Two Husbands

"The outcome of every test of faith depends on how I look at the test."
--Unknown

This week my family went on spring break vacation. We had such a test of faith. We saw ourselves in a new way. I hope we came out of it on the right side.
I watched the interactions of our family with new eyes, partly because we were together as a family group for several consecutive days...an unusual event...and partly because I saw us through the eyes of my son's girlfriend who came along on our trip. The first night, she retreated to her room and pined to be with her mother...so severe had been the turmoil in our family trying to find its balance.
With everyone finally separated from each other after hours confined to the car, I sat playing solitaire, wondering if we needed family therapy. My husband and I talked about it...seriously. By the end of the week, we were a "unit" again, she was glad she came on vacation with us, and we had uncovered a vital point of relationship that has been drifting away from us even as we ourselves have been drifting apart from each other, like galaxies moving out from the big bang's center. Our main source of imbalance, I believe, has to do with this two husbands idea. We use it to find our unity again; and we use it wrongly.

I found this concept in a commentary on the book of Romans. In this book, Saint Paul uses the idea of successive marriages to illustrate the transition between living by law and by grace. In the analogy, the law is portrayed as a first husband, but he dies. If a person embraces the genuine walk of Christian faith, the law/ritual marriage in itself is not sufficient. There is nothing particularly Christian about such a marriage. Law is merely an indicator of need and insufficiency, and so can not serve as a true source of fulfillment. The second husband is not available until the first dies, but when it dies, the second can be taken legally. The second husband is grace as it came in the personage of Jesus Christ. This second husband...this final husband...has the power to fulfill completely what the first husband could only offer in shadow. But a person can not be married to both simultaneously. Therein is the rub. Our pride wants to be reassured that we are powerful enough to please the first husband while counting on the second as the sugar-daddy insurance policy for the great unknown variable: the after life. That fuzzy area between what we do and what He does: this is the problem that has plagued us without our ever realizing how disrespectful we were being to God. I, and maybe my husband too, have been trying to co-habitate with the husband of grace while living like the husband of law still has ultimate rule over us, still binds us and still must be inspired to grant us his approval. Thus, we basically render the power of the second husband impotent. Like the spinster in Great Expectations, we cling to a dead hope, kept morbidly before our eyes, in exchange for the very living possibilities that walk into our room and beg us to bestow a blessing on the potential hopes of the future. This "hope of the future" idea is a large one of joint faith for both my husband and me, so our receiving instruction about this is hardly surprising.

As I look at this commentary on Romans and then at my children, I see them fight, attaching their very identities to the outcome of this trial of who is right vs. who is wrong, and I know I have failed them. I see how we have ridden the pendulum across the generations--from swinging toward too much freedom in one generation to its opposing side now: identity completely defined by law, as displayed by either our conscious obedience or disobedience to it. In fact, our identity in this day can be based on the personal rewriting of law, should group-law go against our personal wants and needs. I have led my own children to become too preoccupied with pleasing this dead husband: law.

Right versus wrong. Fair for me versus unfair for me, with no thought given to fairness for another, because my being shown to be right has to be proven by that universally accepted measuring stick: fairness. Fairness, the ultimate measure of everything. How did I ever allow this mindset to creep into my family? I look at the other things I've blogged, and I believe I have a heart to grieve injustice even when it is not personal to me. Is this something my children will also discover as they age? How much does my example count in their growth? I know we live in a society, an age where everyone is law-suit happy, so this mindset is not just born out in my own family. Everyone being a law unto himself is a sign of the closing of the current age of mankind. According to ancient prophets, each person in the end will be doing what is "right in his own eyes."

So while I am not surprised my family is touched by this, I can not use this commonality as an excuse to avoid the effort required for change. We will remember what it means to be in the family of God through marriage to Grace and Truth. While this marriage is the only one to offer any sort of permanent satisfaction, it is nevertheless a harder marriage to face in a mirror, because I don't earn its proposal, I accept it. To accept it, I must acknowledge that what I see in the mirror is ugly, and I can't hire a cosmetic surgeon to fix it, nor can I work hard enough at the gym to earn it, nor can I even build up my own inner beauty enough to deserve it. Like a fairy tale, that ugliness is the Truth of me, and the Grace is that as I gain the courage to look in the mirror, face the ugliness, and then find the humility to accept Grace anyway, I become beautiful magically. The beauty that would have pleased the first husband is there, but given by the hand of the second husband. We had it backwards. We figured that pleasing the first husband would win the second. I see now that even we are very much like everyone Christ railed against when he walked this earth. Surely knowing this is a good thing. But...now what?