DailySusan Humor Blog

ICE MARRI(AGE)

(T)hy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
-- Genesis 3:16c

In the beginning, God made marriage, and behold, it was good.

But God didn’t make marriage like a tube, where the man and the wife shoot through life joined at the hip, always at the same speed, never veering to the left or the right of each other.

Neither did He make it like railroad tracks, with the two identical rails equally joined at the same distance and depth, traveling at the same velocity through mountain and valley and canyon and plain.

Nooooo. Like everything else in Nature, marriage had to be, well, natural.

And let’s not forget: at the same time God made marriage, He made thunder and lightning . . . and tsunamis and tornados and hailstorms and earthquakes and 100-mph winds.

So God made marriage like a river. It’s alive! It’s complex! It has different speeds and different layers.

At times, it flows along, slowly, sweetly and silently, with gentle curves. Sometimes, it chuckles along on shallow rocks. Sometimes, the flow is fast and change happens quickly. But other times, as with a river-fed chain of lakes, movement is almost imperceptible, and that’s OK, too.

But then there are the rapids. And the swamps. And the waves. And the whitecaps. And the floods. And the droughts. And the waterfalls.

And anytime you have water, you can also have . . . ice.

And that’s what happened to the marriage of some friends of mine in a faraway state. On the surface, their marriage and family life looked terrific, and mostly, it was. Where he was strong, she was weak, and vice versa. It was a good match, a perfect fit.

Life flowed along well for over 15 years. Then, gradually, in came the Ice Age.

Maybe it was job stress or midlife crisis. Maybe it was bills or chores, or the brain paralysis that comes with parenting young teenagers.

Instead of flowing, their marriage pooled up, cold and dark and lifeless. Communication froze into the same old patterns. “Didja take the dog out?” “What’re we having for dinner? Oh. Again?” “You always make such a mess.” “You never get anywhere on time.”

The glacier of disaffection spread. They never went out together. They never laughed and talked or opened up to old friends. If one rented a movie, the other would fall asleep. If one suggested a trip destination, the other would sneer and sigh.

Nobody knew this, of course. They kept it underground. And like stalactites and stalagmites in a cave, the estrangement slowly grew and hardened.

It got to the point where she wondered if he was planning to divorce her. He was going to a marriage counselor, but told her not to come. He wouldn’t let her touch him or hug him. They barely spoke.

She was afraid. Deep down, she still loved him very much. There was their teenager to consider. There were their marriage vows.

Finally, she confided in a friend. How could she break the stalemate? The friend gave her this advice:

Love, to a husband, is spelled s-e-x.

It’s not manipulation: all’s fair in love and war. It’s not deception: it’s what she wants, too. They prayed about it together, and asked others to pray, too.

I don’t know the details, but one night not long ago, she initiated intimacy.

I got tingles over her description of how it went: she said it was “beautiful and sweet.” She expected rejection, but he was open and said he missed that part of her so much. So very much.

She was a wife who met her husband at their deepest centerpoint of need . . . and it broke the ice.

It’s not a solution. They still have a lot of work to do. But the flow is back. There’s warmth. There’s life. There are currents again.

And the heavenly Weatherman? He’s happy. He forecast it, after all.

He knows ice has its purpose from time to time . . . but the real fun is making it melt and go away.

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Prayer request: The Battle for Cindy begins this week. If all systems are “go,” my best friend Cindy will begin chemotherapy this week for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. She will endure chemo for several months before the climactic bone marrow transplant. Oh, Father God, we lift up Cindy and her family to You for Your encouragement and blessing as this battle for life and precious health begins in earnest. Thank You for sending so many prayer warriors to fight in her behalf. You say in Your word that the life is in the blood, and that’s true on all levels. Just as the blood of Jesus Christ has saved Cindy’s spirit for eternity, we pray with all our hearts that this treatment will renew, repair and defend her precious physical body and blood and save her precious life. This is for Your glory, Lord. We unite with You in loving her. (Leviticus 17:14)