Dear Wife, God will perfectly father your children. You don't have to be Mom AND Dad. You are free to be Mom, and only Mom. God—our Everlasting Father—will take care of the rest.

And even if you have the very best Dad in the whole world, he is merely a shadow—an image bearer—of our perfect and everlasting Father. We are fully known and fully loved by the only perfect Father in all the universe.

If you hang around here long, you’re going to hear “it’s about beauty from ashes…” So what does that actually mean and what are we implying?

Dear Church, these abandoned women have likely heard really (really!) difficult no’s from God. And that is a hard place to walk. She is likely very weary. And probably very wary too. In all gentleness and love, remind her of the goodness of God.

Dear wife, be careful what you believe about God in the midst of your suffering.

Endure the no God gives with your eyes set on the eternal joy set before you. This no, like every other God gives, is paving the way for something BETTER.

God feeds those birds. Day in and day out.

And if He is an abundant, watchful Feeder of birds, what must He be for you, His beloved daughter?

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief…

He tears me down on every side so that I am ruined.

He uproots my hope like a tree.

I will say to God, my rock,

“Why have You forgotten me?

Why must I go about

in sorrow…?

Blessed be the Lord, for He has heard the sound of my pleading.

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped.

Has his faithful love ceased forever?

Is his promise at an end for all generations?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day?

Lent just seems like the right time to admit that everything feels a bit broken. It seems like the perfect time to remind ourselves that while, yes, everything is dark and shattered, IT WILL NOT ALWAYS BE SO.

Join us as we learn to welcome biblical lament into our lives. We pray it stirs up fresh, raw hope within you in the days to come.

Your husband let go because selfishness ruled his heart. God hangs on eternally because perfect, steadfast, abounding, giving love rules His.

Your husband may have walked away, broken your covenant, hurt you, discarded your marriage vows. That might be true. But the bigger and more real truth is that today if you are in Christ, you are loved by a God who pours out covenant-keeping love in eternal and lavish ways. You are not unloved.

"JESUS"

That's the only word that I could force out. There was no time to think about how I felt about God in that moment. I’m sure I wasn’t feeling very loved by Him as those tears ravaged my body—how could I when my life had shattered only hours before. I did not preface that cry with praise or adoration. I didn’t clean up my heart before Him first. I just cried out—like a child lost in the waves, tumbling, smashing against the sea floor—completely and utterly desperate:

What an abandoned woman needs the most—more than answers, more than practical help, more than companionship—is to be reminded that Jesus is truly strong enough and willing to hold her life together. She needs to know that He really is enough.

Dear Wife, If we really believe Jesus is holding all things together, then we can let go of all the things.

Five weeks after my husband’s unfaithfulness was exposed, I lost everything. First came my shattering, then came the great unraveling. Everything started to fall apart before my eyes.