Marriage Moats-Flames

Published: Wed, 12/28/11

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

(If you want to hear Lori read this story click)here

A friend was telling me about the most gnarly period in her parenting. Her son was doing destructive things to avoid the pain inside. They sat in the office of a counselor, grasping for answers. Miraculously she found the words, through prayer, to toss him a lifeline. He held on.

The other day she was with that grown son, and her granddaughter while she bemoaned the tragic conditions of her life. Her son spoke with compassion, and experience about how these feelings, while overwhelming, do slide away. The sun does come up again on the other side of midnight.

It is possible that if there had been a red eject button available at the time, my friend would have sprung from her chair to push it with both hands and a foot for good measure. Seeing her precious offspring in pain was excruciating. But perhaps now she holds it as the path to get to where they are now. It is hard to bake bread without an oven, or forge silver without intense flames.

Sometimes marriage is warm and snug, like the couch by a wood stove. But other times are more like the temperature inside the stove, where logs are being transformed into ashes, with a subplot of keeping a family from freezing.

We occasionally fall for the convincing appearance that our trials are the main event. Our response is secondary, to the Problem at Hand. If only the difficulty would conveniently go away, we could get back to our previously scheduled lives. But what if the illness, or the broken dream, or the travesty is not as important as we think? What if it is actually a wormhole beckoning us to grow in ways that would never occur to us if life proceeded as planned?

I am not very old, but when I look back over my shoulder, the fires that threatened to consume me have cooled. In their place I smell the savory sweetness of love, that feeds my marriage in ways that squishy dough never could.

I would have grabbed for the eject button back when we were at CHOP with a developmental pediatrician whose diagnosis changed the axis of our world. I would have reached for it when our son was in trouble with the police. I certainly scanned the walls for it when my manic mother was flooded out of her apartment and we were faced with inviting her to live with us.

But I would have missed the miracles that emerged from the flames.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and the rivers they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned and you won't be scorched by the flames."

Isaiah 43

Photo by Andy Sullivan

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