To the Brink and Back

September/October 2008 Issue | Posted by Daria Sockey in Features

By Daria Sockey

“I am so tired,” Greg Alexander said one evening to his wife, Julie.

“Me, too,” Julie replied. “Let’s get to bed early for a change.”

Greg sighed. “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean emotionally tired. Julie, I’m done. I want a divorce.”

Julie barely paused to digest this. Really, it was no huge surprise.

It was 1984. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” was popular on the radio and “Dallas” and “Dynasty” were TV hits. Greg was a junior in college, Julie a freshman. Julie’s roommate was their mutual friend who promised to introduce them at an upcoming dance.

Greg recalls, “Before I even knew who she was, I saw this deeply tanned blonde walking across the room. I was stunned. I kept wishing this would be the Julie I’d already heard so much about, and sure enough, my wish came true! We hardly danced at all, but just sat talking outside until 2 a.m. Then I took the gold heart off my chain and gave it to her, saying I knew this was sudden, and that she could give it back at any time. But she said, ‘I think I’ll wear it for the rest of my life — I think you’re the man I want to marry.’”

After three years of “engaged dating,” Julie and Greg married in 1987. Both of them were Catholic, but neither was very knowledgeable about or committed to their faith.

Greg’s parents had not really practiced the faith for many years. Julie had very devout parents, but since leaving home she had not really followed their example beyond keeping up Sunday Mass attendance. The couple’s pre-Cana class gave a very superficial presentation of the Catholic vision for marriage.

After graduation, Greg had joined the army and trained as a medical technologist, so they left Texas for his first duty station in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Julie recalls the happiness of their early married life: “It was just us — we had no relatives around and very few friends at first. It was our intention to start a family immediately, and I was blessed with a pregnancy almost at once. At this stage, Greg was not paid a whole lot, but we were so happy, content just to take walks together and do simple things. Christopher was born 10 months after the wedding. We loved parenthood. Greg was wonderful; he’d love to hold and take care of the baby. Greg was on the post’s basketball team, but instead of going out with the guys after the games, he wanted to come home to be with us.”

Although they were blissful in newlywed “poverty,” Julie and Greg dreamed of an affluent future.

They kept a scrapbook of pictures clipped from magazines — fancy houses, cars, and high-end vacation spots. Someday soon, they hoped to have it all.

Greg’s next Army assignment was in Colorado, where Julie’s extended family lived. It was great to be near Julie’s parents, although Greg admits he didn’t understand their penchant for discussing the Catholic faith.

“I thought all that stuff was for priests and bishops, not ordinary people,” said Greg. And it didn’t even occur to Julie that her parents’ happy marriage had much to do with their faith. “I thought it was just them, that no one else could attain the kind of marriage they had.”

Buying Into the Lie

Their daughter Lauren was born in 1989. At the post-partum checkup, Julie’s doctor said, “Now you have a boy and a girl — a perfect family. One of you needs to consider getting ‘fixed.’”

“We just looked at each other, dumbfounded,” says Julie. “I’d only heard the term ‘fixed’ for cats and dogs. ‘What do you mean?’ we innocently asked. ‘Tubes or vasectomy,’ he answered. Until then, it hadn’t even occurred to us.”

“But then we started thinking about it,” says Greg. “I thought. ‘Hey, that would be pretty cool. We could get on with our dreams of the good life and maybe be millionaires by the time our two kids were in high school.’ We started thinking life was all about us.”

Greg soon had a vasectomy.

Shortly after he left the military, a friend in Austin, Texas, suggested that Greg, with his charming personality and background in medical technology, might be a natural for a career in pharmaceutical sales. He even knew of an opening there in Austin. Would Greg be interested?

“I knew those salesmen did really well,” says Greg. “So I went down for the interview and got the job. We left Colorado and moved to Texas.”

Greg was wildly successful in his new career. Soon the Alexanders were accumulating all the fine things they had dreamed of. The scrapbook of dreams had become a reality. New cars, a luxurious home, membership in a prestigious fitness club, and a boat.

“We could press a button and watch our boat being lowered into the lake. Really cool. But then the trouble started,” says Greg.

Julie agreed.

“We were never thankful for all this, but were always looking for ways to get even more stuff,” she says. “I stayed home with the kids the first two years, but we hung out with couples who were, like us, centered on ‘getting ahead’ in life. The wives were very career-minded. At our get-togethers they would talk about their great jobs and raises. They’d keep asking if I was still just staying home with the kids, and did I really get anything out of that? Soon I wished my hard work could be acknowledged with a salary. I wanted to prove to our friends that I could ‘do something’ with my life, that I could make more money than any of them.”

