Put Down Your Stick

Imagine for a moment that you are at a funeral for someone who suffered a long illness. The difficult decision finally had to be made by a husband or wife to disconnect life support. It is highly unlikely that you or anyone else would weigh in on whether or not this was the right choice, understanding the pain that must have been involved and that it was a very personal decision influenced by many factors.

Imagine another funeral for someone well-loved, but someone who did not take care of his health the way he should have and could have prolonged his life if he had eaten a more healthy diet and had been more physically active and sought medical care sooner. Would you comment on that, at this most difficult time for his family? Of course not!

Now imagine that you are for a funeral for another someone. Nobody is really quite sure what happened to her. They are waiting for the results of the autopsy to determine the cause of death, and they may or may not share the results with everyone. Do you ask a lot of nosy questions or do you mind your own business and show sympathy for the loss?

Now reimagine these scenarios as the death of a marriage. I am writing this article for a friend of mine who has struggled for the better part of a decade with a husband who was addicted to porn. Although he made a pretense of having conquered this problem, she was painfully aware of the reality that he had not and troubled that he had convinced everyone else that he had no further challenges in that regard.

Finally she made a difficult and painful decision to leave the marriage, for the good of her children, for her own mental health, because past experience had shown her that nothing was going to change. That decision for her might have been equally as difficult, if not more so, than the decision a family member would make to pull the plug on the life of a loved one. She may feel that every intervention within her power to make has been made.

While fellow church going friends might hesitate to remind someone of the sanctity of life if they make a decision to withdraw life support, few shrink from reminding her of something she already knows, that marriage is sacred and ordained of God and should not be terminated lightly. From what they are able to see, she is married to a good man who has addressed his problems, if they were even aware that they existed, and she should overlook the fact that he does not pick up his socks or that he forgot her birthday. At this time when she feels she is hanging by a very thin thread, it seems every other person wields a large pair of scissors.

Although the law has come up with something called “no-fault divorce,” there is likely no such thing. There are always ways that each party could have tried harder and done more and usually there is fault on both sides, because there is fault on both sides in marriages that last. Sometimes there may be an act that becomes the last straw. We often set ourselves up as judge and jury. While no one wants to condone sin, we all acknowledge the difference between someone who breaks into a home to steal out of greed and a hungry child who swipes a piece of fruit. Even when you can clearly see a misdeed that has ended a marriage, you may not know of the years of emotional starvation someone endured that left them vulnerable to the attentions of someone outside their marriage. Marriages can die of malnutrition, too. They can be assaulted by outside forces. They can be beat to death from within, and though the scars may be hidden from sight, they still exist.

Sometimes you are close enough to be able to see what is going on, or perhaps you think you know what is going on when what appears to be the case is not truly the reality of the situation. There are many who are quick to pass judgment without any acquaintance with the facts.

If someone is still among you at church, that means they are in there trying. You likely have no idea how hard it is to continue to be active in the Church when you feel you have failed at the single most important undertaking of your life, second only to your duties as a parent. It may be that a person’s stewardship as a parent played heavily into the decision to leave a marriage. Is it harder to decide when to let a loved one slip away than to determine when having their other parent in the home with the discord and contention and possibly physical or spiritually damaging situations is more harmful to your children than helpful? Unless you, or someone very close to you, have struggled with that decision, you cannot know how very difficult it was to make.

Consider this. If you are not close enough to the person to know the details, you are not close enough to pass judgment. Even if you feel you know enough to see where the fault lies, it is not necessary or even helpful to verbalize your feelings. As with a death, “I’m sorry” is always a safe thing to say. It can mean anything it needs to say.

“I’m sorry your marriage ended and for the heartache and struggles involved.”

“I’m sorry you and your husband were not unselfish enough to make things work.”

“I’m sorry your wife ran off with the mailman.”

“I’m sorry your husband put you through a living hell.”

“I’m sorry your priorities were all out of whack.”

When a marriage ends, it is a tragedy. It is a time when that extra measure of love needs to be shown. A hug and an “I’m thinking about you” or “We love you” goes a long way. On the other hand, your judgmental comment may be the last straw for a woman who has endured years of emotional abuse from a husband who appears to be kind and loving to the rest of the world. It may be a slap in the face to a man who could never provide enough for a woman prone to excesses.

