Hidden grief is some of the hardest grief. My friend, Vaneetha Risner, shares about the isolating grief of divorce and finding hope after betrayal.
I’ve grieved many losses in my life, some passing sadness and others life-altering grief. I buried my infant son after a doctor’s mistake and thought my world would end when his tiny casket was lowered into the ground. I’ve grieved the loss of my health and independence when I was diagnosed with post‑polio syndrome, knowing it would mean a slow and painful journey toward quadriplegia.
But the grief surrounding my divorce was different. It was lonelier, private, and intensely personal.
After eighteen years of marriage to a grad school classmate, my husband told me he was in love with someone else. A month later, he moved out of state, leaving me to parent our two daughters, who were in fifth and eighth grade. Our world collapsed, each of us grieving in different ways. Sometimes our pain overlapped; other times it collided, intensifying everything.
When I first learned of my husband’s betrayal, I crawled into bed and stayed there for a solid week—something I had never done before or since. I ate little and cried until my sheets were wet with tears. I read my Bible, though the words often floated past me. I didn’t know how to process what had happened, let alone put it into words.
Grieving in Isolation
For months, I hesitated to tell anyone what was happening. My husband kept wavering, saying he wanted to return, then changing his mind. I didn’t know what to tell people because I didn’t know what the future would hold.
I wanted to reconcile, to return to the life we had, and I kept holding onto that hope.
When I realized he had mentally and emotionally moved on, I opened up about our situation. My words were sometimes met with kindness but other times with raised eyebrows and questions. I couldn’t share the full story because I wanted to honor God as well as protect my children. They still had a relationship with their father that I wanted them to maintain. So I shared the details with a few trusted friends while I overheard allegations I couldn’t defend against. The grief of a tarnished reputation became another layer of pain—one I bore alone.
At home, I avoided discussing my heartbreak in detail with my daughters. They had their own grief to sort through, with a father who visited occasionally but had chosen another life. Our community didn’t grieve with us either—people either didn’t know about what happened or didn’t know how to respond. There were no casseroles, no prayer chain updates, no letters of condolence. Divorce grief isn’t the kind that draws sympathy; it tends to draw whispers.
Family photos eventually came down, memories went unspoken, and the happy moments of the past felt tainted. I didn’t even know which parts of my life had been truly happy and when I was believing a lie.
Betrayal rewrites your memories.
Lamenting Before God
I grieved in private, in my tucked-away prayer closet, crying out to the Lord as the weight of it all pressed in. I was thankful he was holding my tears in a bottle for me and that God was for me (Psalm 56:8-9) when everything else felt against me. I journaled daily, asking God hard questions and writing furious reflections.
Through Scripture, I discovered that lament is holy. The Psalmists, Jeremiah, Job, and so many others showed me that grieving in the Bible is not suppressing pain but bringing it openly before the Lord. Biblical lament is not faithlessness but a candid conversation with God where nothing is off limits.
As I poured out my anger and confusion in prayer, I felt even closer to the Lord. The more specific I was about my doubts and disappointments, the more I sensed his presence. He didn’t turn away. He listened. He stayed close. He met me. Rather than pulling me away from God, my divorce became the making of my faith, because I discovered his love to be more real, more personal, and more comforting than I had ever known.
Morning by Morning
Each day I opened the Bible and prayed: “My soul clings to the dust; Revive me according to Your word.” (Psalm 119:25, NKJV). These weren’t just words I recited; I needed God to do that, and I came expectant. And without fail, God revived me. Every morning.
It required getting up earlier than my daughters, which meant going to bed earlier. At first, I resisted because I had little time for myself. By evening I was worn out. As a single mom, I carried the weight of two people’s responsibilities: homeschooling, driving, cooking, paying bills, home maintenance, and showing up at every game and recital.
But I discovered that giving in to mindless distractions left me more tired, not less. Mornings with the Lord gave me the strength to face each day’s demands.
Finding Peace in God’s Promises
One passage I returned to repeatedly was Isaiah 54. Though he was speaking to the Israelites, I felt God speaking directly to me through these words that were underlined, starred, and tear-stained in my Bible:
“Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced…
For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name…
For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God…
For the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the Lord.
Grief exposed everything fragile in me, but it also revealed what cannot be shaken. Through my separation and divorce, God became my constant. His Word taught me to lament, to wait, and to trust that sorrow is not wasted when it is laid before Him. While divorce is one of the deepest losses I’ve ever known, the reality of God’s presence was deeper still. God met me when I called out to him—and he still does, morning by morning, with mercies that have never failed.
Vaneetha Risner is the author of several books, including This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God through the Heartache of Divorce. She lives with her husband, Joel, in Raleigh, NC where she writes about Christ’s presence in suffering, shaped by her experiences of losing a son, living with a painful disability, and walking through an unwanted divorce. You can follow Vaneetha on her website or on Instagram at @vaneetharisner.
