Sacred Influence (31 page)

As Diana looks back, she can predict the drift, including the part she played in Ken’s dwindling affections. Earlier in the year, Diana’s company suffered a major computer meltdown. It took a full month for Diana to get things back up and running. She stayed late at the office and brought work home.

The first night after Diana finally solved the work crisis, Hillary overdosed on prescription drugs. A boy Hillary really liked had said some cruel things to her. Heartbroken, Hillary turned to drugs to tune out the pain. To make matters worse, shortly after the overdose, another young man eagerly pursued Hillary, and in the wake of her hurt and recent abandonment, Hillary gave up her virginity.

Diana felt devastated when she discovered all that had happened. Every maternal nerve fired Diana’s indignation, and she all but swore off sex in her marriage. Every time Ken proposed physical intimacy, Diana thought about Hillary losing her virginity, and she just couldn’t respond.

It doesn’t take a PhD to predict this one — overwork, serious problems with a child, no sex at home, and little communication.
Of
course
one partner began to feel as though he were no longer in love. “If you don’t water your plants,” Diana admits, “eventually they’re going to die; you
have
to nourish your relationship.”

“Do You Realize What Your Husband Is Doing with My
Daughter?”

For years, Diana and Ken had separate interests that they rarely shared. Diana loves going to the movies; Ken tolerates them. Ken enthusiastically follows NASCAR; Diana has never quite understood the fascination of watching cars drive in circles for hours on end. Diana sensed that Ken was pulling away, but a friend assured her that it was probably just pressure at work and that she shouldn’t get paranoid.

But Diana
knew
something was wrong. When she pressed Ken for details, he finally came clean and told her he cared about her but didn’t love her.

“Is there anyone else?” Diana asked.

“No,” Ken said, to Diana’s relief.

Unfortunately, Ken was lying.

On June 11, just a few weeks after Ken had declared his lack of feelings, Diana found herself praying to God to use whomever and whatever to save her marriage. She never expected it to come from “the other woman’s” mother.

That very day, a woman phoned Diana and asked her, “Is your husband Ken Franklin, who works at Grizzly Industries?”

“Yes.”

“Do you realize what your husband is doing with my daughter?”

Diana felt her heart beat its way out of her chest. “What are you talking about?”

“Your husband and my daughter met in a NASCAR chat room. They started out sending emails to each other, and now they’ve exchanged pictures. They’re even planning to meet on the Fourth of July weekend.”

Diana couldn’t believe what she heard, but sadly, it all added up. Ken had already arranged for Diana to spend time at her parents’ house while he went on a “business” trip over the holiday.

And then came the kicker: “And my daughter is married and has two kids!”

Diana could hardly believe that her husband had planned an affair with a married woman. Would Ken really blow apart two families, just when Hillary needed him the most?

That’s when Diana took the action that both she and Ken believe saved their marriage.

A Friend in Need

Diana drove to a friend’s house, her mind racing with questions and prayers about the future. “What will happen to me?”

“O God, what will happen to Hillary? Will she make it all right?”

“OK, God, technically, this is adultery; I can leave this marriage, right?”

And yet Diana had a strong sense that divorce played no part in God’s plans.

Diana’s mind launched into such a whirlwind of speculation that when she got to her friend’s house, she blurted out the entire story on the front porch, venting her rage and anger, yelling at Ken, asking how much more she was supposed to take, and calling Ken some nasty names she hopes he never hears about.

Diana’s friend had survived a similar situation; her husband had had an emotional affair several years prior, so she could understand Diana’s feelings of betrayal.

Today, Diana believes that “venting my anger, disgust, and disappointment on Darla instead of on Ken saved my marriage.” Darla patiently listened as Diana worked through her emotions. Once Diana gained control of herself, she risked returning home to her husband.

She arrived at about ten o’clock; Ken’s car sat in the driveway. Diana immediately went up to him and said, “We need to talk.”

“Why?”

“Cheryl’s mother called.”

Ken’s face went white. The jig was up.

Diana and Ken went out onto the porch — and here the story becomes remarkable. With incredible detachment, devoid of accusation and fiery emotions, Diana talked through everything with Ken. Because she already had vented her emotions with Darla, she could be more objective and dispassionate in this conversation that had the potential to either save or wreck her marriage.

“OK, tell me about Cheryl,” she began.

Ken slowly described how he had met Cheryl on the Internet. The two shared a love of NASCAR. They had never met, but Ken admitted they planned to do so. They had even talked about a possible future together.

“You mean to tell me you’ve actually contemplated a life with this woman?” Diana asked.

“Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to be with someone else?” Ken said.

“Let me get this straight: you’re prepared to tell Hillary you won’t be her daddy every day, but you’ll be daddy to these two other kids whom you’ve never met?”

Finally, Ken began to see the ridiculous nature of the situation. Diana’s eyebrows lifted, almost comically. “You can’t be serious about ending nineteen years of marriage for someone you met on the
Internet
,” she said with a laugh, and Ken laughed with her. The entire evening went like that. Diana spoke forcefully but maintained a light enough air to raise her eyebrows and elicit some comic relief at just the right moments.

Not once did Diana swear or call Ken any of the names she had uttered on Darla’s porch — even though Ken expected exactly that. Later, Ken told Diana that if she
had
reacted to him in the way she had talked to Darla, he would have bolted. Instead, he saw a picture of God’s grace and mercy through Diana — and it made all the difference.

Diana remembers, “When I first walked out on the porch with Ken, the disappointment and sadness were still there, but the anger was gone, replaced by God’s peace and the confidence that if Ken chose to stay in our marriage, it would eventually be better than it was before. It was so totally God, because I did not expect to act that way. I was very hurt and disillusioned.”

