Faithful Friendship Through the Heartache of Divorce

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Carl Laferton
Good afternoon, my name is Carl Laferton. I serve as publisher at the Good Book Company, and it’s my privilege, and it is a privilege to introduce Veneetha Reisner to this breakout session. Veneetha lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her second husband, Joel. They have four adult children, between them, Vaneetha is a great lover of good coffee and dark chocolate, and of the Lord Jesus, not in that order. She’s also a great writer, and you may have read some of her books, her memoir, Walking Through Fire, and this, her new book, this was never the plan: walking with God through the heartache of divorce, available at all good TGC W bookstores. As a publisher and led, sir, I have the honor of working with lots of different authors, but working with Veneetha has been one of the greatest privileges of my time at the Good Book Company, not simply because she’s a great writer, but because she is a woman through whom the gospel of the Lord Jesus shines very brightly. Veneetha is no stranger to heartache and heartbreak, and yet she’s also full of joy and peace and hope and the Lord Jesus, and so you’re in safe hands this afternoon, and you need to be in safe hands this afternoon because of the topic that Veneetha is going to be speaking on, and you may have come in because you have a friend who is walking through this particular season in their life, and you want to love and support them, and I want to say on their behalf, thank you for coming. You may be here because this is something that you’re walking through, or have walked through, and I want to say, well done for having the courage to walk into this room this afternoon. I’m going to pray in a moment for Veneetha, but also for you. But before I do, just two things that Vaneetha wanted me to share. The first is that due to a health condition, Veneetha can’t sign books, so if you have a book that you want signing, her sister is here and she can forge Veneetha’s signature exceptionally well. Say, do come to the front. No one else will ever know who signed it. Second thing, more seriously, is Veneetha will be hanging around afterwards. If you do want to come and speak to her individually about what’s going on in your life, then she would be delighted to speak with you, or pray with you, or weep with you, whatever you need. So she’ll be hanging around afterwards for that. I’m going to pray, and then I’m going to hand over to the person you actually came to listen to. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that your grace is sufficient. We thank you that your spirit is ever present and so we pray that by your spirit you would bless Vaneetha as she speaks. Please use her words to give each of us what it is that you know we need to hear words of comfort, words of healing, words of hope. We give this time over to you and pray that you would be working for the glory of your son and for the good of us, his people, for his sake and in his name. We pray. Amen.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
Thank you, Carl. I Yeah, well, I still remember hearing the garage door go up and stopping what I was doing. He was home all week long. I had been waiting for this moment. I’d missed him so much. The girls had been pushing every limit, partly because their dad was not there, and I felt his absence too. Our once long phone calls had become short, almost clipped, and I told myself it was because of travel stress. We’d been apart for a long time, work had been busy, but I walked into the kitchen, and I just wanted to see him when he walked in. I wanted to see his face, to feel his arms around me, and to know that we were okay. This was the day before Valentine’s Day, and I had some things planned, and he always wrote me a long letter, a letter that I would read and reread and cherish, and I couldn’t wait to see what he would write this year, because he’d been traveling so much, and I had been handling a lot with the kids, so he walked. In and before I could say anything, he said, “I need to tell you something. I’ve met someone else. I’ve been seeing her for a while, and I’m in love with her. I stood there stunned as my world turned upside down, so that’s how my story of separation and eventually divorce began. And today I’m going to begin by telling you more about that story, not to stay there, but just to help those of you in the room who haven’t been through divorce, to understand perhaps a bit of what your friend might be going through, and then I’m going to speak directly to the people who are going through divorce in the room, or who have been through divorce, and then the bulk of my talk I’m going to give you some practical suggestions for friends walking through divorce with someone, so I’ll begin with my story. Well, that night my husband and I met at my pastor’s house, sat, and my pastor and his wife listened as my husband unraveled all the details. He was cold, almost detached, as he told us all that he had been living with this woman in another state, where his company headquarters were. The next day was Valentine’s Day, and that did not go as I imagined. There was no letter. Instead, I was met with coldness and indifference, and when I tried to talk to him, he kept texting, and I presume it was texting her, and he said to me, there really isn’t much to say. Life just hasn’t been fulfilling for a long time, and I have been gutting it out. Why can’t you just let this go? Well, that question floored me. I loved him. We had made a covenant together. We’d been married 18 years. We had two daughters together and buried an infant son. Besides that, I had been diagnosed with a debilitating disease, and we had walked through that together, and I thought he loved me, and that we could weather anything