About a year ago, Proverbs 31 Ministries head Lysa TerKeurst announced that due to her husband Art’s infidelity and lack of repentance, she had no other option to but to seek a divorce. Her shocking announcement went viral, but was mostly met with love, prayers, and support from her followers. I wrote an article about Lysa’s announcement and what we could all learn from her marital troubles, and that too quickly went viral. All of the Christian blog-o-sphere was a-talkin’ about it; if this tragedy could happen to Lysa TerKeurst, surely it could happen to any of us.
So, imagine my surprise when I learned two days ago that Lysa TerKeurst and Art TerKeurst were back together, and were moving forward with their marriage.
Lysa had made an announcement on her Facebook page on Father’s Day, three whole weeks ago, and I had missed it. “How could I have missed that?” I asked myself. Perhaps it’s because Facebook isn’t actually showing us things from pages we follow anymore, perhaps it’s just a fluke, or perhaps…it didn’t go viral, and the Christian blogosphere ain’t a-talkin’ about it…because it wasn’t bad news. Perhaps we’re only interested in the personal lives of the Christians we look up to when they’re not going well. Tragedy is so much more enthralling, after all, than the status quo.
Terkeurst’s Facebook post contains a photo of Lysa and Art and several of their children, and says:
A gift. A hard prayed for and fought for, glorious, messy, miraculous, honest, treasured gift of together. Happy Father’s Day Art! The way you have pursued the Lord, healing, and us… is evidence of God’s supernatural grace and goodness.
I’m praying for everyone praying for a miracle today. God has a plan but it will probably unfold in a way you never thought it would.
To which I internally responded as soon as I read it, “Praise the Lord!” I really could not believe it. O me of little faith, I had, after Lysa’s viral announcement last summer, just put the TerKeurst marriage in the “that’s so sad but at least we can learn from it” box and nowhere near the “God’s not done redeeming this hot mess yet” box. Shame on me, and praise God that Lysa TerKeurst didn’t place her marriage in the “it’s over” box just yet. Praise God that He brought two broken souls back together in pursuit of Him first, and Them second. Hal. le. LU. jah!
But my confusion still remained as to how I could have missed this huge news from Lysa TerKeurst.
Not only had I missed the Facebook announcement, but none of my community had mentioned it to me or asked if I’d seen it. How did we ALL miss it? I decided to investigate a bit.
Taking a closer look at Lysa’s Facebook announcement about her marriage being on the mend, I can see that it was shared 355 times. Now, that would be a lot of shares from MY personal Facebook page, but from Lysa’s, which has over 1 million followers, that is a pretty paltry number of shares. No wonder I didn’t hear about it. I decided to see how many times her blog post from 2017 announcing the demise of her marriage had been shared, but found that it has since been deleted (interesting), so I could not check. Instead, I checked how many times the article I myself wrote about the demise of her marriage had been shared, and…it was shared over 122,000 times. That’s over 50% of the fans on this website’s Facebook page had at the time, so that is a HUGE number. Are you getting that? A huge number of shares on the bad news, and barely any shares on the good news? It makes me sad.
Romans 12:15 is a verse familiar to most people, even those who aren’t regular Bible readers: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
The fact that the news of the TerKeurst’s reconciliation did not spread like wildfire says to me that as a Christian community, we’re not as good at the rejoicing part of this command. And that certainly needs to change.
“I’m praying for everyone praying for a miracle today,” TerKeurst said. “God has a plan but it will probably unfold in a way you never thought it would.”
Lysa, I am guilty of not even considering that God would move your marriage story back to reconciliation. I certainly knew He was powerful enough to break your husband’s heart and turn it back around, but I also certainly didn’t think it would happen. But oh, how I rejoice with you that He DID! If there is anything positive about my unbelief, it’s that it made my shock and awe at God’s miraculous work of restoration even sharper and more joyous. I am absolutely delighted, thrilled, and full of hope for your family.
Christians, I hope if you haven’t already shared the TerKeurst’s joyous good news of God’s miracle in their marriage, that you will now. Let’s let His light shine bright with this one and give Him all the glory! When we are bearers of this specific good news, we are undoubtedly also bearers of THE Good News of Jesus Christ.
Congratulations, TerKeurst family. My prayers are with you as you rebuild your house upon the Rock!