Lord, I just want to say, "Thank You!"

I am Thankful today for friends and family both here and in eternity. And I can honestly say I am looking forward to that great reunion day. 

I was reflecting just yesterday on all the people who have touched my life in both big and small ways and how their coming into my life has blessed my life. Each one of you, many who may not remember where or when we met or maybe whether or not we have met, have touched my life in some way and now you are forever a part of the tapestry of who I have become. Thank you!

I am thankful that God loved me and that He loved me enough to give His son for me. I am thankful that He called me to salvation and then placed in my heart not only the call to preach but the desire to preach the unsearchable riches of God's love and grace in Christ Jesus.  

I am thankful that God put a young woman in my life who was the perfect pastor’s wife. We were not the same in so many ways. But we both Loved the Lord. When our hands touched and our lips met as teenagers, I only thought I had won her heart and she only thought she had captured mine. As time passed, we came to see that the reason we had the lifetime love affair with each other is because God was our matchmaker. We didn’t choose each other . . . no indeed. God gave us to each other as a part of His purposes.. 

This year I want to add to my “Thank you.” I say, "Thank You, Lord" for allowing Susan and I to have a life together here in this world that spanned more than 60 years . . . . 54-1/2 of those as husband and wife.  I cannot remember a time in our life together that the Lord did not supply our needs - both great and small. By His grace we achieved what so few couples obtain . . . we literally became one flesh in the fullest sense of that terminology. Somewhere along the journey we ceased to be two travelers on the same road and became a single traveler that embodied the two of us. 

Thanksgiving 2021 was the hardest of my life. Susan and I as we became one flesh ceased to experience the same things separately. Somewhere along the way we began to share them singularly. Now I face life without a part of who I am. It is not a matter of discovering the new me . . . the one without Susan because that person does not exist. I still experience life as if she were present . . . . and, in some way she is and always will be. 

Our relationship never was superficial but over a lifetime our union became stronger and deeper spiritually. Somewhere along life's journey she got into my heart and into my soul and I did the same with her. This is why when someone asked me about her passing, I responded with, “It feels like someone has ripped out a large part of my soul.”  And that my friend is something only God can do. Our spiritual DNA is the same. 

As mentioned above, this is the first Thanksgiving in over 60 years when we did not celebrate the blessings of God together and I must tell you it seems so strange and wrongheaded to me right now. But I know God did not make a mistake when he brought us together as a couple back in the 1960's and He did not make a mistake when he led us into becoming one flesh and while I don’t understand all that He is doing right now He did not make a mistake when He called Susan home. 

Let me be clear . . . . Susan and my life together are a reflection of what God is doing in bring redemption to mankind. I now know something of how Jesus felt when at about the ninth hour He cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' The separation I felt at Susan’s home-going is reflective of the separation Jesus felt that day. To be sure, what I have experienced is not the same as to the reason for the separation or the degree and depth that it was felt but it gives me a deeper understanding and a greater appreciation for what He endured for me. 

Now for some speculative thanksgiving. I have every reason to believe that just as the separation of Jesus from the Father because Jesus became sin was but for a short time so the separation that death (the first cousin of sin) brought to Susan and myself will also be short lived. I fully expect to join her in Paradise either through passing through my own death experience or when I experience the transformation from the physical to the spiritual realm when Jesus returns for His own.

Now here is something glorious about that One Flesh thing I mentioned earlier . . . all that death is capable of doing is separating the body from the spirit and soul. We often speak of Christ in us as the hope of glory and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Hence, we are connected to God the Father through Jesus His son and the Holy Spirit (Spirit of God) who abides within us (in our soul and spirit). 

Well, something similar, though not the same, takes place in the becoming one flesh process. Without spelling out all the theology of “One Flesh” suffice it to say it involves all aspects of our person . . . . body soul and spirit. There is a song that has the lines . . . “I said I'm wrapped up, tied up, tangled up in Jesus, He's all I need.”  

Becoming one flesh is being wrapped up, tied up, tangled up body and spirit with each other. It is two people, a man and a woman, becoming something new, something that did not exist before, in both time and kind. It is something that God enables and something that cannot be undone. It is becoming one as Jesus and the Father are one. Small wonder that Paul would use this oneness of marriage to help us understand the nature of the church and the church's relationship to Jesus. 

I cannot reach out and touch her and I cannot sit and hold her hand because she has at God’s bidding laid down the body that constrained her. When she laid that body aside, she flew away to Jesus and Paradise where she now awaits the day I take my flight and join her in paradise. But in the meanwhile, our love goes on . . . love never fails . . . love never ends.

So, Lord, I just want to say, "Thank You!" Thank You for being so good to me . . . Thank you for letting Susan love me and I her. Because you did, I better understand your love for us . . . . for me.