Julie went to work for her health club selling memberships. Soon, like Greg, she discovered her own gift for sales, and was making more money than she had thought possible. She moved up to marketing director for the club, and found herself getting addicted to success: “‘There she is, our No. 1 salesperson’ — I thought this was cool, being glorified by others.”

But in order to sell lots of memberships, Julie also had to have a perfect body — to be a walking advertisement for the club. So working out became an obsession: “I’d wake up early, work out, use the tanning salon, and work out again in the evening. I had to take the kids to McDonald’s for dinner — really healthy, right? — so that I would have more time to make myself look healthy.”

It was similar for Greg, who moved from one sales job to another, always in search of ever higher earnings. “The babysitters must have loved us,” he says. “We were never home, because in order to be good at sales you had to be at all kinds of meetings, functions, trainings, happy hours, and whatnot. I traveled everywhere, filling my ego. In reality, it was pretty sad.”

At first Greg was happy with his wife working.

“It allowed us to buy more and do more,” he recalls. “But after about two years I began to discover that even after attaining all this luxury I was still not happy. I tried to explain to Julie, but she thought something was wrong with me. She felt I was giving up on our dreams. But I had realized having lots of money was not enough when the price was never spending time together.”

Julie didn’t see what Greg was talking about.

“If someone had asked me at the time, I would have said we had a great marriage. When Greg suggested it wasn’t so great, I said, ‘What do you mean? I cook, I clean, and I bring home this huge paycheck!’ To me, loving someone meant serving them, doing things for their welfare, and I certainly thought I was doing that. My mind was set on fulfilling our dreams [of material success] as the way to serve my husband and family.”

Another reason Julie didn’t appreciate Greg’s wish for more attention was that she felt quite fulfilled by all the attention and acclaim she was getting at work.

“But to be fair,” says Greg, “it was a Catch-22 situation for her, because I never gave her much appreciation when she was a stay-at-home mom and I was building my career.”

Julie could not take Greg’s complaints seriously. She even went on to accept a new, higher paying job in San Antonio — a 90-minute drive away from home. Soon she was only coming home every Wednesday and Friday. They continued to go to Mass every Sunday —“mainly to please my parents,” says Julie. “Although they lived far away, I worried they might find out somehow!”

A Decision Made — Then Delayed

Greg finally announced that he wanted a divorce, and Julie agreed.

“But my very next thought was, ‘What will my parents say?!’ Still, when we called them, they were calm and didn’t take sides. They just listened, and said, ‘We love you and are praying for you both.’ And I think they soon had everyone they knew praying for us, too.”

Those prayers had some immediate effect: The Alexanders felt a great reluctance to take any legal steps towards a divorce. They simply “coexisted” for the next several months. They made some efforts at getting help, talking to their parish priest, who referred them to a marriage counselor.

“But the counselor just told us what we wanted to hear,” Julie says, “that our marriage was hopelessly broken — and that will be $100, please! Next couple!”

Greg and Julie told the children, then ages 8 and 9, what they were contemplating. “They huddled in a corner together and cried their eyes out,” Julie recalls. “We just dismissed it. We knew other divorced couples whose kids got over it. We figured we’d get them some counseling and they’d be okay. That was how cold-hearted we’d become. It was all about us.”

But the Alexanders still didn’t start divorce proceedings.

“Deep down inside, I don’t think we really wanted to. We just hadn’t found a way to make it work,” says Greg.

A new priest was in temporary residence at the Alexanders’ parish. Greg and Julie really felt drawn to Father Ronnie Jenkins, and for several weeks would hang around after Mass, chatting with him. Finally they decided to make an appointment to see him and tell him everything.

At this point, Greg and Julie had been in their holding pattern long enough. They figured that after hearing their careful explanation of why their marriage was hopeless, Father would “bless” their decision to divorce, and his support would give them the final nudge to actually go through with it.

But that isn’t what happened. After quietly hearing Greg and Julie out, Father Jenkins asked some questions. What is God’s intention for marriage? What does the Church teach? What does St. Paul say about marriage?

Julie and Greg admitted they had no idea. He told them to go home and study these things before making a decision.

Exploring the Truth

Greg says, “Even though we felt that we could not go on in our relationship, something inside us said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’”

What followed was remarkable. After locating their rarely opened Bible, dusting off a Catechism of the Catholic Church in pristine condition (a gift from Julie’s parents), and logging onto websites to find writings of the Fathers of the Church and papal encyclicals on marriage, Greg closed himself in his room for two days.

