Behind Closed Doors - Christianity Today

(In the following true account, names and some identifying details have been changed.)

Pastor Dale Youngstrom stepped onto the throw rug inside the front door of his house. He unbuttoned his shirt, kicked off his shoes, and loosened his belt to let his pants down. A pile of clean clothes had been painstakingly stacked on the rug. Before taking another step into the house, he picked up the clean clothes, slipped them on, and tossed his office clothes into a waiting laundry basket.

As Dale moved into the kitchen, sunlight danced through the window onto the wet countertop Rhonda was washing. Her Swedish- blond hair bobbed as she turned.

“How was your day, Honey?” Dale asked, looking into her blue eyes. That’s a switch, he thought. She looks happy.

Hard was the only word Dale could think of to describe the last five years of marriage. Rhonda had become a “washer”; she was paranoid about contamination and germs. She demanded that Dale and their two children, Jessica and Sammy, change into clean clothes at the front door whenever they came home.

It was affecting his ministry, too. When a church member spontaneously dropped by, Rhonda would watch where the visitor had stepped and then use a cloth to scrub the carpets and the chairs the visitor had touched. She refused to join Dale on pastoral visits or preaching trips. If Dale invited guests for Sunday dinner, she would complain for days before the meal and days afterward.

Will she ever be free of this? Dale clung to every shred of hope that she was improving. But was she?

THE COURTSHIP

In Rhonda’s senior year in high school, she had fallen from her bike and hit her head on a rock, leaving her in a coma. Doctors determined she’d had a seizure. But had it caused the accident? Or had her head injury caused the seizure? They couldn’t be sure.

When Rhonda finally came to, three days later, she didn’t recognize her family. She couldn’t remember her boyfriend or her childhood. She insisted her name was Lori, at first. And her brain waves were irregular.

By the time Dale met her, Rhonda’s personality had definitely changed; she was more withdrawn. She was a shy, pretty, socially competent young college student when Dale fell in love with her. He was already pastoring a rural church nearby.

Seeing the relationship getting serious, Rhonda’s parents talked frankly to him about the accident.

“When she came home from the hospital,” her father explained, “she began taking long showers. She would wash her hands three or four times every hour. Her mother and I also feel she became more vulnerable emotionally,” he continued, “so we wanted to ask you–to tell you–that you shouldn’t lead her on if you are not serious about her.”

Then her father leaned his face close to Dale’s. “We think a fellow who dated her soon after the accident took advantage of her,” he said. “We don’t want that to happen again. Do you understand?”

Dale nodded and in his lowest tenor voice said, “I am serious about Rhonda. I promise to take good care of her.”

They soon married, and within three years Jessica and Sammy were born. Dale enjoyed being a family man and found it a boon to his ministry. Sometimes he and Rhonda would make pastoral calls together. He carried baby Jessica with them in a picnic basket Rhonda had lined with blankets. When Dale traveled to other churches to speak, Rhonda would go with him.

Many nights in the haven of their bedroom, they laughed and cried about the ups and downs of ministry. They laughed about the time Mrs. Johnson fell over backward while sitting on the piano bench. She was okay, but Dale could hardly preach afterward because he was trying not to laugh. They cried about the member who left the church after feeling his ideas for evangelism had been ignored.

Those first years of marriage were mostly what Dale hoped they would be.

THE “HIPPIE COWBOY”

Still, from their wedding day, Dale found certain facets of their relationship inexplicable. Their honeymoon night Rhonda reluctantly made love; she complained her breasts hurt. Now that we can finally have sex, Dale thought, why does she resist?

He remembered the signals she had sent him during their courtship. “I can’t wait until we can be together,” she had said. Dale took that to include sex. Now he wasn’t so sure.

That first year, their love life did not improve much. Occasionally Dale would bring it up with Rhonda, and in one of those conversations, she told him about the “hippie cowboy” incident.

“He lived about three miles out of town,” she said, “and we dated for about a month the summer I graduated from high school. My mind was still not always working right, but I do remember waking up in the back of a station wagon with him. We were under a blanket … “

Dale gulped. “And?”

“That’s all I can remember. Honest. I didn’t tell you before because it was so foggy. I don’t remember anything at all about how we got there or what happened.”

Dale assumed the worst. He tried not to think about it too much, though it helped to explain why their sex life was so difficult.

Following the birth of Jessica, Rhonda grew increasingly moody. By the time she was pregnant with Sammy, Dale expected to come home from the church to find Rhonda rankled about something.

