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WITH HER HUSBAND TRYING so hard to make everyone at Orchard Grove love him, Katrina still couldn’t understand why he refused to preach a traditional Advent sermon series through the month of December. Several of the congregants had already made it known they expected the four weeks leading up to Christmas to be full of nothing but wise men and shepherds and little baby Jesus asleep on the hay.
For some reason, though, Greg had it in that stubborn head of his that a preacher’s job was to teach directly out of Scripture regardless of tradition or liturgy or holiday schedules. When the adult Sunday school class made it to the end of Second Corinthians, he moved the very next Sunday to Galatians. In the same way, he refused to stop teaching through First Samuel until he reached the end of the book. Even if you weren’t a strict traditionalist like so many folks at Orchard Grove, December was still a strange month for a sermon about Nabal, the fool, and his wife, Abigail (who is either prudent or rebellious depending on which commentator you listen to). Katrina wouldn’t tell her husband, but she would have picked the shepherds if the choice were left up to her.
Greg defended Abigail’s behavior for the most part, insisting that even though she went behind her husband’s back, her actions saved the lives of their entire household. Katrina could never hear a sermon about husbands and wives without thinking about her mother. Divorced twice before finally catching an early Internet entrepreneur who’d already made his multimillions, Katrina’s mom was probably the last person worthy of doling out marital advice, even though that did nothing to stop her.
“You need to find a husband who will not only provide for your lifestyle but who will also give you the independence you need.” That’s what she’d been drilling into Katrina’s head from the time she was on husband number two, a plastic surgeon who had no issue sleeping with his patients, whether or not he happened to be married to one of them at the time.
Sometimes Katrina wondered if her mom’s biggest problem with Greg wasn’t that he was a poor minister but that he would try to control Katrina’s life. “I’ve seen men like him,” her mother warned. “Christian men who believe it’s their God-given duty to demand nothing but blind allegiance from their wives. He’ll have no problem beating you into submission if you show the slightest trace of independent thinking.”
Ironic that after two decades of doing nothing but controlling and manipulating Katrina’s life, her mom was now all of a sudden concerned about her daughter achieving a healthy sense of independence.
“If you marry that man,” she’d said, refusing from the very first day to ever speak his name, “you better pray that he lets you continue playing for the symphony and teaching your lessons, and you better make sure to put that money in your own account under your own name and don’t let him touch it. Best if he doesn’t even know about it if that’s at all possible. That’s your only ticket to freedom when you realize that the fairytale you’re hoping for is nothing but a lie.”
Not exactly the pre-engagement pep talk most girls would expect.
At the time, Katrina had been so in love with Greg, so emboldened by his passion for her, that her mother’s words and dire warnings hardly bothered her. And even now that they were married, Greg certainly didn’t try to beat her into submission. That was ridiculous. Sure, sometimes he asked her to do things she didn’t want to do, like go to the stupid fundraising teas or holiday decorating parties with the Women’s Missionary League, but he would never force her to do anything against her will. Katrina didn’t have to ask permission or tiptoe around her husband like he was some kind of dictator.
No, that was the way her mother operated. Reading all of her daughter’s diaries until Katrina finally developed her own style of cursive scribbles that were entirely indecipherable by anyone but herself. Refusing to let Katrina do anything other than school and music her entire teen years, so that the night she and Greg chaperoned the little dance at the Christian school, it was the very first dance Katrina had ever attended.
Her mom had worried about Greg controlling her life, but really she was just afraid that someone would come and free Katrina from her clutches. Rescue her from her mother’s psychotic need to stay in charge of every aspect, every minute detail of Katrina’s life.
No matter how hard things got here at Orchard Grove, no matter how bleak the dreary winters and how stressful her position as first lady of this uppity country church, it was still better than the life she’d left. Maybe sometimes it felt like she’d exchanged one form of slavery for another, but she would rather be here with Greg and his stressed-out moodiness than go back and live under her mother’s control again.
There were blessings in everything, a purpose for everything. Life wouldn’t always be this hard either. Eventually, things would have to get better. She just had to find the patience to wait until then.