together, but now he felt like a stranger. Within a month, he moved out of state and moved into the apartment that he shared with her. And now I began life as a single parent. So I tried to hold things together, but really, I was falling apart. I cried in the bathroom, I cried in the closet. I had kids at home, and I didn’t really want to fall apart in front of them, but I felt worthless and foolish and ashamed. I questioned everything that I had once believed about our marriage and about myself. I asked myself, what is wrong with me? Am I not enough, or maybe I’m too much? I kept replaying the events of the past year. When did he stop loving me? And when did he start loving her? And why did I believe the excuses he’d been making? I’d been swallowing so much pain, keeping his secrets, making excuses, and losing myself in the process, I had a lot more clarity now over things that had been so confusing before, but my emotions were all over the place, and grief ambushed me at the most difficult times, it was anything – a movie, seeing a happy family, thinking about the future could make me collapse into tears.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
I do need to mention, I was in my early 40s when this happened, and I was in perimenopause, and if you know, you know, so I cried all the time, anyway. So this was just a lot more, but on top of that, I on top of the personal betrayal and the pain I felt judged. Dinner invitations that my husband and I had just stopped. Friendships changed. Changed people in my small group that I had led that small group didn’t know what to say, and I know they felt betrayed too, but most of them never reached out to me again. Church changed, I had been teaching our women’s Bible study, and someone went to our pastor and said, given what we think is upheaval in her marriage, I don’t think she’s qualified to teach Bible study anymore. I don’t know if we should be listening to her now. Our pastor defended me, and I kept teaching, but I heard whispered comments in the hall, and I felt like I had a scarlet D on me. I would go to church, but often we would slip out quickly afterwards, because I didn’t want a lot of questions or people who pretended they didn’t see me and walked the other way and I saw them and I know they saw me. Our once happy family of four was now an isolated family of three. We were so lonely. I remember one Easter when my parents were out of town, and it was just me and my two daughters, no one invited us over. So I made a basic meal, and we ate in almost complete silence, because they didn’t want to say anything. And finally, one of my daughters looked up, and she said, Why didn’t anyone invite us over, didn’t they know we were alone. Well, that loneliness for me was intensified because I could not share publicly and widely all that had happened, because I needed to protect my daughters from gossip, and I had this sign on my bulletin board that I would read almost every day, which is faith is trusting God to set the record straight, because I needed God to set the record straight. I could not do that. One thing I wanted was a friend to take initiative and say, maybe let’s have coffee every other week, we can talk about whatever you want, but I just want to support you through this. Now, I had a really close friend who would initiate, but she often canceled because she had family obligations, and I understood that, but cancelations in that season hurt 100 times more than in any other season, because I desperately needed to talk to process with a friend to see someone face to face. Now, my daughters were 10 and 13 at the time, and one became really angry and combative, and the other one was consumed with boys, and they both walked away from faith. I remember a youth pastor from another church calling me and saying, I’m obligated to call you because your daughter has threatened suicide. That same week, two different moms called me and told me my other daughter had been bullying their kids at school. One daughter ran away. Both daughters would tell me they hated me, and most nights I cried myself to sleep, exhausted and desperate. Single parenting was the hardest part of divorce for me, and I tell more in excruciating detail in walking through fire, so more detail than you want to know, probably, but one vignette from that describes my life back then with my kids, and one day my daughter came in and she said, “Can we get takeout for dinner? And I said, “No, we’re just going to have leftovers tonight. She looked at me and she said, “Last night’s dinner was gross, and leftovers are going to be even worse. Yuck, I’m not eating that. And I said, well, even if I had thought about getting takeout, I’m not going to based on that attitude. And she stood there, and she rolled her eyes at me. And then she said, Why don’t you make anything good anyway? You just make disgusting meals. Well, I had had it then, so I screamed at her, ‘Just go to your room, you brat! And we were both kind of stunned at how angry I got over that. She looked at me.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
