"Love Their Husbands"

My Mother's Day was very sweet this year. Now that the kids are getting a little older, they are able to treat me in ways that are better even than gifts, although Jonathan gave me a beautiful card and Katie gave me a very pretty coffee cup that is now my favorite. We had my parents over for lunch, and Henry and Katie put the meal together while Jonathan set the table. I was ordered out of the kitchen and spent my time playing the piano while they all put the meal together. It was a lovely day.

And yet there was a small, gray cloud hanging over the day. Not because of anything my family did or didn't do--they were great-- but because of some news we had received earlier in the week that a family that we all know and have been friends with for years is getting a divorce. We were all shocked to hear it. They seemed to be such a solid Christian family. The husband works hard at a good job, shows great love for his two children and wife, takes care of his house and lawn, and takes his family boating and camping in the summer. The wife was able to work at home before the children were in school, and keeps her home beautifully and dotes on her children. Katie has babysat for the children. The family has taken Jonathan in, making a special, conscious effort to include him in their activities, knowing how difficult things have been for him growing up without a dad. When I had no idea where to send Jonathan to a high school where he would be able to grow in healthy ways, the wife was the answer to my prayers when she told me about a small, conservative Lutheran high school that has, in fact, worked very well for Jonathan.

And now, we hear, she has left--a husband, two beautiful children, a lovely home, and even a much-loved dog--because she hasn't loved her husband in many years, she says.

During my single years, I had several opportunities to get to know men whose wives had left them for similar reasons. I've never seen anything so sad as these men who will admit they made mistakes but were genuinely trying to be good husbands and fathers to their families, who now sit back watching the wives that they still love going out on dates with their boyfriends or remarrying, relegated to being fathers to their cherished children only on the weekends. The children in these situations feel a pain that will never go away and are hurt and angry that the family that they had once been a part of is now broken and beyond repair. I've told Katie and Jonathan more than once that it's definitely painful when a parent dies, but far worse is when a parent chooses to leave, chooses to destroy the family, chooses to forever scar his or her children because of selfish desires that will never be satisfied.

The women in these situations seem to be hoping to star in their own personal chick flick or be the main character in a Christian romance novel, hoping to find themselves, find romance, find love--find something more satisfying than loving God, their husbands, and their children. They won't find "it" because there isn't anything to find. There is no object to discover, only a task to be fulfilled.

Back to Mother's Day: Our pastor preached from Titus 2:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

It was a convicting sermon, and if there was a woman who walked out of church that day feeling like she had it altogether, she wasn't listening well. But the concept that struck me--again--is how unlike the world's notion of love biblical love is. Most think of love as a kind of passive thing, something that we fall in and out of, something that happens to us--an object we hope to find. The world also sees it as something optional--you can love your husband or not love your husband. In fact, we often hear that someone stays in a marriage for the sake of the children even though he or she doesn't really love his or her spouse.

That's not at all what Paul is saying here as he instructs the older women to train the younger women to love their husbands and children. Love here is something to be learned--something that must be learned and exercised in order to be obedient to God. As our pastor pointed out, the passage doesn't say wives should love their husbands if they are thoughtful, romantic, good looking, helpful around the house, whatever else we might think that we want in a husband. Just love him. Because we are commanded. Because you can't truly love your children--or God--if you're not loving your husband.

And so I'm sad for this man who says that he married his wife for life but is faced with the ugliness of divorce. I'm sad for these children who have known what it is to have a rich family life but who will never have it again, whose future will mean dividing holidays up between more families than there are holidays. And I'm sad for this woman who thinks that she'll find something more satisfying out there than loving her husband and children and who thinks that love will happen to her somehow, someday. Outside of chick flicks and romance novels, there are no happy endings for those who wait for love to find them. The answer to not loving anymore is to start loving again. Only in this is there a happy ending.