At this writing it has been three years, four months and 17 days since my wife, Eleanor, died as the result of injuries suffered in an automobile accident in Durban, South Africa. We were there participating in the Baptist World Alliance General Council meeting.
Alabama Baptists have been strength to me during this time. You have prayed for me. You have written. You have called. Practically every time I visit a church or associational meeting, someone comments on Eleanor’s death and asks how I am doing. As recently as yesterday a pastor with whom I had lunch inquired about my grief journey and assured me of his continued prayers.
I do not know how anyone could be cared for more completely than Alabama Baptists have cared for me. I am eternally in your debt. That is why I dare to share in this public forum the recent changes in my life’s direction.
The changes cannot be understood without knowing that for most of the time since Eleanor died, I have been chronically depressed. Hours with a psychologist confirmed what I suspected, or maybe I should say, feared. To some, a minister experiencing depression indicts the sufficiency of God. Not so.
From the moment I regained consciousness from the accident, God has been “a very present help.” There has never been a moment that I did not know that God was with me amid the destruction and chaos that is loss. He guided. He upheld. He provided. Praise be to God.
My problem related to the future. Oh, I longed for the ultimate future of a child of God. I longed for death in order to be with God and with Eleanor. It was the days between the present and that eschatological future that caused me problems. The days between now and then were like an endurance contest. I had to get through them with only brief oases of joy provided by my children and grandchildren. It was not a pretty picture.
One Friday night I went to sleep while reviewing my sermon for the coming Sunday morning. God is with us, I would preach. God promises never to abandon us and God does not lie. The next morning I awoke thinking about the promises of God — to be with us wherever we are, in every stage of life and in all situations. God’s promises provide hope — hope for the present and hope for the future. The reasoning was inescapable. God is the God of the present and God is the God of the future.
I knew that. I had preached that countless times. But that morning the insight had new meaning. If God is the God of the future, then the future is His gift to us. The future is not to be an enduring time. It is to be an endearing time.
During those early morning hours, I realized I had been unwilling to accept the future I could see before me as an endearing gift from God. In essence, I had said if the future cannot be on my terms then I will get through it but I will not like it.
I confessed my selfishness to God and repented. I opened myself to the future in a way I had been unwilling to do prior to that moment. I quit longing for death and started looking for life. I quit going through the proper motions in my own strength and started looking for what God wanted to do in me and through me.
Later, when a psychologist explored my chronic depression, he found no traces of it. My outlook had changed. My attitudes had changed. No outward circumstance had changed but my life had changed and changed drastically. And that was just the beginning.
Shortly after that, a friend arranged a dinner to introduce me to someone. When she walked through the door, my heart jumped. Before we even said hello, my spirit said, “Hey, this could work.” Three weeks later I asked Pat Hart to marry me.
God had worked in her heart as decisively as He had in mine. She said yes. This may be the most impulsive thing I have ever done. Such quick action is certainly out of character for me. I am much more given to evaluation and analysis. Not this time.
Pat is a registered dietitian and professor at Samford University where she is chairman of the department of human sciences and design. She is a former Southern Baptist missionary serving 10 years in Venezuela. She grew up in Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Hueytown, holds two degrees from The University of Alabama and a Ph.D. from Texas Woman’s University. She has two children, Jennifer, a junior at Samford, and Taylor, a junior at Briarwood Christian School.
We will be married on March 22, 2002.
Pat and I went to Eleanor’s grave after we agreed to wed. Together we acknowledge that this is not the path either of us would choose in an ideal world, but death and loss are not part of an ideal world. We are where we are. Then together we gave thanks that God brought us together, that He affirmed our love for one another so dramatically for each of us. We pledged to do our best to make our future together an endearing time. Already I have known joy and happiness like I thought would never again be possible.
Yes, life changes. Thankfully, God does not. He is with us everywhere we go. He is there in every situation. He is there at all times — even in the future.
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