| The Covenant Illustrated
The Covenant Illustrated Let us close this chapter with a real life example from my own experience. I had come home a half an hour late to a furious wife one night. Coming through the door I apologized for being late. Cathy was less than mollified as she served her dry, overcooked dinner. We got into it immediately. "Your apology doesn't cut it, this is about the 5th time you've been late in two weeks. The dinner is spoiled again and I'm just supposed to shut up and smile and say 'How was your day, darling.' Well I'm fed up." Now at this point I could have taken the easy carnal tack of pointing out that she should forgive me and obviously had not since she brought up the last 4 occasions. However the look on her face and perhaps the prompting of the Spirit told me that this would be an attempt at starting an argument I could win, but at some cost to the relationship. So I thought it wise to take a little different tack. "So your a little upset, huh?" I responded. "No, I'm mad. You sit there with your guys and talk about who knows what, and I am always the one left holding the bag. Well, I'm sick of it!" "Well, I'm sorry I am late, what more do you want?" I replied. At this point we were getting nowhere fast. I felt it would be wise to try to get at whatever was eating her. We men are a bit slow on the uptake, and women always expect us to be mind readers. I realized that this would likely get uglier and by this point I really wanted to disarm this before it could do further damage. It took sometime to get to what was for Cathy a painfully obvious truth, but one that was not obvious to me probably because I didn't want to see it. "You don't care about me as much as you do the guys you meet with!" She sobbed. Bang! I was caught. Trapped like a rat! I could have tried to cover it up, but she was right! Probably not to the degree she believed it, but there was no question she had hit a real nail on the head. And I found I didn't want to escape. I was cut to the heart as, for the first time, I saw how deeply my insensitivity and lack of care had hurt her. I'm sure that my voice tone, and my body language spoke more loudly than my words when I said "I am so sorry, Cathy. I had no idea how selfish I have been and how little regard I have paid to you. Please forgive me. I have been wrong." She looked at me skeptically, believing my sincerity but doubting that the next time would be any different. She did know her husband, and I knew myself and knew I could not promise that I would never be late again. She wanted to hear the ideas I might have for restitution before she believed in the genuineness of my repentance and would close with the forgiveness bit. After some discussion we focused on the real problem: not my lateness, but my lack of care. For restitution I suggested that whenever I was going to be late (Cathy decided 15 minutes late was truly late), I would show my care by calling her and letting her know (BEFORE the 15 minutes was up). This turned out to be a good solution since my office was in my car and Cathy knew it would talk me time to find a public phone and call (Mobile phones had not yet been invented!). The pilgrimage to a phone booth was a testimony to the fact that I was thinking about her and cared about her. This solution has held us in good stead for the last 18 years even though now I do have a mobile phone. The pattern has changed! I went on to work on some deeper levels of how God would want me to love my wife which were revealed from that experience as I practiced the cycle of renewal. Back |