The evening concluded with Diana giving Ken a challenge: “My challenge to you is to be obedient to God’s Word, contact Cheryl, and say it’s over — and work on our marriage. If you do that, I believe God can give you astounding feelings for me again.”

The next day, Ken told Diana he was through with Cheryl. He closed the email account he had used with Cheryl and gave Diana the password to the new account so that she could keep tabs on what happened from then on.

Despite Ken’s attempt to put the situation behind him, Cheryl continued to pursue him. Diana even received a couple of calls from Cheryl. But in the end, Ken ended the relationship, and Diana’s words proved true. Ken’s feelings for her came back.

What Went Wrong?

In the aftermath, Diana spent a good bit of time trying to dissect what went wrong. She asked Ken, “When things got tense, why weren’t you talking to
me
instead of to a stranger on the Internet?”

Ken doesn’t have an answer, but Diana does. She believes Satan saw a foothold and used it. Because of Diana’s work schedule and their problems with Hillary, Satan took advantage of this natural lull in their relationship and tried to force a permanent break.

Diana wisely understood that Ken’s breakup with Cheryl was just the first step. She needed to follow through and do her part to patch up an obviously shaky relationship. I asked her how she would counsel wives in a similar situation. When you sense that your marriage is drifting apart because of events you can’t control (a work crisis, a child-rearing crisis, or both), how can you keep the intimacy going?

“First,” said Diana, “you have to keep working on your marriage, because ultimately everything else is going to be irrelevant if your marriage falls apart. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of child-rearing, but if you put the children first to the neglect of your marriage, what will happen to them if the marriage falls apart? It was for Hillary’s sake that I realized I needed to take better care of my marriage. An intact marriage gives you better support and resources with which to face everything else.

“Second, I’d say don’t forget the small things that keep a relationship going: keep your finger on the pulse of your marriage. If you haven’t gone for a walk in a couple of days, do it! Just be up-front about it and say, ‘Honey, we need to get connected again. Let’s go have a cup of coffee.’ Make sure you really are communicating; it sounds like such a cliché to say that communication is important, but it is! Regularly ask each other, ‘Are we OK?’ Do a periodic checkpoint — use a scale of 1 to 10, or empty to full, whatever works. But don’t forget to watch out for relational drift.”

While Diana admits that she really couldn’t have put her job crisis on the shelf, in hindsight she does believe that she probably didn’t need to bring home as much work as she did. “I thought I was the only person who could fix what needed fixing; it was egocentric of me, and it almost cost me my marriage.”

Hillary presented a tougher challenge. With a child’s life in peril, it’s hard to keep the pulse on your marriage. “I wasn’t asking how Ken was, because I was singularly focused on how Hillary was,” Diana admits. It had been almost a year since the two of them had gotten away. Then add to that Diana’s and Ken’s wildly different reactions to Hillary’s problems, which only seemed to push them further apart. Ken simply couldn’t understand the emotion that would lead Hillary to hurt herself “over a boy.”

Even so, Diana stresses that you cannot let your children’s main base of support — their parents’ marriage — crumble just when they need it most. It might sound crazy, when your child is in crisis, to contemplate breaking away for a walk or a cup of coffee or even a weekend, but to keep the family going, that’s exactly what you have to do.

The book of Proverbs talks about setting priorities: “Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house” (24:27). First, you take care of the life-sustaining needs (like food), and then you worry about things like comfort (shelter, for example). Relationally, you must maintain the life-giving relationship of the home — the marriage — out of which you can provide emotional and spiritual sustenance for the children. If you starve the marriage, you risk creating a spiritual hunger that will end up injuring everyone else in your home.

Almost inevitably you will endure stresses at work, concern for the health of your parents, and anxiety over the choices your children make. Virtually everyone faces these kinds of issues at one time or another. But in no case should they distract us from that duty of prime importance —
feeding our marriages
.

Shared Interests

The third part of Diana’s recipe involved making a bigger effort to enter Ken’s world — a theme that keeps surfacing in the many talks I’ve had with couples who have renewed their marriages.

When we let common interests fade, over time we slowly drift apart. Diana went to her movies and Ken watched NASCAR, and both of them, for a while, felt fine with that. But when Ken met another woman who was enthusiastic about NASCAR, he realized that shared intimacy is far more fulfilling than solitary fun. That’s why Diana now counsels other wives to “find a way to be interested in the things that your husband is interested in, because it shows him you care about things he cares about.”

Will doing so be easy? Hardly. Diana admits that when she went to her first race, she was bored silly. “I was asking myself, ‘Why am I here?’ And then I remembered: ‘I’m doing this to please him.’ And it got better.”

During that fateful conversation on the porch, Diana had asked Ken, “So what would you do if you left?”

“I’d go to more NASCAR races,” Ken answered.

Keeping the conversation light, Diana half laughed, half inquired, “So you’d leave me to do NASCAR?”

“It’s not just going to NASCAR,” Ken said. “It’s about being interested in the standings, the driver, who’s won the last pole, who’s in line to win the championship.”

So Diana has chosen her favorite driver — Michael Waltrip — and on most weeks, she can tell you who leads the points race. She even enjoys the races — just as Pat learned to enjoy fishing and Catherine (whom you’ll meet in the final chapter) learned to enjoy biking.

I can readily imagine many readers thinking, “That’s all well and good, but when is he going to start doing the things
I
like to do?”

Give it time. Diana freely admits, “In the beginning, some of my needs were in the backseat, and I asked God to love me so I could focus entirely on loving Ken.” Remember that Rich (from chapter 12) said he felt more inclined to engage in Pat’s favorite activities once Pat started going fishing with him. Sometimes the person who is more invested in the relationship must accommodate the other: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up” (Romans 15:1 – 2). By pleasing your husband, you’re winning the intimacy that you can use to influence him in a positive way, including his building an interest in
your
life.