Thursday, June 30, 2016

Don't Run Back Home


When I got married, my mom told me that I couldn't come running back to her when I had marriage problems. I did one time in my first year of marriage and she told me to go home to my husband. I don't even feel the need to tell this to my children since they are as committed to their marriages for life as we are now.

One woman I was mentoring left her husband to go live with her parents. She was leaving her husband because he had an affair. She emailed me and asked me what to do when her parents wanted her to get a job and no longer be able to homeschool her children nor be home with them. I told her to go home where she belonged and let her husband continue to support them. It's not good to leave a husband all alone in a home, if you want to heal a broken marriage. This is giving way too much temptation to a man. She took my advice and went home; now they have a fabulous marriage! She is even winning him to the Lord. Actually, since I wrote this post a while ago, he is now going to church and loves studying the Word of God. Yes, our God is a God of miracles and is in the business of transforming lives.

When married children know they can come home to their parent's home if they want to leave their husband, they just may do this. It's not a good idea! For one thing, everything they tell their parents that is negative about their husband will be remembered by the parents and cause them to think badly about their son-in-law. They will have a much harder time forgiving him than their daughter. Secondly, the grown children always will know they have a place to go just in case it doesn't work out. Don't give your grown children this option. I have mentored women who were very unhappy in their marriages, but they had no place to go. This is a good thing! If they don't have a place to go and they are a full-time mama, they will probably stay with their husband because they need them and they should. This is how it was in the olden days. They just worked it out and stayed together.

No matter how bad some marriages are, if neither of them leaves, it almost always gets better over time {unless there is physical abuse, then call the authorities}. Commitment does something special in a marriage. It's security. It's God's blessing upon your life. You get used to it and don't want to leave.

Make sure your children know that marriage is until death do they part. Teach them to be vow keepers. Model it for them. Help them to pick wisely for this reason. We told our daughters to marry someone who loved the Lord and worked hard. They both married men who fit this description. We taught our sons to marry women who loved the Lord and wanted to stay home to raise their babies. They both married wives like this. We are truly blessed!

Instead of wanting to flee home, call a godly older woman and have a nice long conversation with her. After pouring out all your complaints about your husband, hopefully she will then ask you to share all those things you love about him like Miss Clare did in the War Room. {I have always done this as well.} Then begin dwelling on all the good about your husband and stay with him; for you were created to be his help meet.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, 
and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
Ephesians 5:31