Bounding down the stairs from my home office, I felt productive. It was only Tuesday and I had already finished most of Sunday’s sermon, solved three minor Sunday school crises, written the week’s newspaper column, and prayed with two hospitalized church members. Some days you just feel like a successful minister, I thought.
On my way to the coffee maker in the kitchen, I could see my wife, Joy, on her knees in the living room surrounded by piles of clean-yet-unfolded laundry.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Joy blurted out.
I laughed. “Who can?” I joked, folding a towel.
She broke into tears.
I stopped laughing.
“It’s just too much.”
I matched a pair of socks. “Honey, I know. And I’ll help, okay?” Must be that time of the month, I thought.
“I don’t mean this,” she sobbed, gesturing to the ever-present laundry.
“I mean (gasp) our life. I can’t (three convulsive, inhaling gasps) live—this—way—any longer.”
Even before it came out of my mouth, I knew it was a dumb thing to say. But that’s never stopped me before. “What way?”
“Everything!”
Torn between bewilderment and anger, I needed specifics. “Every-thing?”
She took a deep breath and then let fly a script she had obviously been thinking about for a long time: “You working all the time—me left with the kids. You stomping up the stairs, angry at the latest church problem—me left wondering why you’re mad at me. You dictating the schedule—me adjusting to the schedule. “Every-thing!”
She paused, looked up from the laundry, and stared me straight in the eye: “I hate my life. Something has to change. I cannot do this any more!”
I was prepared to help with unmatched socks, but this? I felt like a tourist standing at the ocean end of a long pier, taking pictures of an incoming tidal wave. Her next words knocked me off the dock: “I don’t feel any love in our relationship any more. In fact, I don’t feel anything.”
After sixteen years of marriage, her announcement shocked me. God was indeed still on His throne, but all was not right with the world. At least not with my world.
I mentally shelved those six projects I’d planned to tackle and sat down on the floor, ready to listen.
Evidently, I had missed some major danger signals being given to me by my most important church member.
It was only Tuesday and I was suddenly feeling terribly unproductive. Some days you just feel like a total failure as a husband.
Language of the two-by-four
Without saying a word, I simply looked at her, opening the door for her to speak.
Recently I had preached, “When a dominant personality whacks you up the side of the head with his communication style, sometimes the only language that will get his attention is a four-foot piece of pine. Sometimes you have to learn to speak two-by-four.”
Apparently Joy had been listening to that particular sermon.
“Our friendship is broken,” she sobbed. “I have been avoiding conflict. For years. I’ve been going along to get along—for years—but I’m done with that. I’m speaking up now. I have been dishonest with you through my silence.
“I’ve got nothing left. No energy to cope. Not with the church. Not with you. Not with this.” And she held up an unfolded shirt.
As a pastor who had counseled others—I am ashamed to admit this—I had operated on the premise that counseling was for “other people.” You know, wimps and people with a lack of faith. If I ever got in a bind, all I had to do was simply practice what I preached. Pride goeth before a minister’s marriage crisis. Suddenly my illusion shattered.
In my wife’s contorted face, I saw mirror images of my pride and arrogance. And they were ugly.
After more miserable minutes of hearing how my actions had slowly drained away her joyful personality, I spoke (typical of my desire to fix broken situations quickly).
“I have to leave the ministry,” I said quietly. I was dead serious. I was willing to do anything to save our marriage. I simply could not imagine life without my wife and kids.
“No,” Joy protested. “Your leaving the ministry would become one more thing I caused.”
(Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut for five minutes?)
The lesser of two fears
The pain of counseling was less frightening than the pain of separation. So we planned to get counseling, aided by Joy’s sister who jumped in to help. On the phone Joy talked for over an hour with her younger sister Gaye, who lives two hours away from us.
“Sis,” Gaye said, “I’ve been watching you fall apart now for two years. You’ve been slowly losing yourself. If you crack up, who’s going to fix the rest of us?”
Joy, the middle of seven children, was always the “family fixer.” Gaye called back an hour later. “I’ve made a counseling appointment for you, Joy.” She said, “Chris and I are paying for it, so there’s no excuse. Be there!”
I would not have felt comfortable counseling with anyone in our small town, since nothing travels faster than the speed of gossip. But because Gaye and her husband had lined up a counselor fifty miles away, I relaxed a bit.
