Back-seat Fighter
Would I ever learn to keep my comments about church antagonists to myself?
By Nancy Nicewonger
October 1, 2004
Holding his cell phone while driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, my husband acknowledged the caller, "Yes, I know who was in church today." Let me guess, I thought. Walter and Catherine just happened to show up, again, on the day you were on vacation. They were hugging and sharing and, oh, just maybe let a few concerns slip out about the pastor. Ending his call a few minutes later, Dan nodded. "They were in church again." "Yes, I heard," I said, glad that my previous response had not escaped my lips, and proud of myself, too, for not sharing every thought that enters my mind. Early in my marriage, I learned never, for any reason, to point, yell, grab the door, or comment while my husband was driving. When I gasped, his eyes left the road to look at me. He wanted a wife, not a back-seat driver. Once I watched as we slowly rear-ended a Suburban in a toll booth line. Dan was glaring at people laughing at my son's tricycle tied to the roof of our car. My last moment "Hey, Babe" got his attention so we could witness the bump together. He never asked why I didn't speak up sooner. A much harder lesson, though, has been my tendency to be a back-seat fighter. Church fights become our fights
When I fight with someone at work, Dan can take my side from afar. When someone fights with him at his work, I'm supposed to hug them and ask for their brownie recipe. In Dan's first full-time position as a youth minister, two families realized their children were no longer running the program. To correct this, the mothers came to "supervise" a meeting. Afterward they cornered Dan to "fix" the problem. From our apartment next door, I waited and stewed and boiled. Finally around 10:30 p.m. I called the pastor and told him to do something. He laughed ...
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