“The first thing I saw was St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. I read the part that says, ‘Wives, be submissive …’ and thought ‘Ha! That’s what’s wrong!’ But then I read further: ‘Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.’ It began to dawn on me that maybe my own selfishness was contributing.”

Greg continued reading every reference to the Church’s teaching on marriage that he could find. He kept calling Julie over and reading passages to her. “Listen! This is why our marriage is so messed up!” he’d say.

They stayed up most of the night, overjoyed to share something together for the first time in a very long time. It was a new beginning, reminiscent of that first date when they stayed up all night talking.

But this time, God was part of the conversation.

“I recall that my heart was on fire as Greg read to me,” Julie says. “I was so excited. I said to Greg, ‘This sounds great, but what do we do with it? How do we put this into practice?’”

Then Julie and Greg prayed together, asking God to show them how to put their marriage back together according to his plans. Greg even went further.

“I said that if he delivered us from the mess we were in, we would dedicate the rest of our lives to helping other married couples,” he says. “From that day on, amazing things began to happen. Now that we had the instructions for marriage, everything started clicking.”

Greg and Julie made their first serious confessions in years.

“Confession used to be more about relieving guilt feelings,” says Julie. “But now I knew I had offended God and needed grace. We were starting over. I had to both forgive and be forgiven.”

Stepping out in faith, they both resigned the jobs that kept them away from the children and tempted them with too much wealth and material indulgence.

They sold the boat and fancy cars and started a home business of consulting work plus marketing vitamin supplements from a concession trailer.

Sales were good, but Greg wanted to get to work on the promise he had made.

So they drained their savings account and started Alexander House, a non-profit organization committed to marriage enrichment and family life.

They were also offered part-time work as family life coordinators for the diocese of Austin. One day, Greg found a Church document in the diocesan office he had never read before: Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Birth), whose 40th anniversary is this year.

Until then, Greg and Julie hadn’t focused much on the Church’s teaching on contraception. They had a vague idea that the Church was against the pill, but since they hadn’t used contraceptives this did not affect them.

Then Greg learned for the first time that the Church also forbids sterilization, and why. He was stunned: “I felt heart-rending remorse for the vasectomy. How could I have been so selfish? How could I want to symbolize a turned-in love every time I had relations with Julie?”

A priest told Greg that he was not required to have the vasectomy reversed, and for a while Greg felt some measure of peace. But some months later, the Alexanders attended a marriage conference that included talks by Christopher West on the theology of the body.

Another speaker urged sterilized couples to consider abstaining a week each month as an act of reparation, and to prayerfully consider reversal surgery.

“I felt God tugging at my heart again,” Greg says, “How could I preach and teach other couples how they should be when I was not living it completely?”

Greg and Julie began praying about the possibility, as well as researching doctors who perform vasectomy reversals.

The normally high cost of this surgery — up to $15,000 — at first seemed to be a sign that they should drop the whole idea. But they made an appointment with a Christian doctor who had repented of performing sterilizations years before and now specialized in reversals. They told him their story, and about their fledgling marriage ministry.

“How about next Tuesday morning?” the doctor asked. “Great! Let’s do it!” Greg replied.

The practical Julie broke in. “Wait! We can’t afford this unless you can give us some kind of payment plan.”

The doctor sat back, looked up as if in prayer, and then leaned forward. He liked the Alexanders, and thought the work they were trying to do was wonderful. So much that he wanted to invest in it. Could they come next week and just bring $500? “We wept tears of joy all the way home,” Greg recalls.

The reversal surgery was a success. A little over two years later, the Alexanders welcomed Katharine into their lives. In 2005, they were blessed with their fourth child, Michael, and Ava-Marie was born in 2007. Their sixth baby is due in mid-August.

Even years after this conversion, Greg and Julie are still amazed at what has happened to them.

“I never dreamed marriage could be so awesome,” says Julie, “When Greg discovered the Church’s teaching, he realized what a true man really is. I feel respected and cherished — what an amazing feeling. And faith is no longer something we just do on Sunday, but the way we live our lives.”

Daria Sockey writes from

Venus, Pennsylvania.

For more information on the Alexanders’ work and mission, check out their website, TheAlexanderHouse.org

Greg and Julie’s Must-Read List for Catholic Couples

Scripture

Ephesians 5:25-30

1 Peter 3:7-11

Matthew 19:3-9

Catechism of the Catholic Church section on marriage (article 7, from No. 1601)

Familiaris Consortio (The Christian Family in the Modern World) the 1981 Apostolic Exhortation by Pope John Paul II.

Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Birth) the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI.

(all available at Vatican.va)