Joy came home with red eyes after her first solo session. I wasn’t supposed to join her until after her first two meetings. “Chris and Gaye just spent $60 for me to sit and blubber,” she said. She had built up an ocean of tears in our sixteen years together. The tide had finally begun to go out.
When it came my turn to join her, we drove the fifty miles in silence. I was thinking about how good it was that we were getting help so far from home. She was thinking about what she had to say to me when we got there.
Once in the counselor’s office, I sat silently, feeling like a punching bag in the corner of a gym. Joy calmly painted a clear picture of the many aspects of our relationship I had wrecked over the years. Because of the third party in the room, I behaved myself and took one blow after another.
When the pain of my wife’s miserable life in our ministry made its way to my gut, I crumbled. I wasn’t just perceived as a jerk by my wife. I was a genuine jerk.
Finally, after the hour’s drive back home, my feelings broke. I sobbed. Joy appeared more curious than moved over my weeping.
Why hang on?
We discussed our options. Would we leave the ministry? What would we tell the kids—and the church?
Joy and I had made a commitment when we were first married that we would never use the “D” word. Not even in teasing. During the first week of our crisis, we reminded each other of that promise. “Whatever it takes, we will work this out,” we said to each other. “We will not entertain divorce as an option.”
We said to the kids, then ages three, six, and eight, “As you can obviously see, we are having some problems. We are mad at each other, but we still love each other. We are working on not being as mad. You kids have done nothing to cause this, and we both still love you. And we’ll always love you.”
Their bedtime prayers included Mom and Dad. Those three kids would have been reason enough to stick it out, no matter how painful the process. Looking into their faces was like Peter, going under for the third time, yet looking into the face of Christ.
And Joy and I agreed we would not leave the ministry. Not yet, anyway.
We would tell our congregation’s inner circle only that we were working through some challenges and ask them to pray for us. If things weren’t better in a month, we would ask for a three-month leave of absence for serious reconciliation work.
Those who knew were very supportive. We received notes from church friends that said things like, “We know you are facing a difficult situation, though we don’t know details and don’t need to. Just wanted you to know that we are praying for you. God is big enough.”
The hardest part for me was getting up to preach every week. I felt like a hypocrite. How am I supposed to tell people how to live their lives when mine is falling apart?
In the middle of our mess, I picked up an aging issue of Leadership and read, “You can preach higher than yourself by preaching the truth from God’s Word. The Word is always right, even if you’re not all right. Preach higher than yourself, as long as you don’t try to act higher than you really are.”
Those words kept me going. And some in the congregation said later that those were some of the most powerful sermons I had preached.
To this day I cannot understand how or why God demonstrated His strength so powerfully through my utter weakness.
Getting to know me
Meanwhile, back at Relationship 101, we discovered how we each had contributed to our problem.
Joy had learned to lie to me because she feared my anger. To avoid confrontation, she had practiced the temporary-but-dangerous behavior of withdrawal. She began working on ways to speak truth to me, even when what she said might upset me.
And I had to learn not to blow my stack. I knew I had caused our problems.
Self-evaluation, recognition of sin, and true repentance is torture. Maybe that’s why we refer to it as “dying to self.” But as painful as it is, I was committed to hearing what I was doing wrong, so I could change.
For years I had perfected the fine art of problem solving, to the exclusion of empathetic listening. When Joy tried to share her feelings, I mentally made a list, then spat out my seven-point plan to solve her problems. In counseling, she informed me that all she wanted was someone to listen and validate her feelings. Often, after venting, she would solve her own problems.
We made a deal. When I was tempted to “fix” her, she had my permission to say, “When I want your solutions, I’ll ask for them.”
Our counselor urged us to take walks together, every day if possible. At first our conversations were wooden. It had been years since I had made small talk. Everything came out stupid: “It’s nice we’re having weather.”
After three months of banal banter, I made a statement so silly that Joy giggled. I said, “Gee, look over there. It’s a squirrel.” I truly didn’t know what else to say so I just started talking about “stuff.” It was so inane that we both laughed. It had been months since I had seen that radiant smile on my wife’s face. I said, without thinking, “You are beautiful when you smile.”
She countered, “And I’m not when I don’t?”
I thought she had misread my comment and that I was about to catch another arrow. Instead, she broke into a grin and said, “Gotcha!”