For a second, and then she leaned over. I was at my desk, and she threw everything off my desk: pens, papers, pencils, paper clips, everything went flying. And then I stopped. I was kind of shaking, and I said, “You need to pick that up right now. Now, my daughter was much bigger and taller than me. She got about three inches from my face, and she said, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and make me? I couldn’t make her, and she knew that and I knew that and she laughed and said I didn’t think so and walked away. I didn’t know what to do. So a few hours later, when I pulled myself together, I called my husband and I told him what happened, and his response was, so what do you want me to do about that? I felt totally helpless. Then a few days later, I told a friend of mine what happened, and her response was, that’s unacceptable. You need to get your kids under control, because if you let them rule your house, you’re going to regret it, and they are going to run over you. Well, I wanted to get my kids under control. I wanted to know how to do that, but I had no idea. I did everything I knew to do, so I just felt so alone in parenting, but there was another side to my daughter’s story, and that was what my daughters were going through. They were fighting their own battles. When my husband first left, I had been homeschooling, and our small little homeschool group, they didn’t even have a category for what had happened to us, and so their friends didn’t understand what they were dealing with. They felt awkward. So then I put them in a small Christian school, and they felt out of place there too. One of my daughters, the one who threw the things off my desk, she told me later she ate lunch in the bathroom stall of school every day. When I asked her who she ate with, she would always just brush it off. And years later, she said, I ate every day in the bathroom. She told me that one day, one year, there was a sleepover, and the girl, one girl in her class, invited every girl but her. They both overheard people talking about our family. Their lives were much harder than I knew. And then I had everyday things I was dealing with bills, taxes, home repairs, things that I never had to deal with, lawn care, plus every game, every rehearsal, every play, every doctor’s appointment, every everything I had to do alone. Well, my husband and I went back and forth for three years, and I was certain that God would restore our marriage if I waited and prayed, and if I was faithful, and I prayed every day that He would repent and come back. I wanted my marriage restored, and I was sure that was the only way that God could be glorified, so restoration was all that I wanted, so I kept hanging on to honor God, but honestly, also because I didn’t want the shame of divorce, and I realized I was holding on to the outcome of a restored marriage, more than I was holding on to God, and I had to let go this picture of the life that I always wanted. Divorce was the breaking of my heart, but it was also the making of my faith. God drew closer than He ever had, and scripture became alive to me, and I learned what true dependence on God really looked like. When there was nowhere else to turn, I discovered that God really was enough. Both my daughters eventually came back to faith, and they both said that what they went through made their faith more real, and I am really close to both of my daughters now, and they have really strong faiths, and they’re amazing young women, but I remember.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
Remember what a friend said to me, a different friend than the one who had told me I needed to get this under control, and she said, I want you to remember parenting is a long game, and so I want everyone here to remember that parenting is a long game, so to the woman here who is in the middle of divorce or who’s been through it, I’m so sorry it was a very, very hard time in my life, and those days were a blur for me, but you will get through this. I just want to share a few things that I wish I had known or heard. First, is expect your friends will disappoint you. Most of the people that I mentioned who let me down or who hurt me, they were good friends, and they still are good friends, but friends try to support us, and they say the wrong thing. They cancel at the last minute. They don’t know what we may need. They forget, but make them give them room to be imperfect, and don’t put everything on one person, spread your needs in the things that really give you life among several trusted friends, lower your expectations, they have their own families, their own loads, that good friend who would often initiate, she wanted to love me well, and we had a conversation just a few years ago, and she said I wanted to be there, but my life was stressful too, and I realized so often I was so focused on my needs that I couldn’t see that she had needs as well. Secondly, remember, God sees you. You may feel like you have a scarlet D, and that everyone knows, and everyone is talking about you. You may feel like you are part of that family, but that is not how God names you. Hagar was alone in the wilderness. She was cast out of her home, and she was a single mom, and God came to her there, and God saw her there with her son, and God sees you now. God will never abandon you, He will never fail you, He will never forsake you. He runs to our aid, ask him for help. Friends cannot meet all our needs, but God can, and God will. Third, don’t get lost in the unfairness, focusing on what your ex did, and obsessing about him will eat you alive. Forgiveness is hard work, but it begins with letting go of the lies that you swallowed and facing the truth. It begins with counting the cost, seeing what this cost you, and giving it to God. My definition that I talk about in the book is refusing to hold on to bitterness and giving up the right to hurt you for hurting me. It’s not reconciliation, it’s not restoration, but it’s giving up the right to hurt someone who’s hurt us, and bitterness is often more damaging to your soul than what happened to you, because bitterness left unchecked will poison you and will poison those around you. I remember several years ago I did a workshop on forgiveness, and you could tell the people in the room that did not want to forgive just by looking at their faces. It was etched on their faces. So ask God to help you, and if you don’t want to forgive, I get it. I did not want to forgive, and so my first prayer was, God, help me want to want to help me want to want to. You just need to bring yourself to God. But I have to say, forgiving my ex-husband was one of the most life-giving things I have ever done. Fourth, trust God with your future. God has good plans for you. When I went through my divorce, I lost my sense of self. I felt insecure. I was fun and outgoing before, or. Or at least I thought I was, and then I felt lost in a crowd. I didn’t even know who knew me, and refinding myself took time, but it was something that God did in me and for me. God wants to restore you. I thought I would never laugh again, but I love to laugh. One thing Elizabeth Elliot said that I love is of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends in ashes. God’s story never ends in ashes. You may wonder if your witness is tarnished.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
