The Promise (13 page)

 24 

M
arilyn walked back toward a little souvenir booth the tour group had passed about thirty minutes ago. As she did, she kept looking back over her shoulder, but she wasn't noticing the most obvious thing in view, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She was looking at Jim standing just below it. Each time she saw him she nudged him with her prayers, asking God to give him the courage to talk with Brian Holbart and give him the wisdom to know what to say.

Today, Jim and Marilyn had woken up at a charming bed-and-breakfast villa just outside the town. As they ate breakfast, they noticed the Holbarts didn't say a word to each other. At one point, Marilyn looked up to find Brian eating alone. Jim had said if God gave him an opportunity today, he would try to talk to Brian.

Well, the opportunity had come.

After breakfast, the group was led on a one-hour guided tour, where they learned some fascinating facts about the infamous tower—not just details about its history but all the efforts being made now to keep it from leaning over too far. Jim had whispered to her, “Imagine your claim to fame as a city is that 850
years ago some lousy engineers built this bell tower on a puny foundation with unstable soil. If they had built it right, nobody would probably even visit this town.”

After the tour had ended, the group was given two hours to walk around on their own. Of course, everyone immediately began taking turns posing for the obligatory picture where you stand just far enough away from the tower and hold out your hand so that it looks like you are keeping it from toppling over altogether. Jim and Marilyn had opted to skip that picture and instead asked Brian and Amanda to snap one of them in a more affectionate pose. Jim stood behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and snuggled his chin on her shoulder. When Jim had offered to take a picture of them, Amanda politely declined.

A few minutes later, Marilyn had noticed Brian standing under the tower by himself. Amanda was nowhere in sight. That's when she whispered to Jim, “Now's your chance.” Jim's eyes bugged out a moment, and he shook his head no.

A few moments later, he changed his mind. “Do you still want to buy those Leaning Tower figurines you were looking at before?” Marilyn nodded. “Maybe you could do that now,” he said, “while I talk to Brian?”

“I'll be praying for you,” she had replied.

Now she was standing by that booth. She turned to look back once more. Jim was definitely saying something to Brian. Across the field, she couldn't see his mouth moving, but his hands were talking up a storm.

She wanted this to go well for another reason beyond just the obvious desire to help out this young couple. She hoped it would inspire Jim to initiate a similar conversation with his own son when they got home to Florida in a few days.

“But Jim, she's just being ridiculous. Do you know what she said to me this morning? She said, ‘I'm not sure you even love me anymore.' Can you believe that? I must have told her I loved her half a dozen times since we got here. I spent thousands of dollars to take her on this ‘romantic adventure,' used up half of my vacation time, and she says that to me?” Brian seemed almost at the breaking point.

“Mind if I ask why you took this trip in the first place?”

“To prove to her that I
do
love her, that she means more to me than my business. She's been saying for months that I don't love her the way I used to, that my business and even my friends matter more to me than she does.”

“And that's not true?”

“Of course it's not true. We're here, aren't we?”

“I see you here,” Jim said. “But where is she? Where's Amanda?”

“Right,” Brian said, looking down as he leaned against the railing. “Where is she?”

Jim turned around and leaned next to him. “See, Brian, changing locations—even coming to a romantic place like this—won't fix these kinds of things.” That reminded Jim of something he heard in a sermon a few Sundays ago. “My pastor said in a sermon once that changing things on the outside can't fix problems in our hearts. That's like a dog running down the hall trying to get away from its fleas. He doesn't realize the fleas go wherever he goes.”

“Our problems certainly followed us here to Italy,” Brian said.

“I'm not trying to judge you. You know that, right? I'm just trying to be a friend. My wife and I almost called it quits last summer, after twenty-seven years of marriage. Well, she almost did. I was so dull, I didn't even see it coming. It turned out, she had been unhappy, seriously unhappy, for years. One day I came home and she was gone.”

A startled look came over Brian's face. “Really?”

“Really. We're on this Italy trip for the same reason you guys are. It's like a second honeymoon for us. I spent the money and took off the time from work for the same reasons you did.”

