On Friday, we received an email that brought tears to my eyes. Here is an excerpt of that email:

I love all the encouraging stories of marriage being restored. I’m just wondering what about the ones that don’t. My husband has choose to file divorce and not have anything to do with forgiveness. I just feel like everyone has the great stories about the ones that get restored and God uses. But what about the ones who don’t, will God still use me? Is his Grace still for me? Does he even see me?

What do you do when the ending isn’t happy? For some of you there is no restored marriage. For some of you, your spouse did choose the other person. For some of you our blog is often a reminder of what could have been, and you wonder, “Why them, and not me?” For some of you, God left your life when your marriage ended; or at least it has felt like it.

Can I offer these words of truth to you today?

-Just because your marriage has ended, doesn’t mean your story has ended
Your story is still being written. God is still working. He is still moving. He is still planning. He can and will use, even the most difficult and hurtful times of your life to write His story in you. His plan for you isn’t dependent on your marital status. His grace is for YOU.

-The best thing you can do is pursue healing
This is hard, but so important. So many people want to pursue being used by God before they pursue being healed by God. I get it…I really do. The guilt of my choices and the destruction of my choices weighed on me so much that I wanted to make up for it. I wanted God to use me. But when we pursue God using us before we pursue His healing, we forfeit the heart wholeness He longs to bring. In the long run, we shortcut our own healing process and set ourselves up to repeat history rather than rewrite history. Pursue healing above all else.

-The hardest person to forgive is yourself
It will be the most difficult to forgive yourself. Can I encourage you today to recognize this and begin the forgiving process with yourself. God’s plan for you isn’t to live in shame and guilt. In fact, His word says that there is “no condemnation for those that are in Christ.” He forgives you. Forgive yourself.

-Your identity isn’t dependent on your marital status
God loves you single, divorced, remarried, separated. Your identity in Him isn’t dependent on your marital status. It will take a while, but as you begin to find your identity in Him, you will allow Him to use you, your story and your life.

It is easy to tie a bow around our story and think the happy ending is only for those who have been restored. Restoration is for you. Redemption has less to do with your marriage as it does your heart.

Even when it seems like your ending isn’t happy…remember it isn’t the end. He is still writing your story.

On Monday I wrote that there have been many different types of transitions that Justin and I have experienced over the past 17 years together. Some transitions were self-inflicted some inflicted by others. Knowing the topics of transitions our friends will be covering next week I thought I would tackle a transition I don’t often write about.

In the summer of ’97 I had the privilege of going to Florida with Justin’s family. Because of Justin’s work schedule he was not able to come along. As I returned from my trip I expected Justin to greet me with an amazing hug and kiss but I knew by the look on his face that something was terribly wrong.

He asked me to sit down and proceeded to tell me that he had just spoken with my mom. My mind went a hundred different directions and for a brief second I felt my body go deaf and numb. I did not want to hear what he had to say.

Before I finish the rest of that story it’s important for you to know a little background about me. When my mom was in eighth grade her dad died of a heart attack. Two years later her mom died of breast cancer. Knowing this, I constantly struggled with the thought of losing my parents. To make matters worse by the time I was 18 I had experienced 5 funerals of loved ones who tragically died. My first death was a dear friend who shot himself in the head and his family decided to have an open casket funeral. The last death was my sweet friend and sister Tricia who came to live with us and was adopted into our family (we were the same the age). DEATH marked me at a young age.

So there I was deaf and numb struggling not to hear the words Justin was abut to say. I knew someone I loved had died but what he proceeded to tell me I NEVER expected: “Your dad is having an affair” I looked at him with relief. Me: “Oh… You must be wrong Justin… My parents have been married for 25 years! They love Jesus and each other. You HAVE to be wrong!” but he wasn’t.

I think in that moment it would have been easier to handle if one of them had died. Why? Because death would have meant that they didn’t choose to leave. An affair and an eventual divorce clearly shouted, “You, your brother, your sister and yes your mother are not worth fighting for”.

I was so young in my age and in my marriage that I didn’t realize how much of a transition this would be for me. It was the death of my parents in a way I had never thought of or feared. This death striped me from the foundation I had built my life on… TRUST. I trusted my dad was who he said he was. Even worse I trusted that the transformational work I saw God do in my dad was real! It was a death that would take me years to accept, grieve and heal.

