There is one idea that, in more than twelve years of walking alongside marriages, I have seen bring about more transformation than almost any other: the dry bones. Your marriage may be, right now, completely dead. And I want you to know something before you keep reading: Lazarus was dead too. They were already mourning him when Jesus arrived and told him, "Lazarus, come forth."
Faith isn't magic, it's sustained obedience
My faith is not believing in magic. My faith is believing that what God asks of me is good, it is right — and that as I keep doing what is right, today, tomorrow, in two years, in five, in ten, it is because God is fixing, little by little, everything that was wrong: a little with my young son, a little with my wife, a little with me. He keeps putting everything in its place.
If pain is one way of drawing near to God, then reading the Bible is the only right way to know Him, to learn how He wants us to do things.
Don't play God
One of the most common traps in the middle of a crisis is putting our own hands in and ruining God's work. Eve decided to help her husband her own way, listened to the wrong offer, and dramatically changed the history of humanity. Sarah believed God, but thought the fulfillment would be hard, and decided to "give Him a hand" — and from that came consequences we still read about today. Doing God's will often means killing our own pride first.
The dry bones are probably us
The prophet Ezekiel came upon a valley full of dry bones — old, dead, almost turned to dust. That is how wounded some marriages are: one of the two decides to leave, and usually, the one who stays has made as many mistakes as the one who left. The one who leaves is often not making an evil decision — they are taking a desperate measure, like someone who stops swimming and only wants to reach the shore.
Here is what has been hardest for me to accept, and what brings the most freedom once it is finally understood: the dry bones are usually not our spouse. They are us — with our passive attitude of sadness, of pain, sometimes even of death. The one who was unfaithful is often out there happy with life. The one who stays behind, hammering on the pain day after day, is the one who looks most like that valley of dry bones.
Read the Bible in the first person
When you read the Bible, don't read it in the second or third person. Don't read "the adulterer," "the unfaithful one," "them." Read it in the first person: I the sinner, I the idolater, I the fool. That is where God really begins to deal with us. We become understanding, we become patient — and then, yes, the changes begin to work.
"Praise the LORD, O my soul"
David had more than enough reasons to complain to God: his father-in-law wanted to kill him, had taken his wife from him, and he was still young. But David never said to God, "give me back what's mine" — he said, "Praise the LORD, O my soul." This is one of the things I have seen most often in people going through a marriage crisis: the first reaction is usually to fall into a total disregard for life — to stop eating, sleeping, getting out of bed — forgetting that God still deserves all our worship, even in the middle of the pain.
The promise that held up my own marriage
When I first read the Bible, it felt like it was written in Chinese. But pain makes you pay attention — the same way, out of sheer necessity, you learn to decipher a doctor's handwriting. I found a promise, made it mine, and I still have it stuck on my closet door, on the refrigerator door, and on the door of the cabinet where I keep my tools:
Caleb saw the same giants that frightened the other ten spies, and still said, "This is the land God has given us — the giants are going to run my errands." That promise is what lifted me out of my own depression, and I keep working with it, day by day, trusting that the Lord knows what He has planned for me.
Restoration doesn't always mean your spouse comes back
I have to be honest with you: your spouse may not come back. But if you are obedient, the time will come when you live according to what God gives you — joyful, at peace — and your children will see that you were faithful to that covenant. And what they see, they inherit.
Moses fought alongside his whole people, walked the desert, carried the pressure of leading without seeing things move forward the way he hoped — and he only got to see the promised land from a distance. Something similar may happen to us. But something will happen in the generations that come after us. None of this is written with guarantees that things will turn out the way we would like; what I can tell you with certainty is that many things will go well for you that would never have gone well if you never decide to obey the Lord — and very often, as a result, that is exactly where marriage restoration comes too. I have seen it happen many times.
A story from my own family
Some time ago I looked back over my own life, and I went to ask my mom how everything had been. My grandmother was there, listening, and when she understood what my questions were about, she said to me: "Son, I'm to blame for all of it." My grandfather lived with schizophrenia, something almost no one knew how to treat back then, and my grandmother ended up fleeing from him out of fear — a real fear — of what that undiagnosed, untreated condition could mean for her daughters. In her flight, she made mistakes several times looking for love. She carried that guilt her whole life, convinced she had brought a curse on the family.
I told her, "Grandma, we don't condemn you." A few days later my mom died; a couple of years after that, my grandmother. But I believe they both left in peace — because there was sincere forgiveness from the whole family, gathered together. I share this because the patterns of one generation pass on to the next unless someone interrupts them with genuine repentance. And healing passes on too, when someone decides to break the cycle.
The example of Hosea
If Hosea had not been, above all, a worshiper of God in spirit and in truth, he could never have gone to love his adulterous wife. Jealousy and resentment would have eaten away at his heart. But God Himself told him, "go and love your wife" — and Hosea went, and with his own money redeemed the one who had betrayed him. That is exactly what Jesus does with each one of us.
To the men: worship God with your whole being, work, provide for your family, respect the space your wife needs even if she is living in sin today — and never, under any circumstances, use her sin as a license for your own. Exactly the same applies to the women.
An army rises up
When breath enters the bones, "an exceeding great army" stands up — hundreds of human beings, alive and breathing. God never told Ezekiel "these bones are alive" — it would have been obvious that they weren't. What He did ask was that he prophesy, act, obey. Whatever situation seems hopeless to you today, the last word does not belong to your spouse, or to your pain, or to the time that has gone by. It belongs to God. And before your spouse, there is the Almighty — the One who truly empowers you.
If you feel that today is your day to prophesy over your own dry bones, and you need support for that process, I would gladly walk that stretch of the road with you.