My husband is a family therapist, and he often says that “anger management” is an incorrect term, because often people with an anger problem are very well able to control it in public settings and take it out privately on their loved ones. We simply do not know the inner workings of anyone else’s marriage. Even when we think we know, we can be missing a big piece of the puzzle, and most of us are influenced and biased by our relationship with one of the parties involved.

I often wonder about hearings where people have character witnesses who work with them or know them from the community who are intended to comment on things that may have taken place in private. It is possible for someone’s private behavior to be very different from the public face they show the world. In fact, sometimes the worse the private behavior is, the more effort is made to present the perfect public persona. I remember once seeing a television program about pedophiles and the methods they use to court their victims. Then I drove by the home of our neighbor who was always surrounded by kids, playing basketball, swimming, etc. He was always involved in the youth groups at his church and in the community. I realized that the scenario for someone who had intent to abuse and someone who, as I believed was true of my neighbor, just genuinely loved children looked the same from the outside.

How then do we judge? For starters, we have the spirit that can whisper to us. Many can share times when they had a feeling something just wasn’t right about a situation or person, even when there was nothing outwardly visible to support that feeling. When we find ourselves on the verge of making a comment to someone concerning the state of their union, we should weigh in as to whether or not we have a strong feeling we should share our thoughts. If not, perhaps we ought not to say it. Sometimes there is something someone is prompted to say.

After my husband died, I had a second marriage that lasted nine years. I had a close friend who had told me, as she became aware of some of my struggles, that she knew me and she knew that I would find a way to make things work. Several years later, when I felt I had done all I could and did not feel that anything had changed for the better, she recalled that statement she had said and told me, “I worry that because of what I said a few years ago, you are still in there trying to make things work, and I want you to know that I feel like you have done everything you could do and I want to remove that expectation I put on you.” Was she prompted to say either of those things to me? I don’t know, but what I do know is that our relationship was close enough that she could, and I also know that she was not the kind of person to just speak off the top of her head.

When a marriage is over, the difficult decisions have already been made. The time for helpful advice is past. If you were not close enough to see that help was needed and give it, you are not close enough to comment on the outcome. Those who do not know are often the ones who pass judgment. Those who do know may be the ones who say “I’m amazed you lasted this long.” If there is a serious wrongdoing that needs to be addressed, that is the task of the bishop or the stake president. Let them do their job.

If you are truly appalled by something you have come to know, there is always the option of saying nothing. Sometimes a party is truly repentant and trying to do better. Sometimes they are moving on with their life oblivious to the wake of hurt and destruction they have left behind them. Either way, it is not your responsibility to reform or shame them.

I have had the dubious opportunity to have experienced both widowhood and divorce by the time I was forty. It was interesting to me that people are sympathetic when your husband dies and, outside of a circle of close friends and family, judgmental when your marriage dies. How did they know, after all, that I didn’t feed husband number one poison mushrooms?

After the divorce, I didn’t expect any funeral potatoes, but going to church was a very painful experience for many months afterwards. Walking through the hall on the way out was like walking a gauntlet, fielding the often hurtful remarks. While most people were loving and kind, there were always a couple every week who took up the slack with a hurtful remark. Sometimes I displayed grace under pressure. Sometimes I became defensive. Sometimes I had a sarcastic comeback. Other times I ducked into a classroom so no one would see my tears. I regret now hiding those tears. I have decided that if someone says something hurtful enough to cause tears, perhaps they should see the results of their handiwork and maybe they will learn to soften their approach.

Sometimes the parties involved in a divorce will make their struggles public, forcing everyone to choose up sides. I have seen wards almost divided by contentious divorces and friendships damaged because of which party was chosen. I have also been aware of times when people try very hard not to have this happen, and choose not to air their dirty laundry publicly. Sometimes this is done for the sake of the children, or for their own mental health, sometimes in an attempt to be charitable to a partner who has failed them in some way but for whom there are still feelings of affection and even love. I had made a conscious decision not to play “good guy bad guy.”

