Love between two people
Commitment between two people
Two people becoming one
How do I know if I am married or not?
Is marriage when two have united through their hearts;
With God as their witness?
Or
Is Marriage when two people have a piece of paper, saying they are married?
What is marriage? There are many who would question this due to questions surrounding gay marriage. I have another reason to question this. Mine is very personal. Mine has religious as well as legal ramifications.
This is my religious dilemma:
When I married I insisted on getting married in a church because this was something I believed strongly in. When I married I took my vows very seriously. The circumstances surrounding my marriage were a bit unusual and this added to the strong beliefs behind my marriage. I had known my husband for only a month and a half via phone conversations. I flew to St Louis to meet him and we got married the same day. We knew, in our hearts, that God had brought us together. Due to my past, I prayed from the moment I stepped off the airplane, while standing in line at the court and up until the time I said “I DO” at the church. I prayed that God would watch over us and I asked to be led to do God’s will; if this was his will that he would bless us in this marriage ceremony. I prayed and I prayed and we were married. I went into this marriage knowing that I made my vows with God as my witness. I believed in my vows till death do us part. I believed in my vows for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer…….I believed and I promised to fulfill these vows.
Do these vows hold true In God’s eyes if my marriage was filled with abuse and adultery against me?
Do these vows hold true if the marriage was not valid in a legal sense?
No one can ever imagine or guess the events that will happen in their life. No one can be prepared for every twist and turn life offers. Shortly after my marriage I learned that my husband was a crack addict. I learned this through the trials my life was faced with. The addiction caused my husband to do many things that are totally against what the Bible says a marriage should be. My husband became abusive; physically, emotionally and verbally. My husband stole from me to pay for his addiction. My husband cheated on me on a regular basis with prostitutes. These are all things that the Bible talks against. Adultery and abuse are both reasons for divorce. The Bible talks about not associating with people like this. The Bible says a person who commits adultery will not be accepted into the kingdom of heaven. The Bible says if you commit adultery you ruin your life. The Bible says very specifically what love is and there is no way that the things my husband did to me would be considered love. And yet, the Bible also says a wife is to submit to her husband. The Bible says we are to forgive 70 X’s 7 times. I believe in God’s word…I believe I am to strive to be as Jesus was. If someone asks for forgiveness and forgives others as he would want to be forgiven; if someone repents and accepts Jesus into his life; if that someone is born again as a new creature of God, do all his past sins matter? Should they matter to anyone if God has forgiven and Only God can judge?
My dilemma is compounded by legal matters.
I have been married for four years now. Even through all the trials, we have tried to work together. Out of nowhere I receive a call from my husband’s first wife. They are not divorced….which means I am not married…or am I? Does it make a difference that he was not a husband to me even when we believed ourselves to be married? Does it make a difference that my husband has asked God for forgiveness and I truly believe that God will judge me to the same extend I judge others? In my mind, I must forgive and not judge my husband just as I would ask God (and my husband) to forgive me. I am not married legally, however, the question remains………am I married in God’s eyes?
When I said my vows to my husband, I said them believing them to be true and from my heart.
Marriage; a covenant
In God's house with God as our witness.
Marriage; with vows
between us two, from our hearts with God's blessings.
Are we married in Christ
under God's Rule
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