I would love to wrap this post up with five ways I’ve learned to trust but I can’t. I’m still on the road to healing. The past 18 months have brought about significant transitions where my trust has been broken. It has exposed parts of me I thought were healed but that are really only covered with band-aides.

Although it’s been long journey here is the beautiful truth:

GOD IS ALWAYS TRUSTWORTHY…ALWAYS!!!

Hebrews 10:23-24 (New Living Translation)

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.

Hebrews 6:17-19 (New Living Translation)

God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.

Regardless of how my trust has been broken He is teaching me “ways to motivate” me “to acts of love and good works”. I don’t understand it or often times even want to agree with it but each time I choose to lean into Him through prayer and reading the Bible I grow a little bit more in my understanding of what it means to trust Him and others. The death of my parent’s marriage allowed my false sense of trust in them to now be rooted where it was always meant to be…HIM

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to speak at Cross Point in our Light Series. I spoke on Light being embodied by Grace. I talked about the importance for those of us who have received grace to extend it to others. For years I looked at grace as something that would change the people to whom I gave it. What I’ve realized recently is that grace changes me as I give it.

Here is an excerpt of the message:

The supernatural ability of grace is not just its ability to transform the person you extend it to. The supernatural ability of grace is its ability to transform you, as you extend it.

God calls us to give grace as much for us as for those to which we are called to give it.

Here is the deal today…you will not always feel like doing this. This is a difficult way to live. Not holding a grudge will be difficult. Accepting the unacceptable will not be easy. Overcoming resentment and bitterness will not be popular. There will be times that the last thing you feel like doing is forgiving.

Your husband owes you. Your mom let you down. Your wife broke your trust. Your dad abused you. You will not always feel like giving grace.

Often, extending grace is more about obedience than it is about feelings.

Doesn’t giving grace just excuse their choice to hurt me? Don’t they in a sense just get away with that they’ve done when I give them grace? How can that be fair?

Grace doesn’t excuse their behavior; grace prevents their behavior from hardening your heart.

When I got home, Trisha told me a story of a woman that goes to our church. Every year for the past several years this grace-giving woman has chosen to overcome her feelings and be obedient to something she feels God has called her to do.

A few days before Christmas, she loads her four kids up and drives them several states away. She drops them off at their dad’s house so they can spend Christmas day with their dad, while she stays with her sister. This would be a sacrifice under normal circumstances. But this is grace at a different level.

He had an affair. He left her and married the woman with whom he had the affair. Out of obedience to what she feels God has laid on her heart, she drives her kids all the way to him (them) so her kids can have the memory of Christmas with their father.

Does she feel like it? I’d bet money that she doesn’t. But what she does every time she makes that drive is she disarms the power of resentment and bitterness. She releases the control of someone’s choice to affect her heart. She doesn’t validate his choice, she chooses to not allow his choice to define her and ruin her. She extends grace.

Grace may never change him, but it changes her.

Is there a person in your life this Christmas that needs grace? Will you give it even if you don’t feel like it?

I read THIS post yesterday on how Facebook is becoming a prime source for evidence in divorce cases. It is a very eye-opening article. Here is a quote from the article that really caught my attention:

All in all, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says that around 81% of its members have had to deal with — or have themselves used — evidence from social media sources, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And a UK site reported that the word “Facebook” alone appeared in around 20% of its cases last year.

81%…DANG! That is staggering! Last month alone, over 300 individual people found RefineUs by Google Searching a variation of the phrase “Facebook Destroyed My Marriage.” A few months ago, I wrote a post entitled Facebook Didn’t Destory Your Marriage. But after reading this article, I’m not so sure.

Here is what I’m wrestling with: Obviously, Trisha and I use social media. We use Facebook, we have a Fan Page for our Ministry, we use Twitter…and I think we use it responsibly and for redemptive purposes. But I also know that social media is a very slippery slope.

So my question today, that I’d love to discuss is this: Are self-imposed boundaries enough to protect our hearts in the social media arena, or are we sharing too much of ourselves with others?

What do you think?