When people made thoughtless comments, there were times I felt as if I needed to share things that would help justify the decision I had made. If anybody asks me, even today, I will tell them many good qualities about my second-husband-once-removed. Be careful about poking and prodding too much. If you are someone who has been confided in, don’t become the town crier. Keep confidences. Don’t fuel the gossip. Remember that there are often children involved. Don’t make someone feel that they need to justify their decision to you.

When I was growing up, we had a pet turtle. One day nobody noticed he had managed somehow to climb out of his little turtle pool with the plastic palm tree and had disappeared. Apparently then he had crawled across the floor and into a sock lying near a pile of dirty clothes. We searched all over the house for our turtle, to no avail. When Mom was hanging out the laundry, she felt something hard in the toe of one of the socks. To her dismay, she dumped out the shell of our turtle onto the ground. She brought him into the house and told us that his ride in the washing machine had probably sent him to turtle heaven.

One of my younger brothers suggested that maybe we could get a stick and poke it into the holes and see if he was still alive. Mom said that probably wasn’t a good idea. We took our turtle’s shell and plopped it back into the water, just in case. It floated there for several hours, with us kids checking in regularly, offering up childish prayers about our poor turtle.

Then something miraculous happened. The turtle poked one leg out of his shell. A few hours later another leg appeared. Eventually his hind legs poked out as well. Finally, his little turtle head appeared and we could almost hear him say “Whatever that was, I don’t want to ever do it again.”

So if you know someone who has been through the spin cycle, please put down your stick.

Susan now has three compilations of essays available as ebooks and paperbacks at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. “A Beacon Light,” “Running the River of Life,” and her latest, a “momoir” entitled “Musings on Motherhood.” She has also written five novels, “Brotherly Love,”“Unfinished Business,”“Push On,”“Are We There Yet?” and “Lucky Change.”

Imagine for a moment that you are at a funeral for someone who suffered a long illness. The difficult decision finally had to be made by a husband or wife to disconnect life support. It is highly unlikely that you or anyone else would weigh in on whether or not this was the right choice, understanding the pain that must have been involved and that it was a very personal decision influenced by many factors.

Imagine another funeral for someone well-loved, but someone who did not take care of his health the way he should have and could have prolonged his life if he had eaten a more healthy diet and had been more physically active and sought medical care sooner. Would you comment on that, at this most difficult time for his family? Of course not!

Now imagine that you are for a funeral for another someone. Nobody is really quite sure what happened to her. They are waiting for the results of the autopsy to determine the cause of death, and they may or may not share the results with everyone. Do you ask a lot of nosy questions or do you mind your own business and show sympathy for the loss?

Now reimagine these scenarios as the death of a marriage. I am writing this article for a friend of mine who has struggled for the better part of a decade with a husband who was addicted to porn. Although he made a pretense of having conquered this problem, she was painfully aware of the reality that he had not and troubled that he had convinced everyone else that he had no further challenges in that regard.

Finally she made a difficult and painful decision to leave the marriage, for the good of her children, for her own mental health, because past experience had shown her that nothing was going to change. That decision for her might have been equally as difficult, if not more so, than the decision a family member would make to pull the plug on the life of a loved one. She may feel that every intervention within her power to make has been made.

While fellow church going friends might hesitate to remind someone of the sanctity of life if they make a decision to withdraw life support, few shrink from reminding her of something she already knows, that marriage is sacred and ordained of God and should not be terminated lightly. From what they are able to see, she is married to a good man who has addressed his problems, if they were even aware that they existed, and she should overlook the fact that he does not pick up his socks or that he forgot her birthday. At this time when she feels she is hanging by a very thin thread, it seems every other person wields a large pair of scissors.

Although the law has come up with something called “no-fault divorce,” there is likely no such thing. There are always ways that each party could have tried harder and done more and usually there is fault on both sides, because there is fault on both sides in marriages that last. Sometimes there may be an act that becomes the last straw. We often set ourselves up as judge and jury. While no one wants to condone sin, we all acknowledge the difference between someone who breaks into a home to steal out of greed and a hungry child who swipes a piece of fruit. Even when you can clearly see a misdeed that has ended a marriage, you may not know of the years of emotional starvation someone endured that left them vulnerable to the attentions of someone outside their marriage. Marriages can die of malnutrition, too. They can be assaulted by outside forces. They can be beat to death from within, and though the scars may be hidden from sight, they still exist.

