William told me a lot about Gina. He told me about a time when they were struggling financially, and she was working part-time, but she gave money to her irresponsible brothers who spent it on expensive cars. I explained that she had not cut ties with her family. I wanted him to see that it was hard for her to leave her family. It was like being married to two families at once. It was especially hard, because she was young when they married. She was still a teenager, still going through new experiences. I felt he needed to be patient and give her time to grow up.
I saw a little bit of light shine in when I explained this. It helped a lot, because it turned the focus off of Gina’s faults and onto Gina herself, a person struggling with her life. William appreciated this, and he turned to Osmond to tell him about it.
A couple of times I actually saw the effects even as I talked to him. I said, “There’s a difference between struggling with someone and struggling against someone.” I could see in his face that he knew exactly what I meant. He said quietly, “Do I have to do all these things?” The question blew me away. It showed that he was really taking these words seriously. I thought I had no chance with his pastor fighting against me, but here he saw that what I had to tell him was something better, something higher.
Still William was in a pattern of seeing the worst in Gina. He told me that he saw Gina in a parking lot outside a grocery store. She had a Mercedes, and she stood at the door of the car yelling at someone. He said with a frown, “She looked like a drug dealer.” He didn’t know what she was saying, but seeing her this way brought back unpleasant memories, and that was all that he could see in her.
I told William a method for forgiving Gina, but he insisted that he already forgave her. I finally looked him in the eye. “You don’t care if Gina dies and goes to hell.” He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing I can do about it.” If I accused a Christian of not caring if his wife went to hell, I would expect him to say, “Yes, I do.” I said it to William on two occasions, and he responded coldly, “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
My friend showed that he was a better person than his wife. As we talked about the bad things she had done, I tried to point beyond the sins and to a person, frustrated with her life. Unfortunately, I realized that his reason for mentioning those things was to build the biggest case against her. We weren’t on the same “page.”
