Impossible Marriages Redeemed: They Didn't End the Story in the Middle

by Leila Miller

the final battle between Christ and Satan will be over marriage and family.

it’s downright scandalous that often the “help” that is offered is the toxic acceptance of divorce.

Far better advice, for someone unhappy in marriage, would be something like this: “You took a vow to be faithful ‘for better or worse.’ Right now it looks worse. Your vow still binds you.”

Or this: “This is an opportunity to draw closer to Jesus Christ. Right now your marriage is your cross to bear. Can you ask for His help, to imitate Him?”

When a marriage seems to have broken down, the options can seem like a binary, on/off choice: to end it or to slog on joylessly. Not so. There is a third and better option: to dig down, solve the problems, and renew...

To repair a damaged marriage may require enormous quantities of patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. It will require an acknowledgment of wrongs, a confession of sins, a commitment to repentance and reform.

“standers,” who have chosen to honor their marriage vows even after their spouses have abandoned them and perhaps even remarried.

St. John Paul II remarks that the Church must “recognize the value of the witness of those spouses who, even when abandoned by their partner, with the strength of faith and of Christian hope have not entered a new union.”

the happier stories here involve the people who persevered in their marriages—through the suffering, through the false hopes and false starts, through the mortification—and finally emerged with a stronger union, fortified by mutual understanding and forgiveness, by sacrifice and especially by prayer.

yet she never ceases to endeavor to bring about a reconciliation, and never despairs of doing so.

Never ceases. Never despairs. Never.

the diligent and unending work to restore broken marriages—not end them!—is still the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

According to canon law, in cases of unrepentant adultery, “grave mental or physical danger,” or unlivable situations, physical separation of spouses is allowed with the bishop’s permission,[2] but: “In all cases, when the cause for the separation ceases, conjugal living must be restored…”

Even should circumstances require continued separation, the marriage bond remains.

Sacramental marriages are indissoluble and can be ended only by the death of one of the spouses, and even valid natural marriages (marriages in which one or both spouses are unbaptized) are designed by God to be permanent.

We rally with all of our sympathy and then, because we have no real tools to help them, we tell them it’s okay to divorce. We never mention that divorce is a sin

The two wide exit ramps of no-fault divorce (automatic) and annulment (almost always granted) are a near-guarantee that no couple truly suffering will stay to fight through the darkness. Why should they? The potential for relief and happiness dangled in front of them is so tempting that it’s practically irresistible,

Each of us—and really it takes just one voice—can either help to kill the life of the marriage, ripping the “one-flesh” apart, or we can help to save it,[8] sparing souls, families, and generations.

We Christians know that with God all things are possible, and we know that the greater good and ultimate redemption come only and always through the cross.

And, to be able to embrace our cross and follow the Lord, we need to have hope.

the Lord whispers, “Stay faithful, stay true. Love even the unlovable and the unfaithful unto death, as I have loved you. Imitate my quiet, unfailing love, and even my humiliation, and carry your cross to the end—where your redemption and glory await.”[9]

This union, then, is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And so not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.

We do not know what awaits us, but we promise to love and be faithful anyway, no matter what, until death.

Over all the clamoring for “moving on” and “starting over,” you’ll hear the real experiences of ordinary people who found their way by honoring the vows they made before God and witnesses.

stay true to your sacred promises—even if your spouse does not—and

If we Christians are not a people of redemption, then we are nothing at all.

today, women are much more likely to file for divorce than men, a statistic that is largely explained by the pervasive and corrosive influence of feminist ideology,

“standers”—those wives or husbands who have chosen to stand for their marriage vows despite complete abandonment by their spouses.

St. John Paul II said in Familiaris Consortio (83): “[T]heir example of fidelity and Christian consistency takes on particular value as a witness before the world and the Church.”

my wife knew the sacredness of her vow, and she never entertained the idea of divorce,

If you had known us ten years ago, you would have said, “No way.” But to you I say, “Jesus looked at them and said to them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’”

Rescuing a marriage requires a lot of dying to self, and that’s difficult for most modern women who have been told via the feminist movement that they need power and control.

The sacrament of matrimony makes husband and wife “one” in God’s eyes.

The spouses help one another get to heaven through the sacrament of matrimony, even when they are not living together, and even if they are divorced. Getting each other to heaven is the goal.

keep before your mind the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians concerning love—that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That love never dies.

“All badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Because evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite that feeds on goodness.”—Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Satan only needs a small crack to enter into the fortress.

I firmly believed that we had entered into our marriage covenant with God at the center—and divorce was not an option.

They did not sit and watch; instead, they joined us in prayer and listened to the Holy Spirit guide them as they helped us rebuild our fortress.

I note that those who advise are often quick to suggest intolerance and unforgiveness, which can result in many people leaving their spouses.

folks have no idea how to support someone appropriately in this circumstance.

Kids deserve both their natural parents and a family.

When I finally stopped exerting my will over my husband—because these things tend to snowball and become a power struggle—and when I finally began to pray, that is when the conversion of the relationship happened.

Several of the Christian women at work were divorced (they had bought the lie that God doesn’t hate divorce),

I knew that in the eyes of God, we had never been unmarried,

Marriage is sacred. And I cannot begin to express the gratitude I feel for Christ, the Church, for all that makes His Church holy.

This was a broken marriage that has been healed and restored. I have a good marriage now. We did change. And we know that giving up solves nothing.

He did pour His grace on us. And that was the beginning of the healing. It was the beginning of what my husband and I consider a miracle.

We are proof that a marriage can get past some horrible stuff and come out the other side stronger, happier, healthier, and more honest.

In the depths of that hell, and under the burden of that cross, was precisely where I fell in love with my husband all over again—a deeper love than ever before.