By Kathleen Miller
Special to The PREVIEW
In 2002, divorce broke my first marriage covenant. As a result, I will never have the opportunity to experience the sounds of celebrating a 60th wedding anniversary. I will never know what it would have been like to raise our children through adulthood together or sharing of nurturing the lives of our legacy of grandchildren and future generations. I do, however, know the pain, sorrow and grief of children splitting time between parents, the awkwardness of two sets of parents seated in the front row of our daughters’ weddings and the heartache of glancing through our son’s Facebook tagged with family photos that do not include me.
“For I’m so ashamed. I feel such pain and anguish within me. I can’t get away from the sting of my sin against you, Lord. Everything I did, I did right in front of you, for you saw it all. Against you, and you above all, have I sinned. Everything you say to me is infallibly true and your judgment conquers me.” — Psalm 51:3-4 (TPT).
Yet by the grace and mercy of God, I am hopeful that if my children learn the inner workings of covenant relationships, they will get the opportunity for marriages that will last a lifetime. If they listen and obey the Lord of the covenants, they will reap benefits beyond my experiences that will be pleasing to the Lord and fill them with joy. After many years of returning (repenting) to the Lord for the sin of divorce, I have been blessed with a new covenant marriage which is better than the marriage of my youth.
“Therefore, if anyone is united with the Messiah, he (she) is a new creation — the old has passed; look, what has come is fresh and new. And it is all from God, who through the Messiah has reconciled us to himself … not counting their sins against them …” -— 2 Corinthians 5:17-19.
In my first marriage, I can honestly say that we did not know the love of the Lord. Consequently, we could not share His love with one another. It wasn’t until I met my second husband that the love of the Lord became a sustaining source for me and our marriage. What’s interesting is that despite the character, physical and generational differences between the men that I married, the terms of the marriage covenant remained the same. God’s covenant terms of marriage did not change. By the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, I did. By the grace and mercy of God, I now know what it is like to have Yeshua (Jesus’ Hebrew name) as my first Bridegroom and Ken as a second husband.
