I’m writing this on the evening of Valentine’s Day, so maybe you expect love to fill my story, but no. It’s all about foxes.
First, let me take you back several years to one Sunday at church.
Before the music played that morning, our pastor approached Husband and asked to meet him for coffee. Could it even work that week, he said? He didn’t know my man well and didn’t give a reason for the sudden need to talk. I speculated.
“He’s going to ask you to be a mentor to someone,” I whispered to Husband during the service. “Maybe even to him.”
“Who knows?” he whispered back.
Later that week, Husband returned from the coffee meeting. “You were partially right.”
“I was?”
“He asked if the two of us would be marriage mentors.”
“Oh,” I said, “that’s kind of big.”
We flipped the idea around for a day or two and soon said yes. We were no experts, but why not try to help?
On each couple we mentored—all engaged couples, preparing for marriage—we sprinkled advice of one kind or another to go with the six-week curriculum. After each session, though, I zoomed in on us and our relationship. How were we doing?
The great lyric poem, The Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs)—that blush-inducing book that somehow made it into Holy Writ—answered my question.
Nestled among the lovesick murmurings on couches resplendent with figs and caresses comes a startling imperative: “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.”
The spotlight illuminates the relationship-destroyers, and it isn’t the big stuff that undoes marriages—at least not at first. The bickerings over the timing of oil changes or saving money by shopping at Aldi instead of Lunds or forgetting to reschedule the dental appointment or saying yes to a friend date over a family commitment—these are the little foxes gnawing at the healthy vines, the creatures digging holes in our well-watered soil. The clumps of snow on the wood floor, the parking ticket, the need for yet another Centerpoint repair, the disagreeing on the details of a memory. The invitations are endless.
Humility and resolve rush in. Admission is everything, isn’t it?
Now I read this writing to Husband, and he’s eyeing the landscape for foxes, and I believe he wants to invite one in. Who even cares if I took the truck last night instead of the car? The car’s gas gauge loomed over E, and I didn’t have time to fill the tank before my meeting. And there I go, holding the gate open for that furry intruder too.
But we can do something about those pesky intimacy-ruiners, and that’s what we choose today.
Husband, let’s go set some traps.
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