Meddling

I just found out that yet again, one our acquaintances is leaving his wife for another woman. Once more, a family goes down in flames. I saw him in passing the other day and smiled, said hello, and went my way. We aren’t c lose, so I said nothing to him about the event. I wonder, should I have meddled? Should I have asked him if it was worth it to leave his wife and his boys? Was the sex that good? Was the marriage that hard? Was his salary big enough for himself and alimony and child support? Not out of hatred or anger, but maybe I should have meddled just to help him have some clarity! Men, and women, go through life in a fog. No one seems to grasp the spiritual warfare that surrounds us, the confusion that engulfs us, the assaults that take our families and shake them apart leaving wives devastated and children broken, broken and broken.

And yet, sometimes I do meddle, when I think it might matter. A 17 year old high-school girl came to the ER to be ‘checked for STD’s’. ‘See, my new boyfriend is kind of a player, and I want to be checked out.’ I asked her why she needed someone who would just sleep with her and leave her, giving her either a child or a disease. ‘I don’t think I’m pretty, and I think I won’t find anyone else’. Ah, tragedy. Truth is, she was lovely. And I told her so, with one of the nurses present. She didn’t need that boy/man to use her. She needed someone, hopefully a father, to give her the worth that comes from love. And yes, she needs the love of a man; her father. I don’t know his role in her life, but something was missing for her to give herself to a man-slut just to get the table scraps of attention he might throw her from time to time.

I meddled and told her to leave him. And I felt right about it. Maybe I should meddle more. Because situation A, the leaving husband/father, almost always leads to situation B, the desperate, hurting child. If meddling is what I must do, then God help me know when to do it!

Ed