged me, and he was present in a way that changed how I acted, not just how I felt.

My marriage wasn’t saved. But I came out a victor, not a victim. My children never once saw a fight, an argument or any ugliness between their parents. I have a lot of respect for how strong emotions can be. Left alone, mine would have keyed his car, emailed the nanny’s mother and posted the whole thing on Facebook with a Bible verse attached.  So when I look back at the moments where they should have betrayed me and didn’t, I can only conclude that God was acting on my behalf.  Don’t give me wrong, I won’t pretend I floated through it like a stained-glass window. I still had my moments. But this was a new me.

Who this is for, and who it isn’t for

Lately I keep hearing from friends about marriages falling apart. The wife is being emotionally abused or lives with a self-centered, indifferent husband and the word “narcissist” keeps coming up. I hear the stories as a woman who has sat at her own kitchen table, rereading words that cut, wondering what was wrong with her. If that’s you, I’m so sorry. What’s being done to you is wrong. You’re not crazy, you’re not too sensitive, and you didn’t earn it. And if I could sit across from you with a cup of coffee, the one thing I’d want you to hear is this: love your husband with the strength God gives you along with the command, and watch what God does with your obedience.

That’s not clenching your teeth and forcing yourself to do something every fiber of you is against. That’s just knuckling under, and it doesn’t last. It’s doing it as unto the Lord. If God commands us to love, he’ll supply the power. Some of us have never felt that, because we quit before He had a chance to come through.

Now let me say something important. If there is physical abuse, threats, or you feel unsafe, this article is not for you. Get yourself and your children to safety. Call the police. Reach out to Christian friends, family, whoever God puts in front of you. Do not stay. I’ve seen where those relationships go, and they only go in one direction.

What I’m talking about is the husband who is unfaithful, harsh, selfish, narcissistic, hard to live with, putting you down.

If you can’t tell which side of that line you’re on, or you’re wondering whether it’s harsh words or something darker like control, isolation, keeping you from money or friends, or a fear you can’t quite name, please don’t figure it out alone. Talk to a pastor, a Christian counselor, or a godly woman who understands abuse. Loving your husband for Christ’s sake never means handing your safety, or your children’s, to someone who would harm them. God doesn’t need you in danger to do his work in you.

Don’t waste it

So if you’re in a marital crisis, don’t let it go to waste. If you’re a Christian, this is a trial, and God means to bring you through it. Trust him for that, and don’t do it alone. Find one friend who will pray with you, every day if needed, so God’s strength is the thing carrying you and not your own.

It’s funny. We have no trouble believing God can part seas and raise the dead. What we struggle with is to believe is that he can help us do the basic thing, like following His example. So start there. The rest, meaning his truth, his peace, his love, his power and his grace, you will experience after that.

I’m still collecting the miracles.