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Pastor Greg is bucking convention, which is never a wise move within the walls of Orchard Grove Bible Church. He’s not preaching a typical Joseph-and-Mary sermon like every other pastor I’ve heard in December. The way he explains it, he’s committed to teaching a book of the Bible straight through, come hell or high water or Advent season.
Another reason I doubt he’ll be here the next time I’m crazy enough to step foot in this sanctuary.
So in keeping with his sermon schedule, he’s in the Old Testament, talking to us about Abigail, the woman who went behind her husband’s back to save her household from King David’s wrath.
I find it interesting and a little disappointing that someone as prudent as Abigail never finds herself listed among the famous women of the Old Testament. I mean, you’ve got Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel and Leah — the matriarchs who are revered for bearing sons for their husbands no matter how pathetic or conniving some of them were as mothers. You’ve got the villainesses like Jezebel and Delilah, women who are downright intriguing for no other reason than their sheer wickedness. And then thrown into the mix are those noble ladies (in deed if not in birth), women like Ruth and Esther and that so annoyingly perfect Proverbs 31 woman.
Each one has their place. You’ve got the mothers, you’ve got the villains, and you’ve got the larger-than-life heroines. But where does Abigail fall into the mix?
Two decades of attending church services, and I’ve only heard one other pastor who touched on Abigail’s story. Abigail, the woman unfortunate enough to find herself married to a fool. The woman who intervened when David and his men had set their hearts on killing her entire household, whose graciousness and tact not only saved her husband’s life but eventually landed her a spot as one of David’s wives.
Contemporary American evangelicalism doesn’t know what to do with Abigail. She’s no matriarch. If she bore David sons, they weren’t the Solomons or the Absaloms or any of the others who made biblical history. She was certainly no villain, or else David the man after God’s own heart wouldn’t have honored her by inviting her to join his small harem. But we have trouble placing her alongside those honorable ladies like Esther or Ruth because Abigail’s the only woman in Scripture who explicitly goes against her husband’s wishes yet isn’t condemned for it.
In fact, she’s rewarded. According to Pastor Greg, “She knew that her God-given mandate to respect her husband ended when Nabal’s actions put her and her household in jeopardy.”
I think about my friend Mel, about the way she and her three kids sneaked out of their trailer in the middle of the night to escape from her ex. Then how she made so many excuses to the cops after Kai did or didn’t hit her with his truck. How I became the enemy for daring to think about getting the authorities involved in her little lovers’ spat.
I suppose Mel could use a sermon like this. In fact, the more I dwell on it, the more I want to take her by both shoulders and shake her. Think about your children. Mel’s not even religious. She doesn’t have the burden of a conservative upbringing that tells her it’s a sin to be anything other than the submissive, obedient wife.
“Abigail is an example of a resourceful, godly, and highly capable woman who could very well have ended up killed or raped by one of David’s men if she did what her husband expected of her. Instead, she went against her husband’s wishes and made peace with the future king.” Greg’s getting himself quite worked up as he goes, not breaking into a profuse sweat or spraying the front-row congregants like you do when you preach, but there’s fervor and intensity in his voice.
And I’m sitting here wondering how many missionary league women he just offended by using the word rape.
The funny thing is I heard another sermon about Abigail back at Orchard Grove years ago, a sermon in which she was criticized and lambasted for daring to call her husband a fool in the presence of another man. “The fact that God spared Abigail’s life is a testimony of his grace and forgiveness, which he offers to even the most rebellious of hearts,” the pastor had said. He went on to tell us that if Abigail had stayed with her fool of a husband, God would have certainly protected her and given her even greater rewards for her obedience and submission. Of course, this was the same pastor who encouraged the church secretary to take her repentant alcoholic husband back into her home. Two weeks later, they were all dead — the husband, the wife, and their eight-year-old twins — in Orchard Grove County’s only murder-suicide in anyone’s living memory.
You know, I wasn’t lying when I said Chris never hit me. Maybe that explains why I stayed with him. I can’t tell you how many times I promised myself that the second he raised his hand to me, I’d be gone. I wouldn’t be one of those submissive doormats that lays herself out to get walked on time and time again.
But even now I wonder. Wonder if I would have found the courage to leave if he had beaten me senseless. If my life was in danger. I hate that there’s still so much of the victim in me, the part that wants to gloss over Chris’s faults and praise him for his efforts to improve himself.
Because he did try. We’ve all got our demons to fight, and I watched Chris struggle against his with the faith and devotion that would put the most ardent of saints to shame.
That’s the part of the story you’re most familiar with, I guess. You jumped right in to try to help him when we attended Valley Tabernacle. I don’t remember how long the two of you kept up your regular Thursday night meetings, but even now, I’m surprised Chris went through with it. Submitted himself to that four-hour long prayer session where you and the elders laid hands on him and muttered away in tongues for him to find deliverance from the spirit of rage. You ministered to my husband like the most skilled of counselors would intervene on behalf of a relapsing addict. I lost count of how many times you fasted for him. There was one period where you called him every single evening at nine o’clock sharp to listen to whatever confessions he had to offer and to pray for him to find victory from the anger that held him captive.
And isn’t it interesting how you and the entire leadership team at Valley Tabernacle encamped around my husband, fought against the forces of evil on his behalf, fasted and prayed and wept for his deliverance, and even then you never once asked me how his actions impacted me personally? If I felt safe? If I needed a place to go? If my husband had ever hurt me?
That first year of marriage is rocky whether or not your lifelong sweetheart has anger issues that he concealed so skillfully during your ten-year courtship. And maybe some people might listen to my story and feel sorry for me. Maybe wonder why I didn’t leave him at the beginning or at least distance myself until he sorted through some of his personal issues.
But that would be neglecting to consider the times in our marriage — yes, even in that horrific first year — when we were truly happy.
Happy to take turns reading to one another at night or waiting to hear the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for literature like some people engross themselves in the Academy Awards or the NFL draft.
Happy to get plugged even deeper into life at Valley Tabernacle, where Chris took over the sound ministry and I was asked to edit and design the monthly newsletter. Even those cruelly embarrassing intimacy issues began to resolve themselves as I discovered that your body and your mind can learn to adapt so that what once was shameful and degrading might eventually become a normal and expected part of life.
I’ve always thought that our culture puts too much emphasis on black-and-white labels. There are good marriages and there are bad marriages. There are good spouses and horrible ones. Isn’t the truth of the matter that we’re all somewhere in between?
It’s possible that Chris and I could have learned to grow even closer in spite of the tumultuous beginning. It’s possible that all your prayers and all your pleading with the Almighty might have finally brought about a dramatic change in him, as miraculous as my deliverance from suicide.
But as you yourself already know, our lives were destined to take a much different route.