More Than 30 Years Ago, my first wife peremptorily left me, taking our two sons, aged four and five, across the United States with her. A note just inside the door informed me she was filing for divorce. I had no money to visit the boys, and I wasn't allowed to talk to them on the telephone. Ahead lay unpleasant divorce proceedings—and for me the prospect of long-term impoverishment. Worse, an alarm bell went off in my mind that said, "You are slipping into deep melancholia."

As I have always done in tough situations, I sought help from a Christian Science practitioner. I made an appointment to visit him. After listening to me for a few minutes, he asked, "Have you ever read the Bible?" I told him I read the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly every day. He then stipulated that as a condition to his praying for me, I was to read the entire Bible over the coming year from cover to cover, as well as Science and Health. I agreed, sensing that only through a radical change in my thinking was I likely to get to see my sons again.

The practitioner said I should begin my reading with the book of Job. For someone going through a divorce and the loss of family, he said, few texts could be more appropriate. As I read and studied, Job became like a personal friend. At first, I was primarily looking for access to my children again, and to try to secure human justice. But my friend Job redirected my thoughts back to God: "Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice" (37:23).

It took time and patience for me to grow into the realization of that concept of "plenty of justice," but over many months I came to discover justice as an attribute of God. God is never absent, I realized, and neither God nor His child ever fails.

Often in divorces, couples lose friends. But I gained some terrific new friends. My assignment to read the Bible introduced me to people such as Moses, Joseph, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Joel, who stood by me. Their example encouraged me to try an approach similar to theirs and to seek similar spiritual remedies. Soon, I had a close, one-to-one relationship with God. Those guys in the Bible talked to God, and so could I. He was with them through their trials, and He must be with me. Each of those new friends offered excellent counsel throughout. However, I drew some of the wisest counsel from Jesus' words to the Sadducees, who represented the ruling hierarchy, "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures" (Matt. 22:29).

I recall one time when I was peppered by more than a few people with patently untrue accusations about my behavior as a father and husband. In a panic, I telephoned the Christian Science practitioner again. He sent me back to the Bible, and urged me to look at the experiences of my friend Nehemiah. "The next time those accusations are made," the practitioner said, "quote Nehemiah chapter 6, verse 8." It reads, "There are no such things done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart."

I did. And that was the beginning of the end of that barrage of untruths. More important, however, Nehemiah became a mother lode of sound legal and spiritual counsel. Like the old Hebrew prophet himself—who had directed efforts to rebuild the gates and walls of Jerusalem, which were in disrepair—I came to see the divorce process as a time to repair my relationship to God and rebuild my life.

However, I still was not confident that I could ever recover from the severe emotional and financial blows. At this point, I was introduced to Joel, the Hebrew prophet who spoke of God's promise, "Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things." Also, "I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm" (Joel 2:21, 25).

I remember smiling at the time and saying to myself, "This is going to be a neat trick." Still, I was determined I was not going to be like Abraham's wife, Sarah, and mock or laugh at God's promise of a future pregnant with good (see Gen. 18:12). God, I knew, always keeps His promises.

For me, there wasn't a magic moment—no reading of a single Bible passage that resolved all my problems. But there were many uplifting verses that helped lift me out of the dark hole of despair and despondency. These feelings had been precipitated, among other things, by a divorce court judge who made it clear he really didn't want to even hear my side of the dispute and strongly discouraged me from testifying on my own behalf.

Every time I called the practitioner for help, however, he would send me back to the Bible and Science and Health, and he would say to me, "God loves those sons of yours more than you ever could, and He is taking care of them far better than you could." My spiritual growth and progress were commensurate with my study of those books. I was especially assured by this comment, "The Bible contains the recipe for all healing" (Science and Health, p. 406). I spent many hours poring over that recipe book.

By becoming friends with many spiritual thinkers, I came to see that divorce is never about the "other person." It is always about you and your own spiritual growth. It is never about someone's failings—yours or anyone else's. Rather, it is about discovering the good about yourself as God's man or woman and uncovering the infinite good that is already there.

Within two months after the divorce decree, my ex-wife told me she was remarrying, and asked if I would like to have the boys over the Christmas holidays. Not long after that, she initiated what amounted to a voluntary shared-custody arrangement, without my ever going back to court. My professional and personal life began to improve as well, and I was offered new, more lucrative employment.

The year following the divorce, I got married to someone with whom I had developed a good friendship, and who has become a true life-partner. Since then, my relationship with my sons has improved out of all recognition. It's as if there had never been a breach at all. My friend Joel wasn't kidding when he talked about restoring the lost years.

Now, many years later, I laugh when I think of my friend Moses' assurances that God would lead me, as he led the children of Israel, "by day in a pillar of a cloud" and "by night in a pillar of fire" (Ex. 13:21). He got that right! And when our approach to life agrees with God and our friends in the Bible, we tend to get that right, too.