What Do You Say to That?

What do you say to a friend when she says she thinks her marriage is over? How do you console a wife of twenty years who is afraid the life she loves is ending? How do you comfort her and tell her that somehow it will end up okay when you’re not sure you believe that yourself?

Twenty years. It’s a long time that saw her grow from her teens into an amazing woman. Smart,funny, accomplished. I don’t know what to say when she asks why the man she still adores no longer wants to be a part of the family they creates together.

She wants nothing more than their family and he seems to want anything but. She begs him to come home but there is always an excuse. There’s always something more important.

So I listen. And I ache for her.

I hear the fears of the woman who grew up with a father who cheated and listen as she wonders if her own husband is doing the same.

And I hurt for her.

I believe in marriage with everything that is in me, but as a child of divorced parents I know that sometimes there can be worse things than staying together. When she cries out her pain I wonder if I would be able to hang on through everything she has endured. I wonder if I could still be hopeful, as she still hopes.

I have no magic words or wisdom to share. There is no advice I can give her. I agree he sounds like a man who loves someone or something else, but I want so badly to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s been my friend too, and I want him to not be guilty of all the things she fears. I want him to just be busy or distracted or something else I haven’t yet considered.

I counsel her to pray, to talk to him, but I don’t know what else she can possibly say. She has begged and cried for him to just come home, and he doesn’t. So she waits and I just listen. She hurts and I hurt with her.

And neither one of us knows what else to say.

*shared with her permission because sometimes I think better when writing out loud, and because please pray for them both – that he comes home and that she’s still there when he does.