Sometimes you are close enough to be able to see what is going on, or perhaps you think you know what is going on when what appears to be the case is not truly the reality of the situation. There are many who are quick to pass judgment without any acquaintance with the facts.

If someone is still among you at church, that means they are in there trying. You likely have no idea how hard it is to continue to be active in the Church when you feel you have failed at the single most important undertaking of your life, second only to your duties as a parent. It may be that a person’s stewardship as a parent played heavily into the decision to leave a marriage. Is it harder to decide when to let a loved one slip away than to determine when having their other parent in the home with the discord and contention and possibly physical or spiritually damaging situations is more harmful to your children than helpful? Unless you, or someone very close to you, have struggled with that decision, you cannot know how very difficult it was to make.

Consider this. If you are not close enough to the person to know the details, you are not close enough to pass judgment. Even if you feel you know enough to see where the fault lies, it is not necessary or even helpful to verbalize your feelings. As with a death, “I’m sorry” is always a safe thing to say. It can mean anything it needs to say.

“I’m sorry your marriage ended and for the heartache and struggles involved.”

“I’m sorry you and your husband were not unselfish enough to make things work.”

“I’m sorry your wife ran off with the mailman.”

“I’m sorry your husband put you through a living hell.”

“I’m sorry your priorities were all out of whack.”

When a marriage ends, it is a tragedy. It is a time when that extra measure of love needs to be shown. A hug and an “I’m thinking about you” or “We love you” goes a long way. On the other hand, your judgmental comment may be the last straw for a woman who has endured years of emotional abuse from a husband who appears to be kind and loving to the rest of the world. It may be a slap in the face to a man who could never provide enough for a woman prone to excesses.

My husband is a family therapist, and he often says that “anger management” is an incorrect term, because often people with an anger problem are very well able to control it in public settings and take it out privately on their loved ones. We simply do not know the inner workings of anyone else’s marriage. Even when we think we know, we can be missing a big piece of the puzzle, and most of us are influenced and biased by our relationship with one of the parties involved.

I often wonder about hearings where people have character witnesses who work with them or know them from the community who are intended to comment on things that may have taken place in private. It is possible for someone’s private behavior to be very different from the public face they show the world. In fact, sometimes the worse the private behavior is, the more effort is made to present the perfect public persona. I remember once seeing a television program about pedophiles and the methods they use to court their victims. Then I drove by the home of our neighbor who was always surrounded by kids, playing basketball, swimming, etc. He was always involved in the youth groups at his church and in the community. I realized that the scenario for someone who had intent to abuse and someone who, as I believed was true of my neighbor, just genuinely loved children looked the same from the outside.

How then do we judge? For starters, we have the spirit that can whisper to us. Many can share times when they had a feeling something just wasn’t right about a situation or person, even when there was nothing outwardly visible to support that feeling. When we find ourselves on the verge of making a comment to someone concerning the state of their union, we should weigh in as to whether or not we have a strong feeling we should share our thoughts. If not, perhaps we ought not to say it. Sometimes there is something someone is prompted to say.

After my husband died, I had a second marriage that lasted nine years. I had a close friend who had told me, as she became aware of some of my struggles, that she knew me and she knew that I would find a way to make things work. Several years later, when I felt I had done all I could and did not feel that anything had changed for the better, she recalled that statement she had said and told me, “I worry that because of what I said a few years ago, you are still in there trying to make things work, and I want you to know that I feel like you have done everything you could do and I want to remove that expectation I put on you.” Was she prompted to say either of those things to me? I don’t know, but what I do know is that our relationship was close enough that she could, and I also know that she was not the kind of person to just speak off the top of her head.

When a marriage is over, the difficult decisions have already been made. The time for helpful advice is past. If you were not close enough to see that help was needed and give it, you are not close enough to comment on the outcome. Those who do not know are often the ones who pass judgment. Those who do know may be the ones who say “I’m amazed you lasted this long.” If there is a serious wrongdoing that needs to be addressed, that is the task of the bishop or the stake president. Let them do their job.

