Behind Closed Doors
By Kevin Dale Miller
October 1, 1995
(In the following true account, names and some identifying details have been changed.)
Pastor Dale Youngstrom stepped onto the throw rug inside the front door of his house. He unbuttoned his shirt, kicked off his shoes, and loosened his belt to let his pants down. A pile of clean clothes had been painstakingly stacked on the rug. Before taking another step into the house, he picked up the clean clothes, slipped them on, and tossed his office clothes into a waiting laundry basket.
As Dale moved into the kitchen, sunlight danced through the window onto the wet countertop Rhonda was washing. Her Swedish- blond hair bobbed as she turned.
"How was your day, Honey?" Dale asked, looking into her blue eyes. That's a switch, he thought. She looks happy.
Hard was the only word Dale could think of to describe the last five years of marriage. Rhonda had become a "washer"; she was paranoid about contamination and germs. She demanded that Dale and their two children, Jessica and Sammy, change into clean clothes at the front door whenever they came home.
It was affecting his ministry, too. When a church member spontaneously dropped by, Rhonda would watch where the visitor had stepped and then use a cloth to scrub the carpets and the chairs the visitor had touched. She refused to join Dale on pastoral visits or preaching trips. If Dale invited guests for Sunday dinner, she would complain for days before the meal and days afterward.
Will she ever be free of this? Dale clung to every shred of hope that she was improving. But was she?
THE COURTSHIP
In Rhonda's senior year in high school, she had fallen from her bike and hit her head on a rock, leaving her in a coma. Doctors determined she'd had a seizure. But had it caused the accident? Or had her ...
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