Short Stories
As Elsbeth closed the browser window that had allowed her to delete a week’s worth of junk email, she felt the vibration of a familiar engine. She turned toward the window of the office and saw Maddie’s car turning into their drive.
By the time she reached the front door, Maddie and Constance were all ready on the porch and Constance was reaching for the doorbell for at least the third time. Elsbeth enjoyed watching her face brighten each time she heard the bell and then made a big fuss over who had been making all the noise.
“Was that you?” she asked as she took the child from Maddie’s arms.
As child and grandmother bonded for a few moments, Maddie let the fully stocked diaper bag slip off her shoulder and double-checked the contents.
“I’m sure we have whatever you may have forgotten,” Elsbeth said. “I don’t want you two taking any worries with you on holiday. We are more than able to take care of a little girl. I like to think we’ve had a lot of practice in that regard.”
Maddie took note of the photos of her younger self in various stages of growth sitting on the mantle and silently agreed that Constance was in supremely capable hands. The comfort of that thought gave her leave to think about the long weekend she and Kyle had planned. They would spend an evening and the following morning at the Tudor-style manor at a local state park where they had honeymooned six years earlier. The idea of reliving memories warmed her spirit, but the events that had led to their need to relive them still troubled her.
“Do you mind if I ask what prompted this little excursion of yours? I mean, this is not the customary time of the year for you two to be spending time away from your jobs.”
“Kyle has an in-service day this coming Monday and he is far enough ahead on grading and lesson plans to allow for a little bit of selfish time together. And my work with City of Refuge is very flexible on the hours. But I think recent events at church are what gave us the excuse. I’m sure the circumstances with Dana and Elliot Aldersley figured into our decision to spend some time alone.”
Three weeks earlier Dana and Elliot had come to the pastor with a request for prayer concerning a situation they were facing. From the manner in which they had carried themselves, Pastor Douglas knew that this was no run of the mill “unspoken concern”. Dana had been on the verge of tears throughout the discussion and Elliot, who was normally upbeat even in tense moments, was somber as a tomb.
After much discussion and probing examination on the part of the pastor (the physician who uses a salve to treat an infection that needs to be excised has done the patient no favors), there were two acknowledgements of marital infidelity. Two Sundays later, a painful public admission was made to the congregation. It was at this point in the healing process that an uncomfortable truth was learned. When you break trust with a spouse, you break trust with everyone the two of you hold in common. The degree of hurt felt by the other members of the church surprised everyone, and the comfort of the Aldersley’s intention to reconcile did little to sooth that injury.
“You are reacting with fear, but I don’t think this is an unhealthy sort of fright. I noticed that couples who heard the confession walked just a little closer than usual as they made the way to their cars after the service,” Elsbeth said as she dropped two cubes of sugar into Maddie’s tea.
“Then I’m sure they were thinking thoughts similar to ours. Could this happen to us? I mean, no one sets out in marriage to betray their spouse, and when it happens to a couple like Dana and Elliot, you have to wonder how secure your own marriage really is.”
“That’s true, we never really know how strong a relationship is until difficult circumstances test it. If it holds up, then thank God for the grace he gave to help you weather the storm. If not, don’t be afraid to go to work and begin again. But the thing that impressed me most about the whole thing is how the pastor assigned blame, regardless of where it fell.”
As Maddie reached for one of her mom’s famous lemon cookies and broke off a corner for Constance, she relived that portion of the service. “I must admit that I never expected to be one of the people sharing the blame, but I can’t disagree with brother Stuart’s conclusions.”
The pastor had closed the service by stressing the fact of the name of the church and expounding on it: “We call ourselves the Lehigh Community of Believers. When we truly live in community, we don’t, in fact we can’t, have the level of privacy that most of us have- a level of privacy that I, before today, used to demand. We, as a body, bear much of the responsibility for this situation. Dana, Elliot, we ask you to forgive us for not being in a position to see that there were unaddressed problems in your lives that you were handling alone. You should have been able to turn to your church family for help and we failed to make ourselves available.”
“And he was so right about the privacy issue,” Elsbeth said with certainty. “Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, are a very private people. In fact we seem to think extreme privacy is a God given right.”
“Yes, and that thought paved the way for a woman’s legal right to terminate a pregnancy. Somehow a child became a private matter, as though that child was not a part of the community at large,” Maddie said, thinking of the mass of future contributing members of society that gathered at the park with their mothers on a daily basis.
“But the thing is, this level of privacy makes it easy to hide things - from minor marital problems to abuse of a spouse or child. Let's face it, if your neighbor was beating his wife or abusing his daughter, would you have a clue?”
“You’re right, we probably wouldn’t. I even doubt there would be any way to tell if someone in the household was being horribly neglected, so insulated is our mindset. Most of us are so deeply private that no one, not even the folks at church, would see problems in our marriage or family unless and until those problems caused a major disaster. Case in point, Dana and Elliot.”
“What we fail to see is that privacy can hurt us. The Bible talks about accountability, but how can we be accountable if no one knows what is going on in our lives? How can we be accountable if we can hide so easily?”
“So what do you do? Or what have you and Dad done?”
“I don’t believe we’ve ever consciously sought out people to be there to give guidance when needed but not wanted, yet there have always been people in our lives that were willing to do so. As difficult and uncomfortable as it may seem, one of the best things you can do for your marriage is to be close enough to another person or couple so they will have the kind of access to your lives that would allow them to see potential problems. And hopefully they will be brave enough to point these problems out before the situation becomes a prelude to tragedy.”
“The thought of opening our life up to anyone other than family is frightening, though. But I suppose if it safeguards that life it’s worth the effort.”
Elsbeth smiled at Maddie’s words. “I’m really not too concerned about you two. I spoke of ‘your lives’ while you referred to ‘our life’. You think in terms of one life lived together instead of two lives lived separately in the same house. That is quite healthy and reminds me of the way Kyle always referred to ‘us’ being pregnant rather than you being with child. Go and reassure each other of your love. Constance, Grandpa and I will have a great time together.”
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