If you are truly appalled by something you have come to know, there is always the option of saying nothing. Sometimes a party is truly repentant and trying to do better. Sometimes they are moving on with their life oblivious to the wake of hurt and destruction they have left behind them. Either way, it is not your responsibility to reform or shame them.

I have had the dubious opportunity to have experienced both widowhood and divorce by the time I was forty. It was interesting to me that people are sympathetic when your husband dies and, outside of a circle of close friends and family, judgmental when your marriage dies. How did they know, after all, that I didn’t feed husband number one poison mushrooms?

After the divorce, I didn’t expect any funeral potatoes, but going to church was a very painful experience for many months afterwards. Walking through the hall on the way out was like walking a gauntlet, fielding the often hurtful remarks. While most people were loving and kind, there were always a couple every week who took up the slack with a hurtful remark. Sometimes I displayed grace under pressure. Sometimes I became defensive. Sometimes I had a sarcastic comeback. Other times I ducked into a classroom so no one would see my tears. I regret now hiding those tears. I have decided that if someone says something hurtful enough to cause tears, perhaps they should see the results of their handiwork and maybe they will learn to soften their approach.

Sometimes the parties involved in a divorce will make their struggles public, forcing everyone to choose up sides. I have seen wards almost divided by contentious divorces and friendships damaged because of which party was chosen. I have also been aware of times when people try very hard not to have this happen, and choose not to air their dirty laundry publicly. Sometimes this is done for the sake of the children, or for their own mental health, sometimes in an attempt to be charitable to a partner who has failed them in some way but for whom there are still feelings of affection and even love. I had made a conscious decision not to play “good guy bad guy.”

When people made thoughtless comments, there were times I felt as if I needed to share things that would help justify the decision I had made. If anybody asks me, even today, I will tell them many good qualities about my second-husband-once-removed. Be careful about poking and prodding too much. If you are someone who has been confided in, don’t become the town crier. Keep confidences. Don’t fuel the gossip. Remember that there are often children involved. Don’t make someone feel that they need to justify their decision to you.

When I was growing up, we had a pet turtle. One day nobody noticed he had managed somehow to climb out of his little turtle pool with the plastic palm tree and had disappeared. Apparently then he had crawled across the floor and into a sock lying near a pile of dirty clothes. We searched all over the house for our turtle, to no avail. When Mom was hanging out the laundry, she felt something hard in the toe of one of the socks. To her dismay, she dumped out the shell of our turtle onto the ground. She brought him into the house and told us that his ride in the washing machine had probably sent him to turtle heaven.

One of my younger brothers suggested that maybe we could get a stick and poke it into the holes and see if he was still alive. Mom said that probably wasn’t a good idea. We took our turtle’s shell and plopped it back into the water, just in case. It floated there for several hours, with us kids checking in regularly, offering up childish prayers about our poor turtle.

Then something miraculous happened. The turtle poked one leg out of his shell. A few hours later another leg appeared. Eventually his hind legs poked out as well. Finally, his little turtle head appeared and we could almost hear him say “Whatever that was, I don’t want to ever do it again.”

So if you know someone who has been through the spin cycle, please put down your stick.

Susan now has three compilations of essays available as ebooks and paperbacks at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. “A Beacon Light,” “Running the River of Life,” and her latest, a “momoir” entitled “Musings on Motherhood.” She has also written five novels, “Brotherly Love,”“Unfinished Business,”“Push On,”“Are We There Yet?” and “Lucky Change.”

Imagine for a moment that you are at a funeral for someone who suffered a long illness. The difficult decision finally had to be made by a husband or wife to disconnect life support. It is highly unlikely that you or anyone else would weigh in on whether or not this was the right choice, understanding the pain that must have been involved and that it was a very personal decision influenced by many factors.

Imagine another funeral for someone well-loved, but someone who did not take care of his health the way he should have and could have prolonged his life if he had eaten a more healthy diet and had been more physically active and sought medical care sooner. Would you comment on that, at this most difficult time for his family? Of course not!

