Divorce & Remarriage

Something interesting we discussed in class deals with marriage covenants. When you make a marriage a "covenant," it means that you bring a superior power into the marriage; the husband and wife are now individually accountable to that new superior power.
This legal covenant marriage is uniquely available in the law in 3 different states: Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana. It's an option- when you get married- to bind you and your new groom/bride into this covenant marriage with you and the law. With that covenant marriage, it states that there are 3 "A's" that are acceptable to file for divorce- anything different than these 3 must be worked out and is not an adequate argument to file for divorce. Those 3 include that of adultery, abuse, and alcoholism.

Today, marriage has become the ONLY contract (legally speaking- besides these optional covenant contracts) that is not binding.

Does anything disturb you about that?
Marriage is seen now a days as something that is not a shock to end- I've heard many men and women even refer to their first marriage as their "starter marriage." How startling is that? It's seen as a commitment to lead to another later commitment. One that they're not expecting to last for their entire lives.
This raises the question that, with this mindset, why are we so shocked when we realize divorce rates are increasing every year?

There are 4 stages to divorce:
1. emotional   2. legal   3. economic   4. co-parental

Divorce, as we know, leads to many broken families. In some cases, divorce is a legitimate last-resort, or is acceptable. However, going into your marriage with the mindset that it probably won't be your only- is troubling. How can you expect to have these deep, emotional bonds with someone and then be expecting and hoping for a better, easier, later marriage? No, marriage has to be worked for- and it's hard work. It's not supposed to be an easy fix to your problems, because God didn't want us to spend our lives comfortably, easily, slowly moving along. God's plan is to make us better people in this life so we can grow to become like him. Thus, the person we marry is supposed to push us to become that better person- and we them.