We hadn't talked in days. No words, beyond the necessary communication between two people sharing a home and the responsibility of children between. "Help the kids brush their teeth. Please." "Stop hogging the covers. Again." "I guess we'll talk tomorrow? Or, never?"
I've no idea what provoked our silence. Walls have been built in our house in the space of seconds, a wrong word spoken, a sideways glance of disapproval, a misplaced something. On their own, each seems trivial, hardly something one envisions as packing a punch of hostility. But each, added to the weight of a long day's work or a scale long since tipping with remembered wrongs, soon becomes the missile that detonates a hole in the fabric of our lives.
If we have a fault in this passionate love affair of ours, it's the passion with which each one thinks. Only one keeps it mostly to himself and the other wants to talk, talk, talk our differences out, mistaking silence as apathy and an absence of any passion at all. She keeps on while he wishes she wouldn't. He keeps silence while wishing she would.
Sometimes the silence becomes deafening.
And so, words give way to bitterness. Real issues give way to imagined impossibilities. Before long, I am wondering who this is that I must share my bed with. Who this is that I have set up as villain to my role as victim, in a war of wills and hearts.
Which one would wave the white flag first?
Oh, it would show it's face frequently but furtively, a weak wave held by an indignant pseudo-surrenderer. An apology backed by a million defenses. Forgiveness granted by a proud dictator.
But who would wave it, with no terms attached? Who would wave it and then lay it down with humility to free arms willing to embrace?
Certainly not I.
Until I read this, a story of a POW grossly mistreated and abused, chosen from thousands to be the daily recipient of a sadistic corporal's twisted violations. So severe was his afflictions, both physical and emotional, that years after his deliverance he would become consumed with murdering his former captor. Until one night, at a Billy Graham meeting, he was ultimately delivered through salvation in the name of Jesus Christ and, from that night on, never had another nightmare or single thought of killing his attacker. Years later he would personally bestow forgiveness on this man, one who went to his death still believing himself somehow justified for his perverse abuse.
If a real man who lived through the ravages of a real war with a real and vicious enemy, unlike any I had ever encountered, could forgive because he knew himself to be forgiven by Another, wouldn't my own surrender and forgiveness be such a small thing?
How little I sometimes think I understand the blood of Jesus! To claim to be forgiven myself and then to go on holding peace ransom because of my own ridiculous pride!
Life provides enough enemies of it's own, one whose very mission is to disrupt all that God has done in my own heart and what God is doing in the union of ours. We are engaged in a war, but one that has long since been won with the blood of our Savior. Our personal and present battles will only be won by following His example.
Our marriages bear the tattoo of His love when we ourselves are willing to go where He did, accepting humility and proffering forgiveness.
Mutual surrender happened shortly after I laid down my book and my pride. Our passions continue to fly between us, sometimes in conversations shared and some nights in affection given. The future is yet full of mine fields that we must approach together, each one bearing arms hand in hand as we bear the token of God's indelible love in our hearts.