At that moment I knew we were going to make it.
Turning aircraft carriers
I wish I could say our healing took place in three easy sessions and that we have lived happily ever after. The truth is, it took eight weeks of counseling and another six months of painful work before we were “back” as a couple.
I recall hearing someone say “You don’t turn an aircraft carrier around on a dime.” That is certainly true of relationships.
At first Joy wasn’t sure I was serious. She had lived with my ingrained hostility for so long, she admitted her skepticism and questioned my motives for quite a while—Is he only acting this way to get what he wants?
But when she saw, over time, that I was making progress, she began to let down her guard. I made several important changes.
I honored Joy with my calendar as well as my words. I began making appointments to speak with people during office hours, instead of taking calls at all hours of the evening. I delegated someone to take my place on a committee, to open up a night of the week for family time. And I began turning off the computer when Joy turned in for the night, instead of working an hour or two later.
One question always asked by couples we speak with (and always by the men) is: “How did your crisis affect your sex life?”
“Hoo boy,” I respond. “There was no sex life! Not when our crisis first broke loose.”
Joy had felt that even the physical part of our relationship was just another failed expectation. Because of the way I acted when I didn’t get what I wanted, she felt like a failure at sex, too. When our friendship broke down, the whistles and bells stopped working.
Joy needed some space of her own. She told me, “I need you to respect my need to say no sometimes.” When I started honoring her in that way (and believe me, this was the hardest thing in the world for me), she began to feel more loved and less used.
When the friendship began growing back into our relationship, we began having fun together emotionally. We were learning to tease, to laugh, to act playfully with one another.
When we began enjoying our emotional intimacy again, the bells started ringing again.
Dreaming together again
The nature of our conversations began to change. Before our crisis, every time Joy started dreaming out loud, I shut her off.
“Let’s not speculate about what we can’t afford,” I’d say. I had confused her dreams with her expectations. Her dreams of a newer car, a larger house, or a new outfit became my nightmares about my failure to provide.
Because of my angry responses to her innocent wishes, I had robbed her of the ability to dream. Without a vision, the people perish. And without dreams and something to look forward to, ministry wives lose hope.
Joy now says, in marriage conferences and to women’s groups, “When we allowed ourselves to dream out loud, that’s when I felt like we were starting to snap out of it. We were learning to share a common dream for the future. Instead of my always adjusting my life to help my husband achieve his dreams, we were dreaming together.”
Our first corporate dream involved a family vacation to Colorado. We traveled there the warm summer after our frigid winter and made some magical memories.
When “happily ever after” begins
Through the crisis and the months of personal work that followed, our church members demanded few details. We didn’t have to tell them much because they saw the gradual improvement in our relationship.
It was just over a year later that I felt free to provide more information about what had taken place. With Joy’s permission, I preached a message on marriage close to Valentine’s Day and shared some of our story. Those who knew us well wept as they smiled at us during that sermon.
Since our marriage renewal, God has allowed us to help other couples survive similar crises.
We have a large percentage of divorced people in our church. They tell us that they feel safe because they know we have suffered, too, and we don’t pretend to be perfect. We also have couples who have been spared the pain of divorce. Our own struggles and restoration have positively affected our whole church.
A year or so after the crisis, Joy and I were asked to lead a marriage and family life conference in another church.
At the end, we invited couples to renew their vows. Awestruck, we watched couples line up at the altar, holding hands, looking each other in the eyes, some holding each other. Joy and I sat in the front pew and cried.
Joy, who had the last word at the conference, shared with the women: “I discovered something through our crisis about who Cinderella really is. ‘Happily ever after’ really happens when Cinderella is over thirty, has put on a few extra pounds, has a couple of bags under her eyes, and has weathered a few storms. It’s only when she has learned to suffer well and wisely that ‘happily ever after’ begins.
“But,” she said, “when it happens with the man you originally married, it’s great, because you don’t have all the complications associated with getting to know another imperfect person. It’s definitely worth the effort to rebuild a brand new marriage with the man you already have.”
I silently thanked the Lord for making a bad ministry marriage go good.
Clark and Joy Cothern recently celebrated their 23rd wedding anniversary. They also celebrated their 9th anniversary with the church family that helped them through their marriage crisis.
Clark Cothern pastors Trinity Baptist Church in Adrian, Michigan. revwrite@aol.com
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