Getting to Greensboro

Eighth Monday after Pentecost

First, let me note that I got my 14th survey response today. That's great. I still wouldn't mind getting a few more. The survey result that has surprised and amazed me is that almost everyone listed Faith Journey Day as their favorite. I don't think of myself as having all that interesting a life. I'm a nerd. I have no grand testimony of a life of sin, then an amazing conversion experience. My sins tend to be of a minor sort. A happy day for me is praying the Daily Office, reading, cooking, eating, talking to Marianne, and watching a little TV. The one exciting thing in my life is lot of travel (31 countries), but all of that occurs after the point where we now are in my Faith Journey narrative. In any case, I'm glad for your interest.

In summer of 1983 we moved from Lenoir City, Tennessee (a suburb of Knoxville) to Greensboro, and I moved from being Chaplain and Asst. Prof. of Religion at Tennessee Wesleyan College to being Chaplain and Assistant Professor at Greensboro College. Marianne moved from being a Teacher in Lenoir City to having no job but looking for one in Greensboro. April by this point had moved from Rocky Mount to Raleigh. The distance between us shrunk from about 350 miles to 70 miles. 

What was a vast improvement for me was exactly the opposite for Ed, my new stepson John's father.

I won't go into too much detail, but there is a lesson in this. Ed was very upset when we told him about the move. He was also Assistant District Attorney of the County. He went at it legally. There would have to be a new divorce agreement. He presented us with a new agreement that had purposefully unreasonable demands. They included our bringing John one weekend a month to Ed's home on Friday night, our finding somewhere to Marianne and me to stay for the weekend, then bringing John back to Greensboro on Sunday night. On top of that we would be required to take John eight times a year to see his paternal grandparents in Manchester, Tenn., about 400 miles from Greensboro. There were also financial changes not in our favor. Ed said that if we did not sign the agreement, he would sue for custody. Being ADA, he knew the legal system and knew all the judges. We had about two weeks to decide. 

It was the single most stressful time in my life. I prayed a lot. I couldn't eat. Both Marianne and I talked to all our friends. Their opinion was unanimous. We should fight it in court. We got a lawyer. She was thrilled. She thought it would be an easy case. The agreement was utterly unreasonable. Our parenting John was exemplary. There was no way we could lose. The lawyer wanted to go for more, to counter sue Ed. She was certain we would win. She gave us a few days to think about it.

We did. April was there with us for a visit during that time. She was 9. John was 13. We told her nothing about it and told John as little as we reasonably could. We took them to Manchester, stopping for a pleasant picnic atop Lookout Mountain, with its fabulous view of the Tennessee River and the city of Chattanooga. I can't help but think that April realized the tension in the air (I'll ask her). 

Marianne said she wanted to go along with whatever I decided was best to do. I did a lot of prayer and fasting (the fasting was inadvertent. I simply couldn't eat anything). There was no option to stay in Tennessee. I had already resigned from my job.  I realized that after a court fight, even if we won, it would result in a lifetime of hostility between us and Ed, with John caught in the middle. He didn't deserve that. In a moment, in the flash of a second, the decision came to me. We would go against what all our friends and our lawyer were telling us. We would sign the agreement. In that moment I felt all my tension go away. My whole body relaxed. My appetite returned. 

We signed the agreement. Ed was surprised. Everyone was. Our lawyer thought we were fools. It would be rough on us, but we would do it. 

Then came the big surprise.  Within two months after our moving to Greensboro, Ed called and said that on the weekends John was to come to Tennessee, he would meet us halfway. For the next four years every month we met at Wendy's at Black Mountain for John to go with Ed on Friday night on Sunday for John to come back with us. Ed never enforced the part about taking John to his grandparents eight times a year. In the financial part of the agreement, Ed took the child support decrease and put it and more into a college account for John. Hostility was gone. Now, all these years later, almost every year when we have Christmas dinner at John and Jessica's house, we sit with Ed and his new mate Selma, and talk about how great John turned out and how wonderful our common grandchildren are. 

As I quoted to you a couple of months ago from Proverbs,

"A soft answer turns away wrath."

Thanks be to God.

Faithfully,

Christian