I thought it might be, but it actually can be strengthened. When we see perfect families worshiping in church, we want their lives, but when we see broken families trusting the Lord, we want their God. Don’t believe the lie that divorce has ruined your life or the lives of your children, because God is in the business of redemption and restoration. So, how do we walk with friends through divorce, no one person carried me through divorce. God brought dozens of ordinary people at the right time, and they each carried small pieces of the load. So, before I jump into the details, there’s a few things I want everyone to remember. First of all, you can’t fix this. You are not your friend’s savior. She already has one, so don’t try to fix your friends or fix her problems. And remember, unasked for advice is criticism, even when it’s loving and well intentioned. Secondly, you don’t need to do everything, just choose one or two things and do them faithfully. Consistency over the long haul makes such a difference. And thirdly, it’s never too late, even if you weren’t there when it first happened, and even if you’re here saying, I feel really guilty, I have done nothing. It’s not too late. You can always reach out to go ahead, make the call whenever you think of it. And if you feel inadequate, I love this quote from Ed Welsh. He says, “If you feel quite weak and ordinary, if you feel like a mess, but have the spirit, you have the right credentials, you are one of the ordinary people God uses to help others. Now, while the whole.. well, the.. there’s a chapter at the end of which this was never the plan, in which I just dedicate to how do you walk with friends through divorce. I’m going to just give six practical things today that are all in the book, but I have different details that I’m going to talk about. The first and most important thing is show up. So, if you forget everything else I said today, remember this one thing: show up. Job had his whole world destroyed, his kids, everything he owned, all that he had, and he had three friends that came as soon as they heard, and they sat with him for seven days and seven nights, and they said nothing. Presence is the most powerful healing thing they could offer that anyone could offer. You don’t need the right words, you just need to show up. Joe Bailey, after he buried his second son, wrote this, and I think it so appropriately describes what show up looks like. I was sitting torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly. He said things I knew were true. I was unmoved, except to wish he’d go away. He finally did. Another came and sat beside me. He didn’t talk, he didn’t ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved, I was comforted. I hated to see him go. Like Bailey, presence meant so much to me. My, the week this happened, my best friend showed up in person. She checked in on me. She invited our family for meals. My kids. Kids loved having someone just being there. My pastor and his wife called every morning and every night and prayed with me for over a month. My sister flew down, the one who might be signing your books, and when my husband moved out, and she helped me regroup, and she always picked up the phone, and I will never forget how helpful all of these people were. So, practically, for you, it might be just save her a seat at church, stay and talk afterwards. Divorce can make you feel like an outcast, especially at church, like everyone’s staring at you. Invite her for a meal. Simple is super fine, like just getting takeout is fine, but she may have eaten cereal every day this week, and just having company in a meal would mean a lot. Go to hard events, family gatherings, kids games, piano recitals. There’s extra bonus for that.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
Anything that she would face alone, and if you’re far away, consistent calls, regular texts, remember dates: the date the divorce was file and final, or custody hearings, her birthday, Mother’s Day, holidays, those are really lonely, and maybe offer like maybe we can have coffee every other week or a walk on Thursdays, but regular is just such an amazing gift, and as I said before, I longed for a regular time with someone who would just take an hour every other week to process with me, and I had that in mind when I wrote the book, and I thought it would be really nice to have a friend read the book with somebody going through divorce and go through each chapter and say, hey, let’s just meet and talk about one chapter at a time, and I have seven questions for each chapter that are really meant for the person to be able to just process with somebody, what are they dealing with? Because processing with a friend is an incredible gift. The second thing is, after show up, is listen like a friend, not a fixer. Job’s friend’s first instinct to go was incredible, but their quote unquote help was catastrophic. The minute they started talking, they gave reasons for what was happening, but they had no idea. They offered unsolicited advice to Job on how to fix it, and he said, “Listen closely to what I’m saying, that’s the one