Home 
Nobody had a house like Annie and Lee Gleason. Nobody. It wasn’t fancy, or big – just a simple wooden structure that sat underneath a stand of pines in East Texas during the Great Depression. But it was completely unique; no one had a house like it.
But nobody would want one like theirs, either.
In 1931, Lea Gleason’s wife, Annie, made a fateful trip into town, on the back of her mule, to buy some sugar. She came back several hours later with a 50-pound sack slung over the beast’s back, and went to unload it in the barn. Evidently, the amount of money Annie spent on the sugar upset Lee so greatly that he swore at his wife. “You silly ______.”
That confrontation in the barn would take its toll on their relationship in the house. His slur would be the last three words he’d ever say to his wife.
No, they didn’t get a divorce. Nobody left the homestead. Nor did one of them kill the other. But for the next forty years, neither of them spoke to the other. Ever.
They slept in the same bed. They ate at the same table. At the same time.
In silence.
Sure, every once in a while, they’d leave a note with a grocery list or something related, but never a spoken word.
Eventually, the Gleason’s nephew returned home from overseas military service, and Lee asked the young man to help him with a house project. The nephew complied, and when his aunt left for church one Sunday morning, he met his uncle at the little wooden house with a saw in hand. All morning long, the two men worked at cutting the house in two…right down the middle…from floor to ceiling!
Annie was kept at church most of the day with worship services and special meetings, but when she returned home that afternoon, Lee was hooking up her “half” of the house to the tractor so he could drag it across the yard away from his “half” of the house.
With the house split in two, and positioned in their final resting place a few paces from one another, they went back and nailed wooden planks over the exposed openings.
Talk about a house divided.
It perfectly illustrates the truth Jesus taught long ago:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot last. And if a household is divided against itself, that household can never last.
Nothing lasted – not love, not marriage, not family – because that house was literally divided.
Resource’s Origin:
The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr. Penguin Books, 2005, Pages 35-37.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Anger
Disagreement
Family
Hurtful Words
Husband
Marriage
Men
Pride
Stupidity
Unforgiveness
Unloving
Wife
Women
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
