A couple of weeks ago I took my daughter to a play at a
local university, “By the Skin of our Teeth”, by Thornton Wilder. I had looked forward to it, plays there are
always fun. And it was pretty funny, until
the end of Act 2. Out of the blue, the
main man is seduced by the leading lady to leave his wife and children for
her. She stops the play (this has been
happening throughout) to say she’s not going to do this scene and argues with
the director about it, because her friend is in the audience, and her friend’s
husband just left her after however many years and she’s not going to subject
her to this on stage. Of course there is
an actress in the audience who falls apart and runs out of the theater. We sat transfixed. It wasn’t funny anymore, it was all too
real. The scene closed with the Flood
coming and the man hunting for his wife and family and getting on the boat with
them. The leading lady also got on the
boat as the servant of the family, the role she played throughout the
play. The curtain closed, I still
couldn’t move. The intermission came and
the audience chattered and moved around and still I sat transfixed. Finally the thought came to me that in the
end, the man on stage returned to his family.
Their family survived. That’s not
going to happen for us.
Unexpected reminders like this in the midst of what I
thought would be an entertaining escape seem to come often. Divorce is common in our culture, and not
necessarily viewed as the evil that Believers associate it with. Divorce is a part of marriage, as death is a
part of life, and laughing about it helps - unless you happen to be in the
middle of it.
But God didn’t design marriage to be that way. Divorce happens due to sin, and it wasn’t the
original design. Marriage is supposed to
be a picture of Christ and the church.
Something permanent. Something
sacred. A promise never broken.
Yet here I am, in the middle of a life of broken
promises. I hurt for myself, for the
loss of the future, for the tainted memories of the past. I hurt for my own sin and inadequacies, and
for the betrayal of his sin. I hurt for
the pain and anger in my children, and for my grandchildren who will not see
the stability of a lifetime marriage. I
hurt because I will not be able to be the full time grandmother I dreamed of
being, I will be at work.
Somehow I sat through the last act, and I am glad I
did. The play written just 10 years
after the Great Depression and in the midst of WWII, and as a whole was about
the survival of the human race. No
matter what comes, the Fall, the Ice Age, the Flood, the War, man survives. Not entirely intact, because there is the son
Henry (Cain), who consistently seeks to destroy throughout the play, but the
family survives and moves on with each disaster.
And so shall I, because God promises healing to His
children. He promises to make all things
work together for not only His Glory, but for my good, and the good of my
children, and the good of the church. He
is indeed Sovereign, and this place of exile and wandering in the desert is His
Plan for me right now. But the Promised
Land is just over the horizon. I can
look back and see Him in the path I have already traveled, and I can look
forward and see the future Hope of His Promise in His Words in Scripture, and I
trust Him.
My broken marriage may not be the picture of Christ and His
church that it should be. But the very
pain of the broken promises points me to a Faithful Father and Bridegroom, who
will never break His Promises, who will never leave me nor forsake me. And I trust Him.
©Rebecca A Givens, 4/10/15
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