Just like this week, once or twice a year, the liturgical wheel would spin, and land on the dreaded, “ ‘Let Not Man Put Asunder,’… Sunday” (Matthew 19:16). Any insider could’ve told you that the “till death shall you part” threshold for mom and dad’s marriage had been crossed a long time ago. It was somewhere towards the end of high school that a judge, in the role of coroner, officially pronounced that marriage dead! Any sentient being who ever lived in my house would tell you that, when mom and dad finally threw in the towel, it was a mercy to all of us—including the dogs!
Having said that, it didn’t feel like a mercy whenever the liturgical lottery landed on the “indissolubility of marriage” scriptures. Those readings always preceded some version of the same sermon, given by the same pastor—great certitudes offered in authoritative declarative sentences—despite the fact that he’d never been married a day in his life! Predictably, mom, and anybody else like mom, would sit in their pew feeling like some soiled exhibit on display. After Mass, a silence (that was not golden) would replace all the breathable oxygen in the car. At home, mom’s shame would shape shift: first sadness, then anger, back to sadness, and so on…. “I never set out to get divorced,” she’d weep. “Your dad and I believed that marriage was for life!”
I’ve heard mom and dad’s stories from the early years. Looking back with the twenty-twenty vision of a trained marital counselor, it’s not hard to identify some early yellow flags, and a few red flags too. Sounds like things didn’t start off terribly. But as the years went on, like a progressive, chronic illness, things got bad, then things got worse. Living in a dying marriage, and then staying in a dead marriage has a way of exposing the fissures and fault lines that come with being a human being. There was plenty of cold conflict and some hot conflict too. Some nights a wet drunk came home, some nights a dry drunk. Without going into too much detail, that was no way for a child of God to live, even if that child happened to be an adult!
Through a blessed alchemy of hard work and grace, the wounds from that painful past transformed. Those wounds gave way to a vocation. I became a wounded healer. Through the course of my professional life, I’ve been a stalwart advocate for preserving marriages whenever possible. I’ve also learned the skill you want to find in a good oncologist who knows how to tell the hard truths when necessary.
An Observation
In the Christian canon of scriptures, Jesus said, “I came that you might have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Hard to imagine that he would have followed that up with an exemption, “…unless you’re in a marriage that chokes the joy out of you and your kids….then you just have to stick with that misery until you croak!”
A Humble Proposal
The “until death do you part,” clause pertains not only to physical death. It includes spiritual, psychological and emotional death as well. If any of those things are happening to you, maybe it’s time to give yourself permission to…part?