“Seven weeks have passed now since she left me

She shows her face to ask me how I am

She says the kids are fine and that they miss me

Maybe I could come and babysit sometime

She says ‘Are you Ok?’, I was worried about you

Can you forgive me? I hope that you’ll be happy

I’m so happy that I can’t stop crying

I’m so happy I’m laughing through my tears.”

That’s the first verse from Sting’s I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying off of his Mercury Falling CD. And I have listened to this song about 10 to 15 times in preparing to write this column.  Actually, this song is the main reason I decided to write the entire What is Love series.

The song is about man losing his wife to another man and their marriage ending in divorce. What struck me the most is when Sting sings that he’s so happy he can’t stop crying.

I’ve wondered is he happy that he’s a free man or crying about the divorce.  Those lyrics could have multiple meanings to them.  Hmm…

Divorce is a touchy subject to write about, but, it is so commonplace in our culture that everyone has been affected by it. Most people can speak about the statistics of divorce in normal conversation that I don’t want to even go there with this column.

But I’m wondering what happened to that person who said they found someone, Out of the Blue {Part 1} and decided that Love and Marriage {Part 2} do go together to now wanting to end the marriage.

Everyone says that marriage is hard work.  Which is true. But it seems we’ve shifted from marriage as a fantasy of happily ever after to this belief of marriage being hard work that the balance between the two has been lost.

I believe marriage is a combination of the two.  There is an element of fantasy to it as well as an element of hard work.  However, the pendulum has shifted from one end of the spectrum to the other end of so drastically that the divorce rate has been the casuality of that shift.

Also, I believe that marriage puts too much weight on each partner to be their everything in that relationship.  For the wife to be a chef, a maid, and sexually available to her husband when he wants it and for the husband to be a protector, provider, and emotionally available to whenever she needs him to be…is just too much for any human being to fulfill consistently over the course of a marriage.

I recently heard my pastor talk about the last paragraph regarding anyone going into marriage with those expectations will not have a marriage lasting no more than five to seven years at best.  Well, the divorce rate makes his assessment a reality.

Because of those expectations not being fulfilled…I can see why people are divorcing and looking for the next husband or wife (or even co-habitating) in order to be fulfilled and find happiness.

So what do you do…if you don’t want to divorce?  Well, I would love to write that I  have a seven-step plan for no more divorces in America. I don’t. But, let me write this.

I believe there should be only three reasons for ever divorcing: 1) Physical Abuse, 2) Serial Adultery, 3) Criminal Behavior from one of the spouses

Anything else from Boredom (the silent killer in a marriage), to irreconcilable differences (I believe those differences should have been paid attention in the Out of the Blue dating stage), to desiring someone else because you believe they will treat you better, and so on is not grounds for divorce.

I know some of you will disagree with the last paragraph. I get that.  But I have to stand firmly for marriage and getting divorce should be the last option…no, the very last option a couple takes when all other avenues have been truly and fully exhausted.

I believe we do forget that there is a spiritual component to marriage (whether you are religious or not) and when you sever that relationship it creates a void that can not only affect you but your children and their children as well.

Here is this: “When grunge-rock star Kurt Cobain committed suicide, reporters digging into his private life discovered that when he was eight years old, his parents divorced, sending him into a sharp downward spiral. ‘It destroyed him,’ admits his mother, Wendy Cobain. ‘He changed completely.’ The experience was so painful that when Cobain made an earlier suicide attempt in 1994, he had a note in his pocket that said, ‘I’d rather die than go through a divorce.'” {From How Now Shall We Live: Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey}

I will finish with this…if there anybody reading this and is going through a divorce or contemplating a divorce, I would ask with my last breath that you truly reconsider.  Please exhaust all options before ending that marriage.  I didn’t write these columns to make pleas…but in this case I truly hope that one marriage can be saved then this plea will be worth more than the words I have written.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.  {Matthew 19:5-6}

See you for Part 4.