Mark 10 – Servant Leadership

In the summer of 1989, the Smith kids contracted the chicken pox.  Besides affording a week-long visit from itchy, plague-like spots which we were told must not be scratched at any cost, the highly contagious virus also required quarantining.  To keep from spreading the virus, we had to stay home and keep away from other kids—except those who had already endured the virus.  This group was now immune.

Thankfully for us, our cousin Lori was among the latter group.  And so she had come up from Virginia for the week to keep us all company at Camp Chicken Pox.  As a recent camp graduate herself, her presence was a welcomed breath of fresh air.  Together, we filled our days with all manner of games and outdoor antics, laughing and delighting in our cousin’s endless diversions.

But what we all knew was that our cousin had her own need for diversions.  This week had been a difficult one for her as well, but from very different circumstances.  Her parents’ marriage had been strained for the last year, and now her dad had decided to walk away from the family.  He wanted a divorce.

We were all aware of this, but were unsure what—if anything—to say to Lori about the subject.  None of us said a word about it until one day later in the week.

We were out exploring the woods when the topic of her parents’ divorce came up for the first time.  Some specifics from our conversation that day have blurred in my memory, but the feelings that accompanied them remain vivid, though difficult to articulate.

“So, is he still your dad?” one of us asked as we walked along.

“Oh, he’ll always be my dad.” Lori’s reply was quick, and in a way comforting, though the sense of loss between her words did not pass by unfelt.

It was as if some unknown, grown-up heaviness had descended from the trees overhead, alighting for a moment on our young shoulders as we walked.  The conversation continued, our words unfamiliar and weighty, out of place after a week of carefree laughter and make-believe play.  It seemed this was a subject from another world, a distant, grown-up world we didn’t understand; and would we ever?

Divorce.  God hates it (Micah 2:16), but He allows it for our sakes in certain conditions.  Like a tourniquet applied to a severed limb, sometimes this extreme maneuver is necessary to preserve what is left from further harm.  And so we cast no stones here; the weight is heavy enough.  But we remember this: like small children struggling to carry a subject too heavy for them, divorce is a burden we were never intended to bear.  But given over to the hands of a loving God, this too can be carried, even redeemed.

“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
        is God in his holy dwelling.” – Psalm 68:5

Reuben Smith