As an Assistant Principal, my husband Paul was half-cop, brave enough to help break up rough fights. He was the one in our marriage who was always calm in emergencies. Except for one night when little Paulie came running into our bedroom, yelling "THERE'S THIS HUUUGE BUG ON MARY BETH'S WALL!!" My husband was unexpectedly slow rolling out of bed. So I shot to Mary Beth's bedroom and saw our little girl backing away from her bedroom wall and the indeed huge, multi-legged bug scuttling across it. I flew to the kitchen, grabbed a broom, and returned to see my green-faced husband standing by his daughter, only too happy to watch me flatten the bug.
Unfortunately I also used that broom on another occasion to swing at a wasp in the house. I swung too hard - oddly with the broom handle - and broke our front bay window. Paul calmly enfolded my sobbing self into arms of unconditional love. Well, after a few groans and a teasing chuckle or two.
Paul almost passed out on the bathroom floor one day in November, 1971. I'd lost my Dad that September; my fourth child had been born in October. I dragged my husband out of the bathroom, seeing his bloody stool in the toilet, and wiped blood off his body. Later that day, the Doctor examined him and sent him to the hospital which was across the street from the Doctor's office.
Paul drove us across the street to the hospital. I was too emotionally and physically shaky to drive, even though my husband was the one who'd been dragged off the bathroom floor earlier that day. It turned out that he had a bleeding ulcer, and thank God he didn't need a transfusion. He never complained about my weakness and his having to drive.
Only a few months later, the baby needed stitches on his forehead from an unexpected fall. It also was the morning of my husband's father's funeral. This time, Paul was so upset and shaky that I was the one to drive us parents and our baby to the Emergency Room for the little one's stitches.
During family crises when both husband and wife are affected, strength and weakness can shift from day to day, hour to hour. Nerves are brittle; tempers flare easily. Acceptance of ourselves and the one we love are so necessary. The family crisis will pass eventually. The couple's relationship, its ability to be a real Team, needs to endure through a crisis and unexpected shifting roles and come out even stronger on the other side.
In 2012, our son died in April and in October my husband found a friend dead from suicide. Meanwhile, my Mother was in a nursing home with dementia. Both of us were depressed, emotional wrecks with little emotional energy. Day to day, hour to hour, responsibilities shifted from one of us to the other, depending on which one of us had the physical and emotional strength to cope. Our nerves would snap and we'd lose our tempers with each other. Forgiveness and understanding and acceptance of the other were a daily necessity.
Even in normal life situations, when both husband and wife are feeling physically or emotionally weak and at the end of their ropes, it's a toss-up as to who will have to be strong on a particular day. If both husband and wife have had a grueling day at work and both come home exhausted, a disagreement can escalate into a full-blown argument. Who is going to cook supper? Who will help a son or daughter with homework? Who will do a load of laundry? Run the kids to soccer or karate practice? Walk the dog?
Someone who's exhausted has to bend and do the job. And it can't be the same exhausted person who bends all the time. Or that person will eventually break - permanently. Practicing taking turns about doing small things makes you ready for the bigger crises that will eventually come.
When we marry, we make vows to stay with each other "for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, till death do us part." Knowing how much we love each other, we each expect to be the one who is cared for when we're hurting. But sometimes in life, God gives us the vision to see and accept that, much as we may be hurting, our partner is hurting more deeply than we are - and we have to be the caregiver.
Sometimes because of a crisis, the pain between two spouses can be so deep that your spouse "feels like" the enemy, the one you can never understand or forgive. Yet, if you pray for guidance, for the Holy Spirit's gifts of wisdom, understanding, endurance, courage, love, peace, and forgiveness, you receive the strength and courage to look into the other's soul and realize why you have to be the one to reach out first.
Home is the place where the greatest joys exist and the greatest trials exist. Where the most courageous inner and spiritual battles for peace and unity, understanding and compromise, are fought. Where Marital Love is thrown into a desert of pain like an unwatered cactus, and needs the rain of the Mercy of God to finally bloom most beautifully. Home is where we learn the full meaning of Team Work, of both being Instruments of God's Peace for one another:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
Oh Divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.
Amen.