Marriage Moats-Leverage

Published: Sun, 08/21/11

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

When I was little I loved to sit with my father and brother as they watched 007, and Mission Impossible. I could not quite follow the ricocheting plot, but I knew they could.

Forty years later I enjoy a show called Leverage with my family. If someone is inconveniently out of state, we do a fancy Skype arrangement using three computers and a twenty minute set up so we can watch it in sync. We make a big batch of popcorn and try to predict how the characters will solve this one. They always do.

The episode last night had a man steal a crucial computer chip, and hide it in his double sealed vault with a lock that only opens by the breath with the correct DNA. His little girl was kidnapped as ransom for the chip, and held captive at a carnival.

The team got a balloon containing the correct breath in it, and used a safe cracking little robot, while distracting him from all this with a fake dispute outside his house.

Meanwhile Elliott, the man with mega muscles, found the little girl and fought with the kidnapper for her in the house of mirrors. But the multiple images were confusing, and he started losing. He was badly hurt and disoriented. Elliott closed his eyes and went deep within, able to strike out using not sight, but sound. He walloped the thug and the little girl was saved.

We love watching this show because the good guys, who by the way are reformed bad guys, use their different and interdependent skills to solve incredible obstacles. They risk their lives for people in trouble.

We are not alone in our taste for television crime busters. There are loads of them, from Get Smart in the 60's to Star Trek: Next Generation in the 90's. People eat it up.

But I have yet to see a show where the characters shrug and admit defeat. In fact the steeper the odds the better we like it.

I wish more viewers could cast themselves as those heroes. When we have overwhelming problems in our marriages, we may be tempted to throw up our hands. It is just too complicated.

Elliott risked his life for a little girl he had only known for a day. He knew she belonged with her father. What would happen if we could go deep within, and ignore those distorted messages like "We can never change." "There is too much damage done." "This marriage is not good enough."

Can we try with everything we have for someone we have known for half a lifetime?

God will fight hard for people in trouble. He always does.

Photo by Andy Sullivan

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