Now imagine that you are for a funeral for another someone. Nobody is really quite sure what happened to her. They are waiting for the results of the autopsy to determine the cause of death, and they may or may not share the results with everyone. Do you ask a lot of nosy questions or do you mind your own business and show sympathy for the loss?

Now reimagine these scenarios as the death of a marriage. I am writing this article for a friend of mine who has struggled for the better part of a decade with a husband who was addicted to porn. Although he made a pretense of having conquered this problem, she was painfully aware of the reality that he had not and troubled that he had convinced everyone else that he had no further challenges in that regard.

Finally she made a difficult and painful decision to leave the marriage, for the good of her children, for her own mental health, because past experience had shown her that nothing was going to change. That decision for her might have been equally as difficult, if not more so, than the decision a family member would make to pull the plug on the life of a loved one. She may feel that every intervention within her power to make has been made.

While fellow church going friends might hesitate to remind someone of the sanctity of life if they make a decision to withdraw life support, few shrink from reminding her of something she already knows, that marriage is sacred and ordained of God and should not be terminated lightly. From what they are able to see, she is married to a good man who has addressed his problems, if they were even aware that they existed, and she should overlook the fact that he does not pick up his socks or that he forgot her birthday. At this time when she feels she is hanging by a very thin thread, it seems every other person wields a large pair of scissors.

Although the law has come up with something called “no-fault divorce,” there is likely no such thing. There are always ways that each party could have tried harder and done more and usually there is fault on both sides, because there is fault on both sides in marriages that last. Sometimes there may be an act that becomes the last straw. We often set ourselves up as judge and jury. While no one wants to condone sin, we all acknowledge the difference between someone who breaks into a home to steal out of greed and a hungry child who swipes a piece of fruit. Even when you can clearly see a misdeed that has ended a marriage, you may not know of the years of emotional starvation someone endured that left them vulnerable to the attentions of someone outside their marriage. Marriages can die of malnutrition, too. They can be assaulted by outside forces. They can be beat to death from within, and though the scars may be hidden from sight, they still exist.

Sometimes you are close enough to be able to see what is going on, or perhaps you think you know what is going on when what appears to be the case is not truly the reality of the situation. There are many who are quick to pass judgment without any acquaintance with the facts.

If someone is still among you at church, that means they are in there trying. You likely have no idea how hard it is to continue to be active in the Church when you feel you have failed at the single most important undertaking of your life, second only to your duties as a parent. It may be that a person’s stewardship as a parent played heavily into the decision to leave a marriage. Is it harder to decide when to let a loved one slip away than to determine when having their other parent in the home with the discord and contention and possibly physical or spiritually damaging situations is more harmful to your children than helpful? Unless you, or someone very close to you, have struggled with that decision, you cannot know how very difficult it was to make.

Consider this. If you are not close enough to the person to know the details, you are not close enough to pass judgment. Even if you feel you know enough to see where the fault lies, it is not necessary or even helpful to verbalize your feelings. As with a death, “I’m sorry” is always a safe thing to say. It can mean anything it needs to say.

“I’m sorry your marriage ended and for the heartache and struggles involved.”

“I’m sorry you and your husband were not unselfish enough to make things work.”

“I’m sorry your wife ran off with the mailman.”

“I’m sorry your husband put you through a living hell.”

“I’m sorry your priorities were all out of whack.”

When a marriage ends, it is a tragedy. It is a time when that extra measure of love needs to be shown. A hug and an “I’m thinking about you” or “We love you” goes a long way. On the other hand, your judgmental comment may be the last straw for a woman who has endured years of emotional abuse from a husband who appears to be kind and loving to the rest of the world. It may be a slap in the face to a man who could never provide enough for a woman prone to excesses.

My husband is a family therapist, and he often says that “anger management” is an incorrect term, because often people with an anger problem are very well able to control it in public settings and take it out privately on their loved ones. We simply do not know the inner workings of anyone else’s marriage. Even when we think we know, we can be missing a big piece of the puzzle, and most of us are influenced and biased by our relationship with one of the parties involved.

I often wonder about hearings where people have character witnesses who work with them or know them from the community who are intended to comment on things that may have taken place in private. It is possible for someone’s private behavior to be very different from the public face they show the world.

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