consolation you can give me. Friends want to help, but sometimes they do take definitive stands and tell you what to do. I remember one friend told me I should never file for divorce, that divorce was wrong no matter what, and I shouldn’t file. I had another friend who said, ‘You need to file. You’re being a doormat. You’re wrecking your kids. Their life is so confusing, like you’re hurting them, so you’re doing something wrong by not filing. And then there was the friend earlier who told me I needed my kids under control, but didn’t offer help, and what I needed, I didn’t need more opinions, I needed someone to say, I’m so sorry, I’m here, and I want to support you, I want to pray with you, and let’s seek God’s wisdom together. So be curious and compassionate, don’t try to be corrective and efficient. Couple of things, don’t say at least. At least is the most minimizing thing you can say, like at least you have kids, or at least he didn’t beat you, or at least whatever. I mean, there’s a million at least, and they all feel horrible when you’re on the other side, there’s also, have you tried? Have you tried counseling? Have you tried reading this book? Have you tried this, like, and it’s not that you can’t ever offer a suggestion, but when they are thrown out without any thought, they are very painful. Just like scripture, when it’s just thrown out there, it’s painful. You need to bring it prayerfully. So, what do you ask? Well, you can ask, what’s on your plate that’s feeling heavy? Is there anything you’re dreading or hoping for? Or you can ask, how has today been for you? Or you can say, what do you need right now to be heard, practical help to laugh, or just to break. Don’t try to cheer people up unless they ask. Proverbs 2520 says, whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda. Well, that’s either a miserable experience or it’s going to cause an explosion. So, the most loving thing we can do is acknowledge what’s hard and stay with someone in it. Thirdly, offer specific help. Let me know if you need anything is not an offer. No one ever responds, because they don’t know what to say to that. I was homeschooling when my husband first left, and there were two women in my home school group that stepped in, and they weren’t close friends, but I knew them, and I realized proximity really does matter.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
If you see somebody regularly, often they’re more likely to be able to step in, and they both had my kids for dinner and kept them when I was away, and they still talk about that today, because they felt accepted in those families, and one of my elders emailed me and regularly set aside Saturday mornings to just come and do whatever I needed, like change light bulbs, not very handy, obviously, just things that needed to be done, and it was a real help not to have to just call and say, ‘Hey, can you help me? He checked in with me. Practical help sounds like, ‘Can I bring dinner on Tuesday. Do you have any food allergies? Or I have two free hours on Monday. Can I run errands for you? Can I watch your kids? Would you like company, or can I have my house cleaners come over and clean your house? Or I’m great at budgets. Do you need help with that from a distance, things like DoorDash gift cards or Uber Eats, or if you can’t cook, those are actually really good suggestions too. Gift cards for groceries are really great in pooling resources with other friends for bigger needs, and you know when you go through divorce, finances are a big issue a lot of times, but it’s a really embarrassing thing to ask, but if you’re willing to say, ‘Hey, I’m willing to help, or we can, we can help pool resources for things that you need, counseling, whatever it is, like that’s a great offer for people, and I have in the appendix of the book, and I think it’s on the QR code on the handout. I have questionnaires at the end of the book that you can download, and those are really important. One, there’s three: one is for churches, one is for the person who’s going through divorce that they can fill out and give to their friends and say, I’m not expecting you to do any of this, but if you want to know what really helps me, and it has all kinds of different categories, because when you go through divorce, you don’t even know what you need, but then if somebody says, ‘Hey, would you want a call or would you want help with rides from school, like if there’s specific things that’s really helpful, and then there’s a questionnaire for friends who can say what they can do, and they can say, “Hey, I love to cook, I love to clean, I love to do whatever it is, and so the person knows what they can call for. So I’m really praying that those questionnaires can just make giving help possible, giving help, more possible. Fourthly, love her children because they’re suffering too well. Faithful friends don’t just love their divorced friend, they love her children as people who are struggling. Children are caring a lot more than you know, they’re bewildered, they feel shame, they’re feeling a lot of fallout. Then my friends meant well, but they saw my daughter’s behavior and the effect on me, and as I mentioned, it was so hard for me, but they often would take my daughters aside and say, your mom is trying to hold everything together, and your mom has so much on her plate. Can you make her life easier? Because all you’re doing is making it harder. And I appreciated their intentions, but my daughters said they didn’t feel like people, they felt like problems. No one felt, no one asked, How are you doing? What do you need, and that really was hard for them. They felt like the church was there for me, but not for them, except for one friend. She was in her late 20s, and I had been mentoring her, and she offered to mentor my older daughter, and she just would pick her up and take her to coffee, and she wasn’t there to give her life lessons, she had no agenda, but she just wanted to say, “You’re worth it, I want to hear what’s going on in your world. So, practically, it’s just doing something like that, showing up to events, speaking directly to them, knowing their names, inviting them for. Dinner, it’s an invaluable gift, both to your friend and her child. Being intentional with a friend’s children communicates care that neither will ever forget. Fifth is pray with her and for her.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