One night, as they sat in the living room watching TV, she muttered, “You always leave your books on the coffee table.”

“You’ve been awfully grouchy lately,” Dale retorted. “If you don’t like something I’m doing, you could at least ask me to stop it instead of grumbling about it.”

Rhonda threw a sharp glance at Dale and then scuffed into the kitchen. Cupboard doors banged. Dale could hear her stomping up the stairs. Then the bathroom door slammed.

In bed that night, just as Dale dropped off to sleep, he heard Rhonda’s voice. It was almost a hiss: “He could at least pick them up so I don’t have to. It ruins my whole day.”

This isn’t normal, Dale thought in the dark. Yesterday she made Jessica change clothes at the front door when they came home from church.

DEJA VU

That summer Dale was asked to become copastor of Bethany Evangelical Church in Dayton, Ohio. At the same time, denomination headquarters asked Dale to teach for three months at a family summer camp in the Appalachian foothills.

The second week of camp, Dale happened to glance out the door of their cabin just as Rhonda fell hard to the ground. Her body began to jerk violently.

“Call an ambulance!” Dale yelled to a nearby camper. He ran out the door, knelt down, and lifted Rhonda’s convulsing body into his arms. Slowly her spasms stopped, and her eyes refocused.

When she could talk, Rhonda insisted she was not married. “I have a daughter named Jessica,” she acknowledged, but she was incredulous to hear she had a baby boy named Sammy. “I only have one child.”

Dale’s heart sank–she was acting like she had after her bike accident in high school.

Rhonda was rushed to a hospital. The doctors said she had experienced a grand mal epileptic seizure. Following the doctors’ suggestion, the Youngstroms flew to Rhonda’s hometown. There the doctor who had treated her after her bicycle accident ran a battery of tests. But the cause of her seizures remained a mystery.

The doctor recommended Rhonda stay in the area a few more weeks for observation. Dale returned for the remaining ten weeks of camp classes.

At the end of the summer, Dale flew to Minneapolis to reunite with Rhonda and the children. At the airport, he scooped Jessica and Sammy into his arms. Then he turned to Rhonda.

“It’s been too long, Honey,” he said, putting his lips toward hers. Abruptly, Rhonda shifted her face and offered him only her cheek.

“Let’s just go, Dale,” she monotoned.

Dale was stunned and hoped her parents, standing there, hadn’t noticed.

When they reached the van, Rhonda maneuvered past the others to crawl into the back seat. “Sit in front,” she told Dale.

Everyone grew quiet. Dale felt the blood rise to his cheeks. He wasn’t sure if he was angry or embarrassed or both.

In the bedroom that night, Dale pulled Rhonda close as she came out of the master bathroom and nuzzled her ear. Maybe it was the public setting of the airport, he thought. “Honey, I missed you so much. Did you miss me?”

Rhonda stayed rigid. Dale let his hands drop from her side. Rhonda circled the room to the other side of the bed. Dale’s stomach knotted. He turned off the lights and crawled into his side of the bed. The sheets felt hot.

A PASTOR’S PASTOR

Dale’s copastor at Bethany, Bob Johnston, was a slight man. Dale liked the fact that Bob was upbeat, but he had the habit of praying prayers that were announcements: “God, bless the meeting on Thursday evening at 7:30 in the fellowship hall.” Dale tried not to dwell on the idiosyncrasies; Bob was his copastor. Dale had given a lot of thought to their personality differences. In the end, he decided their common philosophy of ministry would make them an effective team.

One day, Dale was surprised to find himself telling Bob about his marriage. At first, Dale shared bits and fragments, searching Bob’s face to see if he had been too frank. Eventually, Dale bared his soul.

“For the last six months,” Dale said, “Rhonda has been suggesting I should divorce her. Now she’s insisting on it. It’s like a stab to the heart to hear her say those words.” Dale dropped his head into his hands.

Bob scooted his chair next to Dale’s and put his arm around him. To Dale it felt like the arm of God.

Since her second seizure, Rhonda had started washing her hands again–sometimes 200 times a day. She made the children cover the toilet seat with toilet paper before sitting on it. She fussed when Dale used the vacuum cleaner to sweep the car; she scrubbed the vacuum when he brought it back in from the garage.

But these odd actions were always carried out in the privacy of their home. At church, Rhonda offered a quiet smile and an understanding nod; people never suspected she hated every minute they were talking to her. After a completely one-sided conversation, a lady talking to Rhonda would often say: “I like talking with you. You’re such a good listener.”

