They Said the Church was Safe—but it Wasn’t
Marriage is terrifying at its core. We are most afraid of being known—and not being loved. After years of searching for the right person, you finally find the one who presumably wants to spend the rest of their life with you, and you feel the same. But after years of togetherness through every season of human stress, there is no mystery left. You’ve seen each other without makeup and in stained sweatpants, fat, thin, out of shape, stressed over problems at work, arguing over dirty dishes at the kitchen sink. When the masks are removed, we are completely vulnerable in front of each other, and we don’t always like what we see.
Will they still love me when they really know me?
Or am I only lovable in pieces?
Divorce is our worst fear incarnate. He or she has seen everything about me and decides they want out. After really knowing me, they say, I chose wrong. I don’t want to be with you anymore.
It may be a simplistic framing, but it captures something essential about being human: our deep-seated fear of being rejected when we are most vulnerable. I have lived it and survived it.
The church provides a spiritual form of marriage. Before the altar, in the colored light of the stained-glass windows, believers can remove the veil and finally be fully known in a room of witnesses. But if we are rejected, uncared for, or neglected after laying ourselves bare, it leads to a spiritual divorce. You went to a place you hoped would be safe, a place where you would be loved and protected, and the opposite happened. You were hurt, abused, or mistreated. It is the reason why nearly half of American Christians are now unchurched.
I sat down to talk a bit more about the stigma of divorce in our churches and why it feels like a 'special stamp' of failure. You can watch that here
Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.