Brian sighed. “But it's working for the two of you. Every time I see you, you're both smiling. Always holding hands, always touching. Amanda's even talked about it. She points at you two and says, ‘That's what it looks like when a couple is in love.' She said it, implying, not like us.”

Jim almost got choked up hearing this. “Brian, just last summer I thought I had lost Marilyn for good. I had so destroyed our relationship, she didn't even want to be with me, wouldn't even talk to me for almost two months.”

Brian stood up straight. “I find that hard to believe, looking at you now.”

“It's true. I would never have imagined back then that we'd ever feel these kinds of feelings for each other again. I thought they were gone for good.” Jim's eyes started welling up with tears. He quickly blinked them back.

“You really
are
serious,” Brian said. “So what did you do? How did you win her back?”

“For starters, I learned how to dance.”

“What?”

Jim laughed. “It's a long story. Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime. The thing is, I had to be willing to do whatever it took. And I had to learn from scratch what the Bible says about being a good husband. We're not like the animals, we don't have all these instincts that click into place and get us doing the right things at the right times. If we're going to learn them, we have to be taught. Why don't you give me your email address and I'll send you some of the materials my dance instructor gave me?”

“About dancing?”

“No, about marriage. About relationships. About why they
fail and what makes them work. But I'd like to share one thing with you right now, something that just might help you salvage what's left of this Italy trip.”

“I wish you would,” Brian said. “I'm open to try anything.”

Just then Jim caught the hand signal of a father getting ready to take a picture of his family in front of the Tower. He and Brian were standing in the way. “How about we get out of this family's picture first. Let's go stand over there.” They moved about twenty paces away. Jim looked around and saw Marilyn standing at the edge of the field, not far from the row of souvenir booths that ran along the main road. She waved, made a little hand gesture to indicate she was praying. Jim wanted to wave back but didn't want to interrupt their conversation. He was close to wrapping up anyway.

“Brian, if I asked you what's really bothering Amanda, what's really upsetting her and making her feel frustrated about your relationship, could you tell me what she'd say?”

Brian thought a moment. “No, I'm not sure I could.”

“And how much talking about your problems have the two of you been doing since you got here?”

“You mean how much fighting? We're not doing a lot of talking. But I understand what you're saying. We've been talking a lot.”

“And yet with all that talking,” Jim said, “you're not any closer to understanding what's going on inside her, are you?”

Brian shook his head no.

“I think the reason is you're probably doing the same thing I did for years, the same things most guys do with their wives. See, we make the mistake of thinking communication is about understanding our wives'
words
. But the truth is, good communication is more than that. It's about understanding the
feelings
behind those words. It's about listening to Amanda's heart, not just the things she says. And it's definitely not about
you making sure she understands and agrees with what you're saying.”

“Listening to Amanda's heart,” Brian repeated. “I don't think I'm any good at that.”

“Maybe not now, Brian. But you can learn this. I'm serious. I was as thick as these medieval walls around here, and I learned how. The starting point, though, is simple. You have to first accept that this is the goal when you and Amanda are talking. It's not making her see your points, it's about understanding her heart, and then not reacting in anger or getting defensive when she finally does open up and share what's bothering her. Man, that part's real important. You get angry, you'll shut her right down, blow the whole thing.”

Brian nodded. It seemed the lights were coming on.

“I suggest you go find her, wherever she is, and apologize to her as strongly as you can. Tell her you really want to understand her, and ask her if she'll hit the reset button and give you another chance. If she will, then you just start asking her questions and keep asking her more questions.
What
questions.
Why
questions. Anything that will give you a clue about how she's really feeling. And then shock her by not correcting her or adjusting anything she says. This conversation is not about fixing Amanda. It's about hearing her heart. I can almost promise you, you do this and you'll see progress right away, maybe even a mini-breakthrough.”

At some point, while Jim was talking, a tear had slipped down Brian's face. He wiped it away, shook Jim's hand, and said, “I can't thank you enough, Jim. If you'll excuse me, I've got to go find someone.”

As Brian walked away and blended in with the crowd, Jim spotted Marilyn walking across the field in his direction, reading something on her cell phone. He met her halfway.