She wasn’t so much giving up on her husband as giving up on herself. She was giving up trying to be the person who changes another person. It was going to take more than her to reform the man she loved.
She’s cooking breakfast when he stumbles through the back door of their humble Arkansas home. Eyes bloodshot. Shirt unevenly buttoned, as if done in darkness, and in haste.
She doesn’t turn around. No need to. More times than she cares to remember, my great-grandmother has seen my great-grandfather looking like something the cat drug in.
He was a nocturnal animal, Albert was. Under the canopy of darkness he could transition from various bottles to various beds like an old pro. Never mind that he had a loving wife weeping for him at home. Never mind that the wild oats he sowed were the seeds of a dawning destruction.
He did what he did, and if that disqualified him from winning husband or father of the year, there was always another beer, or another blonde, to make up for it.
“Well,” he growled at Nancy, “go ahead.”
“Go ahead what?” she said, her back still turned.
“Go ahead and start your yelling and scolding and Bible-thumpin like you do every morning. ‘Where ya been? Who ya been with? What ya been drinking?’ Go on. I’m a waiting. Let’s get it over with.”
But Nancy only spooned some eggs and bacon onto a plate, poured a glass of milk, and smoothed her apron. She turned and walked slowly toward the table, her husband a few feet away, eyeing her suspiciously.
“Ain’t you gonna say nothing?” he asked as she eased by him.
She stopped and turned around to face the man to whom she was wed. She did love him. She’d been faithful to him. She had worn out her knees in prayer for his soul. She had yelled and pleaded and begged him to change, year after year, to no avail. Locking eyes with her husband that morning, Nancy calmly and clearly said, “I won’t be yelling at you to change anymore. I’ve tried. Lord knows I’ve tried."
"Albert, I’ve handed your soul over to the devil.”
THE CRUSADES TO CHANGE PEOPLE
Chances are you’ve tried, at some point in your life, to be a reformer. Who was it? A spouse, child, friend, colleague, fellow church member? You made it your crusade to de-alcoholize them, or de-drug, or de-affair.
Their pet evil had become a lifestyle. But you were going to change them. You’d point out the error of their ways, prophesy the looming doom that would befall them, and shepherd them toward the straight and narrow.
She wasn’t so much giving up on her husband as giving up on herself.
Maybe it worked. Praise God if it did. But maybe it didn’t, at least not when and how you wanted it to.
So you increased the volume. You went from begging to yelling, from praying to threatening. You issued ultimatums. You pulled out the big guns. You enlisted the help of friends.
But short-lived improvements notwithstanding, nothing really changed.
That is where my great-grandmother found herself. An intensely religious woman, she knew that her husband was on a path that would end only in everlasting misery. She’d done and said all she could. She had tried to be a reformer, to make Albert change, but, stubborn as a mule, and seemingly intent on self-destruction, he had dug in his heels.
So she said what she needed to say. We may agree or disagree with her; I certainly wouldn’t hold it up as the example for what women should say in troubled marriages. But, in her own way, Nancy was simply acknowledging what was true.
Her husband had already handed himself over to the devil. He had plunged headlong into the darkness. She wasn’t so much giving up on her husband as giving up on herself. She was giving up trying to be the person who changes another person. It was going to take more than her to reform the man she loved.
THE REFORMATION OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION
My great-grandfather died, many years later, a Christian man. After that fateful morning at the breakfast table, something seemed to stir within him. Over time, he abandoned the booze, he quit the women, he helped tuck his children in at night, then crawled into bed with his beloved wife.
People are not reformed by making them better, but by making them dead and alive in Jesus.
No doubt he still struggled against his demons—don’t we all?—but, by the grace of God, he was rescued from the devil’s clutches and passed from this life into the kingdom of the blessed.
By the grace of God. By the gracious action of God in Jesus Christ. My great-grandfather did not change himself, nor did his wife. Jesus did.
Jesus didn't frighten this sinner into a moral life, but plunged himself into living death of Albert’s sad existence. On his own timetable, and in his own way, Jesus brought him into communion with his own crucifixion death, and raised him to newness of life in his own Easter resurrection.
People are not reformed by making them better, but by making them dead and alive in Jesus.
Dead in Christ, dead on his cross, dead in his baptism. For only when they are dead are they candidates for life. And they have life in the one who raises the dead, who himself was raised from the dead.
He entered the hellish prison in which Albert was trapped, overcame the demonic jailers, and pried open the bars to bring his child into the freedom of forgiveness and the light of life.
Then he whom Nancy had handed over to the devil, Christ handed back to her.
My new book, Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul, will be available October, 2017. You can read more about it and pre-order your copy at Amazon. Thank you!
