Instilling a Desire to Change
Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Katie, a thirty-five-year-old mother of two, first came to Pastor Frank Garrett to ask his help with her failing marriage. Her husband, Clark, had never been a churchgoer, and he resented Katie's involvement. They had married young; Katie had known Clark was not a Christian, and to marry him she defied her parents' wishes. Now Clark was refusing to let her bring the kids to church and ridiculing her mealtime prayers.
Pastor Frank tried to contact Clark, and Katie tried to get him to come for joint counseling, but he refused "to see any preachers." Eventually Clark walked out on the marriage and filed for divorce.
Strangely, however, this story is not about Clark's refusal to accept help. It's about Katie's.
Within three months of the divorce being finalized, Katie was engaged to another man — an acquaintance from work, who also never attended church and, as far as Frank could tell, had never made any sort of spiritual commitment.
When some of her friends began suggesting it was too soon to be dating again, let alone remarry, Katie began withdrawing from her church friends. When Frank phoned her, she seemed curt. He asked, "How is your relationship with Will any different from your relationship with Clark?"
"You just don't understand how tough it is to be a single parent," Katie told him. "I need a man in my life. My kids need a father."
She would not change her mind. She and Will got married in a civil ceremony, and Frank never saw Katie or her children again.
"She was getting into exactly ...
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