I
required and provided ten hours of pre-marriage counseling for each couple
before I agreed to do their wedding. (I also required that they write their own
wedding service with careful attention to their vows. But that is material for
another blog.) On occasion, I would find myself in the uncomfortable position
of having to officiate at the marriage for the child of a powerful member of my
congregation even though after only one or two sessions I realized that this
marriage was going to end with a divorce. (Most of these 'required' marriages
lasted no more than a year or two.)
Rick
and Stephanie are a prime example of this. He was the son of the most generous
benefactor of the church I was serving at the time; she was the daughter of the
church treasurer. I should have refused to officiate but I let the pragmatic
concern that I continue to provide food, clothing, and shelter for my wife and
children override my integrity. (This was before I resigned from the ministry
to begin my career as a college professor.)
The conflict
that finally tore the fabric of their marriage in twain was over whose responsibility
it was to take out the garbage—Rick's mother did so in his family; it was Stephanie's
father's responsibility to do that in hers. Within six months of their wedding,
their back porch was piled high with bags of moldering trash, as was their kitchen.
I could smell the fruit of their mutual stubbornness as soon as I drove into
their driveway.
On
the night that ended their marriage, Rick came home intoxicated after an evening
of drinking with his buddies—not an unusual occurrence that always prompted an
argument—and ordered his wife to take all the garbage in the kitchen and on the
porch out to the road to be picked up the following morning. She refused. He, a
very much larger person than she, menaced her with physical harm if she did not
immediately obey his command. She took a large kitchen knife in hand and came
at him. He quickly disarmed her and threw her through the screen door (unopened
of course) onto the piles of moldering trash on the porch. She quickly
recovered, jumped into his much prized, low slung, powerful sports car and
drove home to her parents—across several acres of knee-high corn and two
ditches; she never made it across a third. His car was totaled. As in most
destructive relationships, the tipping point was not the real issue but only a
focus for the true dis-ease infecting the relationship. (This occurrence was
one of the reasons I later created the Expectations, Abilities, and Attributes
exercise. See yesterday's blog.)
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