Increasingly, Rhonda lived with long spells of self-loathing. Dale noticed that she bristled if Jessica happened to step in her way when she was vacuuming. “Are you deaf?” she screeched over the drone of the vacuum. “Didn’t you hear me tell you to stay out of the room when I’m cleaning?”

“You’re being totally irrational,” Dale finally yelled at her one evening in the kitchen. “Can’t you see that changing clothes at the front door isn’t going to make the house any cleaner? It’s all in your head!”

Without a word, Rhonda picked up a cup and threw it at him. The cup narrowly missed his head and nicked the cupboard door behind him. Rhonda stomped up the stairs to the bedroom, leaving Jessica and Sammy sobbing. A few hours later when Dale came to bed, he heard Rhonda’s sobs.

“I’m bad for the children,” she said. “I’m not what a pastor’s wife should be. You’d all be better off without me.” Dale didn’t know what to say. Nothing seemed to bring her out of it.

CIRCUIT OVERLOAD

A few months later, Rhonda finally agreed to see a psychiatrist. Dale had tried to get her to go for the last three years, but Rhonda had resisted. Now two incidents had shaken her.

First, she had slapped Jessica in the face for talking back to her and, a few days later, shoved her across the room for blocking her path as she was vacuuming the living room.

Second, Dale had made a startling suggestion. “Maybe I should resign,” he had ventured one night. “It’s putting too much stress on you, and I don’t want anything to happen to us.” From the start, Rhonda had not liked Bob; his personality traits that Dale found annoying, Rhonda found repulsive. She also resented the church visitors who would stop by their home, and the meetings and church services that forced her to mingle.

But resigning from the church wasn’t necessarily an answer to Rhonda. That would mean moving, and nothing seemed worse than the thought of leaving her house and her bedroom–the holy place and the holy of holies. She had poured years into cleaning this house, into building dikes against the lapping sea of contamination that fought to seep in through its front door. Moving would mean starting all over. She would rather that Dale keep his job, even if it were pastoring.

So she went to the psychiatrist. For Dale, the biggest relief was finally hearing a clinical analysis of Rhonda’s condition.

“She has obsessive compulsive disorder,” the psychiatrist explained. “It may be that Rhonda’s neurological system is malfunctioning. Her brain may be failing to tell the nerve endings that it received their message, so they keep sending and resending their messages until Rhonda’s circuit overloads. She may be living in a world of sensory over-stimulation.”

The description made sense. When he had asked Rhonda why she didn’t enjoy making love, she talked about how it didn’t feel intimate or private. It felt to her like the bedroom lights were flashing and bells were clanging.

It explained why she hated crowds. The multiple voices bombarded her ears like a shelf of falling tin cans. Her hyper-sensitivity amplified things most people never noticed, whether minute amounts of dirt in the house or Bob’s superficial mannerisms. “It’s like her antennae are too finely tuned,” the psychiatrist told Dale.

Her psychiatrist recommended Rhonda learn behavior techniques to control her compulsions and begin taking Anafranil.

Two days after Rhonda was put on Anafranil, Dale returned home from the church office to find Rhonda happy. “It was so quiet around here today,” she said. “The noise in my head–it’s gone!”

The drug–it’s working! Dale thought. That night, he kept thinking about her words: “The noise in my head–it’s gone!” Even in the stillness of our house she was bombarded by noise! He silently thanked God that he hadn’t listened to her when she asked for a divorce. He hoped he hadn’t yelled at her or argued with her too much.

ROTTEN CORE

The behavior therapy and Anafranil gave Rhonda an oasis from herself. But when the drug wore off or for some reason didn’t take hold, Rhonda would sink into depression or anxiety and resume talk of divorce and even suicide. She also began to focus her anger against Dale’s copastor.

“Do you notice how nice Bob treats his wife in public,” she once said, “but then cuts her down when only we’re around? I think he’s as big a phony as his smile. And I don’t think he really respects your position as copastor, either. He’s always putting his fingers into your responsibilities.”

For Dale, the timing was bad. He was having problems working with Bob. More and more Bob would try to shape programs for which Dale was responsible.

Bob had pushed for switching one of two worship services from traditional music to contemporary choruses. Dale was responsible for floating the idea by several committees. When they were unanimously negative, Bob tried to gain the support of other committees.

“Dale and I don’t agree on this issue,” Bob said. He disregarded the promise he and Dale had made to work out differences in private. Dale confronted him, but Bob dismissed the situation with, “I’m a pastor here, too, you know.”

