SHEPHERD’S STABLE
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is
the way of death. – Proverbs 14:12
There are different kinds of deaths. No one would argue that, I don‟t suppose. There is, of course, a physical kind of death and we have dealt enough with that this year. Some we expect. Combat deaths we expect. We hate them, but we expect them sometimes. A lot of soldiers have had to go home to grieve the death of a mom, or a dad, or a grandparent; some of those are expected too, and some are not.
It is a point of very personal sadness for me to witness the death of a relationship. Obviously, as a chaplain – marriage counseling is a constant. I love this aspect of my work. Not in the same sense that I love fly-fishing, which is always enjoyable too – whether the results are good or not. I love working with couples because I know so well the difficulty of military marriages, for that matter marriage in general. God knows how well I know this – having come so very close to losing my own. But marriage counseling is not always a joy, at least not like fly-fishing. Sometimes it is grievous, sometimes it is heart wrenching, but always and sincerely an honor and a work that I believe is deeply important. As I have observed through the years, the natural tendency in a relationship, the natural flow of it (at least in a marriage relationship) is toward isolation and not greater oneness. That is especially true in the context of a military marriage, where soldiers are leaving home with such regularity, and for so long. Not that there are not some great things that come out of deployments too. Certainly, a lot of couples grow fonder of one another. I suppose that if "familiarity breeds contempt,‟ then the converse must be likewise true. But that does not always translate into a stronger relationship at redeployment. No, in fact, because the quality of a relationship is so often based on time spent together, on memories built, it is rare for a relationship to grow closer during a deployment. Fondness then, does not necessarily transfer to oneness – and oneness really is the goal.
Fondness is temporal; think of the early days of your marriage for instance. The first two or three months are great, and then comes the revelation that you will spend the rest of your life with this person! Honeymoons don't easily transfer into marital success any more than fondness easily becomes oneness. The briefings that soldiers and spouses receive are good and I am certainly a proponent of them, but really, only helpful if applied. The trouble some- times is, we hear so much of this stuff that it becomes background noise. I guess then, if I could urge us toward the embrace of one value or one point of intentionality with regard to reunion, one point that will move us from fondness to oneness, it would be to resist the urge to criticize. I have talked before, about how it is that wives need to know that they are unconditionally loved, chosen. For a woman, that is as fundamentally necessary as air. I have talked too about how it is that men need desperately to know that they are respected. There is this God-born need in men for respect; it is why we get angry on the highway, when someone cuts us off. It is the root cause of so much dissatisfaction in marriage with men – a sense that their wives do not really respect them.
Let me assure you that a critical spirit will communicate un-love to a wife and dis-respect to a husband, and it is an easy habit to fall into. Maybe not at first, while the newness of just being together again is ruling the day – but that will eventually wear off and there will be, for some of us, this natural inclination to become critical. I have dealt very personally with this, and I have found that much of the time my criticisms towards my wife and children have been very unnecessary – and the heaviness of my words has far exceeded the annoyance that called it forth.
There are, of course, several good ways to deal with this tendency. But I want to leave you with just this one thought – if the thing you are about to criticize will not matter a year from now, then it probably is not worth criticizing. The thing is, probably most of us are more critical than we ought to be – especially when we are not acting intentionally to quell that tendency.
I will tell you very directly that many marriages die over this very thing – criticism that communicates un-love and dis-respect. Sure, the criticisms swell into bigger issues and so, when the marriage is pronounced dead – the cause, they say, was infidelity, or abuse, or ne- glect, or something like that. Really though, the virus from which the symptoms derived – the thing that killed it, was criticism. If oneness is what you are after, rather than isolation, I would tell you that this is a very important part of it.
The most frustrating part of this whole "critical spirit‟ thing, is that it is the way most folks will go unless they very purposefully strive against it. Our nature is not to affirm, encourage, build- up. Seems like, in many ways we are self-destructive by design. Or perhaps it would be better to say that there is a sickness that has infected our design – and now, all of us are at war against our own tendencies. That is the more biblical way to say it. Nevertheless, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. If you will war against that natural tendency in you, I believe that your marriage will be the stronger for it. “But encourage one another day after day, as long as you have the opportunity, so that none of you will be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
~ Hebrews 3:13
Chaplain Matthew Atkins Squadron Chaplain