Prayer is not what you do when you run out of options, it’s the most powerful thing we can offer. Yet, often when we’re talking to somebody, we’ll say, I’ll pray for you, but we’ve forgotten what we said we were going to pray for before we even get into the car. But I remember so many little times when people were praying for me. One friend texted me one day, saying praying, praying, praying on my face every day. I still remember that text, and it was 15 years ago, but it meant the world to me. I remember soon after my husband left, a group of friends came over, and they sat in my living room, and they prayed with me, and they lamented with me, because lament sits in this beautiful space where you don’t need to tie everything with a bow. You can say, I’m sitting with you in this pain, and this stinks, and this is hard, and that’s what the psalmist did. Like, this is horrible, but then you can trust God together, and the balance is really important, because we want to offer people both the sense that they’re heard and we get it, and a sense that we both need to trust God. Well, practically that means pray with her when you’re with her and not later, if you hear difficult news, pray before you even respond. Text a photo if you’re praying for her in the morning and you’re reading your Bible, just text a photo of the scripture. And sometimes it’s just hard to even open the Bible, and seeing the words in somebody else’s Bible can be so encouraging. Set a two minute timer to pray for three minutes. That may sound like that’s nothing, you pray for three minutes, you’re it’ll be amazing. All you can pray for, you can really pray in three minutes for your friend. Pray through a psalm of lament. Prayer changes the world, and it changes hearts, and if you really believe that, pray like you do. Sixth, help them envision the future. It’s easy to feel hopeless when your marriage falls apart, if you didn’t see it coming, or if you were escaping an abusive marriage, regardless, the future looks black, and you need help rebuilding. Well, my sister Shalini flew down after my husband moved out, and I remember we went to Panera Bread and drank mediocre coffee and talked about what I needed going forward, like what was life going to look like, and she said, What do you think is going to be the hardest? What do you want to stay the same, and what do you want to change, and what has brought you joy? And then when we got home, we walked into this huge walk-in closet I had shared with my husband, and a lot of his clothes were still there. She went to the attic, got boxes, boxed them up, took them back to the attic, but the room looked worse. There were empty hangers, cobwebbed poles, and I was on the edge of tears. And she said, “Oh no, we’re not done yet, and she got found a card table, found my Bible, and pens, and my journal, and she hung a bulletin board from the, like, the closet rod, and she plugged in a lamp, and that became the place I met with God, and honestly, that was the most sacred space in my entire house. The place that I felt like was the most painful became the place I met God, and my sister really helped me rebuild, but she needed to give me vision because I had none. But it was amazing, because she said she didn’t have a master plan, she just was listening to the Holy Spirit as we were doing things like what should I do next, and she let God guide her. So, you don’t need that, you don’t need a master plan. Rebuilding is a long-term project, and it happens after the initial grief and shock sets in. The Israelites needed rebuilding to rebuild the temple and the temple wall. When the exiles came back, and it was slow work, it was brick by brick, and that’s what this is – it’s brick by. Brick, so this means stay involved, lay down a few bricks, ask the spirit how to, how you can help, keep calling, keep asking, keep showing up.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner
So, in conclusion, I’m not talking to you as an expert, I don’t know what to say often, I say really insensitive things, and I avoid what I should be leaning into, but I do know this: if you’re an ordinary person with the spirit, you have exactly the right credentials to help. You don’t need eloquence, you don’t need answers, you just need to ask God for wisdom, wisdom, and you need to show up to listen to stay to the people going through divorce, or who have gone through divorce, God sees you, He has not tethered his glory to your marital status. He can build something beautiful on the rubble that you did not choose. Your life is not second fast. It may be different, but it is no less worthy of beauty and joy in the hands of a faithful God, and to friends, you can’t repair her marriage, you can’t erase her pain, but you can refuse to let her walk through this alone. You don’t need to do everything, but you can ask God what you can do. God is the one who meets our needs, God often cares for friends through ordinary people who are willing to pray and show up. You can be one of those people. Let me just pray, Lord Jesus, we don’t know what to do. We feel weak and inadequate. Maybe our lives have been upended, but Lord, we trust you. We know that you bring beauty from ashes. Lord, show us the next step, whatever you are calling us to do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.