In the end, the contemporary worship service didn’t pass the committees, but the affair left a sour taste in Dale’s mouth, and it gave Rhonda fodder for months. “I knew from the start Bob couldn’t be trusted,” she said. “He doesn’t respect you. Can’t you see that? He never really has.”

Dale began to think she was right. That fall Bob preached for Dale while he vacationed with his family. Bob preached a sermon subtitled: “Or here’s a message for those of you who say you haven’t heard anything about doctrine in the last five years.” The barb stung.

During budget review, with money tight for the coming year, Bob quipped: “They’re going to start looking at the budget pretty hard. The big numbers on that budget are salary items. Yours and mine are the highest. And you’re more marketable than I am.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dale replied. Bob just laughed and changed the subject.

Dale decided he could no longer tell Rhonda of his tension with Bob. She only fed his already critical attitude. It was ironic that he often found himself defending Bob to Rhonda.

When Bob began seeing a counselor for anxiety attacks, Dale felt hopeful. Maybe it will help Bob become more honest with himself, he thought. But the main result was that at staff meetings Bob would let his pent-up anger boil over. Budget problems. Attendance slumps. Staffing problems. Scheduling snafus. All seemed to have come from ill-advised decisions others had made–and usually the finger ended up pointing in Dale’s direction.

Dale knew the time had come to look for another job.

STRENGTH FOR THE ROAD

Six months later Dale pulled his minivan off the highway into a rest stop to use the pay phone. He and his family still had two hours on the road before they arrived at First Church in Des Moines, Iowa. They were candidating that weekend, but Dale felt guilty; he figured Rhonda would never say yes. He needed to be honest with the search committee. On an impulse, he decided to call the committee chairman.

“Richard, this is Dale Youngstrom,” Dale said. “We are about 100 miles from Des Moines. I am calling because of how we are really feeling about the possibility of coming to First Church. Even though Rhonda felt all right about it when we started the trip, now she feels strongly that we should move back to Minnesota where her parents are. As I told you and the search committee, because of Rhonda’s condition I can’t accept another pastoral position unless God prepares her heart for it. I didn’t want to take up your time with the visit this weekend knowing I can’t accept the position. That’s why I called.”

“But we still need someone to fill the pulpit this weekend,” Richard replied. “Would you be willing to follow through on the visit if we tell the congregation that you will not be available for the position? We would enjoy having you even if it is just for this weekend.”

“Hold on a moment,” Dale replied. He ran to the minivan and told Rhonda the situation. She agreed to the arrangement.

“See you in two hours,” Dale told Richard.

Dale was grateful for Rhonda’s flexibility. She had been surprising him a lot lately. She was now on Prozac, which the doctors thought might be more effective than Anafranil. She still cleaned the house like it was an operating room, but there was more contentment in her eyes, not the frantic look of someone bailing water out of a sinking boat.

She told Jessica one morning, “I promised your daddy that if we move to a new house, I won’t make you change clothes anymore when you walk into the house.”

Another day Dale overheard Jessica tell Rhonda, “Do you remember when you were always angry with me? I’m so glad you’re like you are now. I love you so much.”

After preaching at First, Dale regretted that they wouldn’t be coming to the church. He sensed that the position and the dreams of the congregation would fit his gifts. That evening over a light dinner, Richard told Dale and Rhonda that the search committee had been bombarded with requests to ask them to reconsider. Dale’s heart said yes, but he politely refused. Tomorrow morning they would be going home.

That night in bed, Rhonda snuggled close to Dale, then abruptly pulled back and sat up. “Dale?”

The inflection in her voice let Dale know she had something serious on her mind.

“God’s been speaking to me this weekend,” she began slowly. “You’re called to be a pastor. I’ve always known that. And if you feel God is calling you here and if the people want us to come, I know God can help me be strong for it.”

Long after Rhonda had fallen asleep that night, Dale lay awake thinking. It seemed too good to be true. The red digital alarm clock read 2:32. Dale rolled over and closed his eyes. Tomorrow wouldn’t be as long a drive as he’d thought.

Epilogue: Rhonda is experimenting with a new drug and continues to improve. She is gradually learning to override her obsessions. Some days, she even enjoys being a pastor’s wife. She recently said, “In one year here, I’ve made more friends and feel more a part of the church than in all the years at the previous church.” Dale feels he has finally found his niche.

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Kevin Dale Miller is assistant editor of Christian Reader and Your Church magazines.

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