You’ve known Jane and Alex for years at church. Their teens attend youth group with your teens and Alex attends every monthly Knights of Columbus meeting. During Mass, Jane is usually nursing a baby, holding a toddler, or escaping to the foyer with a cranky kid. She often looks tired, but she always has a smile during coffee time after Mass.
When you see Alex at Mass by himself one Sunday, you’re a bit surprised. Then he tells you, with a sad look, that Jane has kicked him out of the house and he’s now living with a friend. He talks about how he misses his kids and he’s trying to work on their relationship.
Next time you see Jane, you tell her, “Poor Alex!”
She assures you that she’s talked to the priest and she’s seeing a counselor. Then she has to stop her 7-year-old from swiping sugar cubes from the coffee table, and you head over to tell the head of the CWL you need to pray for Jane and Alex right now.
Stop.
Let’s think about this situation for a minute.
Solomon’s Wisdom
In 1 Kings, King Solomon encounters two women who have an argument over whose baby is whose. Both women live together and apparently gave birth at the same time. One night, one of the women rolls over and smothers her baby. Seeing this, she quickly switches her dead baby for the other woman’s living baby. When the other woman wakes up, she finds that she’s holding her roommate’s dead baby–but her roommate refuses to return her living baby.
The women keep arguing about the baby in front of the king. In an era before DNA testing, King Solomon has to decide which woman is telling the truth. It’s each woman’s word against the other woman’s word. So the king asks for a sword and orders the baby cut in half to be split between the women.
Immediately, the real mother cries out to prevent this and to say that the other woman can have the baby. She’d rather watch her son grow up with another mom than allow him to die. However, the woman who accidentally smothered her baby agrees to this cruel plan of splitting the living baby. Solomon immediately gives the baby back to his real mother.
Why did this work? Because it revealed the woman who had the most to lose.
The woman whose baby is dead has nothing to lose, because there’s no way to get her infant back again. Her attitude toward both her dead baby and the other woman’s living baby shows her willingness to do anything to get her own needs met, even lie and risk the death of another infant. The other mother’s attitude shows that she loves her baby deeply and will do anything to take care of him. She’s the one who has the most to lose here.
How does this apply to Jane and Alex?
Let’s ask who has the most to lose here.
Alex is living with a friend (or on his own now). Maybe he’s seeing the children a few times a week, after school or on the weekends. He’ll probably watch a movie with them, take them out to McDonald’s for burgers, maybe get them to their soccer games. He can be a fun outing dad without doing any of the brunt-work of childcare at home.
Jane is still living with their eight children. She’s doing all the housework and all the daily childcare. Getting all the kids to school in the morning and home again in the afternoon and supervising all the homework. She’s also had to go back to work part-time to make ends meet. She’s doing everything—earning an income, housework, cooking, childcare—without any help.
Ask yourself what could have been so bad that after twenty years of marriage, Jane would ask Alex to leave and willingly become a single mom to eight children. How unsupported and unsafe must she have felt in her marriage, to risk taking on the precarious task of parenting alone? Do you actually think she’s “not trying hard enough to fix her marriage” or “taking the easy way out”?
But back to Alex, the “poor guy who got kicked out.” Did you ask him if he’s paying any amount of child support? Did you know that child support has strict rules and amounts set by the government and he should be paying this monthly to help his children? Did you furthermore know that many men ignore this court-ruled duty and get away with it?
Look Beyond the Facade
You’re not stupid if you weren’t suspicious of things being bad. It’s easy for a man to put on a nice shirt and play the pious victim at church events… but it doesn’t mean it’s reality. Remember that abusers are usually excellent actors, skilled in convincing others to think and do what they want. This is one of the things that keeps abuse hidden for so long.
So next time you meet a woman at church who just left her husband, even after many years of apparent happiness, remember that appearances can be deceiving, and give the woman the benefit of the doubt. Chances are she’s acting in the best interests of her children and herself, all of whom deserve to feel safe at home. Chances are this decision has been years in the making, and has come after many prayers and tears, and she’s terrified of what you and everyone else at church is going to say to her and about her.
Offer support, not judgment, and kindness, not critique. No one has a telescope into someone else’s marriage, so it is no one’s job to attack someone else’s decision about the well-being of their family. Some people may have judged Our Lady for being pregnant before marriage, but they didn’t have all the information required to understand her situation, nor do you in Jane’s situation. Your focus should not be on gathering gossip to see if things were really “bad enough” to justify her actions. Why? It’s not actually your business to “fix” it.
If you want to be a friend, offer to bring a meal over for Jane. The emotional load and stress she’s going through right now can make something simple like making dinner fell overwhelming. Or help watch her kids for an afternoon while she deals with difficult things like lawyer meetings or counseling appointments. Slip some special chocolate or money into her purse. Buy her a gift card for a massage. She probably really needs it.
Treat her with the dignity and respect she deserves as a grown woman. Treat her with the tenderness she deserves as a suffering daughter of God. See how now she smiles through her tears, because you have made her feel safe.
And keep her in your prayers too.
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