Marriage Moats-Tumor

Published: Tue, 02/01/11

Marriage Moats Caring for Marriage
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This morning I read the blog of a classmate who is battling stage four cancer.  She and her incredibly devoted husband have given everything they have to fighting this. They have zoomed across the country to pursue alternative treatments, which involve pain, nausea, time and expense. Recently they sold their home in order to move closer to a doctor who is on the cutting edge in oncology. They cram what is left of their previous life in between the incessant injections, scans and surgeries. 
 
I wonder if her husband still has his job, given the consuming demands of this disease. It is also hard to believe that insurance is covering all or most of these procedures, the transportation to get there and the accommodations during each stay. One needle, never mind the medication that went into it, cost $3000. Yet frugality does not seem to appear on their list of priorities. They made no mention of turning down a test because it was too dear.
 
I have the utmost respect for them both, and they are in my prayers. I relish that they are able to find gifts in the midst of all this agony, and that they are supported by friends and family. Probably their sense of cherishing each other has never been more poignant.
 
Marriages get sick too. They need emergency treatments, cutting edge procedures. I personally make a stab at providing books and resources to people who are in pain. There are expensive options out there too. John and I watched Tony Robbins in action, as he brought a miraculous healing to a husband and wife not thirty feet from us. His trainings carry a hefty price tag, along the lines of one specialty needle.  There are fleets of therapies, boot camps for anger management, cruises, counselors and relationship programs that offer miracle cures for couples. Divorce Busting, Imago, Beyond Affairs Network, Retrouvaille, Hedy and Yumi and PAIRS are all care providers in the field of marriage that have found ways to shrink the tumors that threaten the life expectancy of love.
 
Do people go to the same length to heal marriages as they do bodies? I expect to shed my earthly shell in a matter of two hundred months or so, but my marriage goes with me to a place where Time carries no sway.
 
Those who are in the combats of temptation regard the life of the world as of no account in comparison with the life of heaven, and consequently regard the death of their body as of no account in comparison with the life of the soul. Apocalypse Explained 750

 
Photo by Jenny Stein
www.caringformarriage.org