Amputee
Read the story first: Amputee.
Nugget of Wisdom
Two people become one on purpose. Nobody becomes half of one on purpose.
SOP
This is the hardest story in the workbook, and some of you are reading it as amputees. If that is you, you decide how much to share tonight, and the group follows your lead. Sit facing each other. If comfortable, hold hands. Think of something that was once part of you and is gone. A marriage, a parent, a career, a friend, a piece of your own body. Tell your partner what daily life is like without it. What you had to learn to do differently. Focus on the walking again, not on the wound. When you come together as a group, keep it gentle. Nobody gets fixed tonight.
Questions
- What have you had to learn to function without? How long did it take before you stopped reaching for it?
- In my story, the missing part was the very thing that nourished the people around me. Whose nourishment depended on the thing you lost?
- The enemy uses smoke, fog, and mirrors. What has he told you about your marriage that looked like truth? Say it out loud, and let your partner answer it.
- If you are married, what part of yourself have you crucified so the two of you could become one? What part are you still holding back?
- What consequence did you try to weigh once, that turned out heavier than you could have known?
Closing Reflection
I am not writing this to tell anybody whether to stay or go. Scripture allows divorce, and it says the Lord detests it, and both of those are true at the same time. I am writing as a man who learned to walk again with part of himself gone, and I am telling you the road after is harder than anybody imagines when they are looking at it from the near side. If you are in the fog tonight, do not decide anything in the fog. If you are already on the road, you can still walk. I do. One line, if you need one: “Lord, show me what is fog and what is true.”
Mission for the Week
This week, one of you spends one full day with an arm out of service. Put it in a sling, keep it in your pocket, whatever it takes, from breakfast to bed. Cook, drive, dress, do the dishes. Notice everything that takes two hands. The other one watches and does not help unless asked. The next day, trade.
If somebody in your group is living this for real, skip the sling and let them lead the conversation instead. They know more than the exercise does.
At the end, sit down and talk about what you could not do alone, and what you did not know your partner did with that hand.
Then the real mission. Name one thing in your marriage that you have been quietly weighing. Not to decide it. To take it out of the fog and put it on the table where two people can see it.
The sling comes off at the end of the day. Be thankful for that. Then go put on the table the thing you have been weighing, while there are still two of you to look at it, and before anybody has to learn to live without the other.
Drafted for review — not yet approved by Ron.