When I Said, "I Will" , , , , I Meant, "Forever."

I have been conditioned by God over more than 60 years of companionship with the same person (almost 55 as a married couple) into the person I am.  No two people ever loved as did Susan and me. Other's may have done as well but none better or deeper. We truly became one flesh in the full spiritual meaning of that term.

Since Susan has finished her course and has now entered her rest in God’s paradise, I get asked occasionally how I feel about getting married again. A number of my friends who have lost their spouses were married again in less than a year from their spouse’s passing. If I were to follow their pattern I’d be getting married within the next couple of months. 

(At this point I need to tell you that I am not passing judgement on anyone one else’s choices in this regard. I am simply sharing my journey.) 

When asked I usually deflect the question by saying something like, “Right now that is the farthest thing from my mind. I am just trying really hard to get through today.” Or, I might say, “I don’t know what God has for me going forward, this is all new to me, even the old stuff has changed, and I am adjusting to too many other things to give that any thought.”

I am also amazed at our capacity to “put on a happy face” when in reality we are broken and poured out. I suppose that is in part because we are trying to pull ourselves out of our personal slough of despondency and in part, we sense that in those around us are growing weary as we struggle for some sense of normalcy. Or perhaps it is the difference in the loves we share.

Truth is, I don’t like being alone so much of the time. But, at the same time, I’m not sure I want a wife either. I’d love someone to share things with . . . someone with whom to have an affectionate relationship and not so much romantic one. A friend who was widowed within the last year about this and I remember saying to him. “I am not closed to the idea of remarriage, but God would have to put her in my lap and then slap me on the back of my head if it is going to ever happen. 

I believe Susan and I did not choose each other. Oh, to be sure we were attracted to one another, and we made choices that brought us together. But as life was being lived, we discovered that our choices were nothing the fulfilling God’s will for our lives. We came to believe that God had chosen us from the foundation of the world to be husband and wife. I know, few will accept this, but I remind you that God does these sort of things and probably more frequently than we think.  

We believe that God created us for each other, and God brought us together. We were each other’s destiny. We were meant for each other. This accounts for the width and length and height and depth of our love. Susan loved the way God does and from her I spent a lifetime learning the real meaning of “Agape love.”  She loved me the way God loved me, and she trusted me the way we should trust God. She could do that because she loved God with her whole heart, mind and sou. It was the only way she knew how to do love and it made her beautiful person. 

That love pulled from me the kind of love that is totally committed to the one who loves me. Susan knew that I would lay down my life for her. I remember when I learned she had pancreatic cancer I went to my office and as I wept, I cried out “O my dear Susan! My precious Susan, I wish to God it was me and not you!” In those moments this David felt like his namesake, King David at the death of his son. It took months after she went to be with the Lord for me to say from my heart to God, “Lord, you gave her to me and you have taken her to yourself, blessed is your name.” 

This love affair that Susan and I shared did developed over a lifetime, but it was ordained from before we met. God had birthed us for each other. The astrologer would say our stars where rightly aligned and the biologist that our chromosomes were perfectly matched, but we believed God would say “my will, will be done. “

(Want to know the whole story of how we came together . . . buy the book when it is done.) 

I believe some couples who God joins have a unique spiritual identity. Just as a baby has an equal number of chromosomes from their father and mother that makes them unique in the world, so a couple brought together by God have an equal number of spiritual chromosomes that make them into the complete person God wants them to be. Jesus once said about such a couple “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” (Matthew 19:6) Paul magnifies this in Ephesians he speaks of this as a profound mystery that it is illustrative of the relationship between the church and Christ. 

We find ourselves wondering why some seem to recover from their grief in short order and then there are those for whom it is a daily struggle without an end in sight. Believe me when I say, “I cast no aspersions on anyone. Whatever you must do to find a normal life take it as from the Lord and embrace it.”  

However, my analytical mind is always searching for the reasons behind things. I am interested in the fact . . . the “what is.” But I seem to have an insatiable need for the “how” and the “why” of things. So, when it comes to loss . . . especially the loss of a one spouse in a couple that has achieved a high degree of "oneness" . . . it is as though, and maybe because it has, half of your soul has been ripped from you. Precisely where I find myself.

I think the depth of grief is directly proportional to the degree that a husband and wife fulfilled God’s intention for them to become “One.” It appears to me that the intensity of the “oneness determines the intensity of the grief when God removes half of that union.

What do I mean by “oneness?” Oneness is the product of building a relationship that transcends the physical and embraces the spiritual. Oneness is the product of a man and a woman coming to the place where they love each other like God loves them. It is a couple whose love has grown from the eros of the flesh through the phileo of men until it has become agape of God.  

It is that rare couple who have successfully navigated life together. They have reached the place in their relationship where they love each other with their whole heart. Their relationship with one another becomes an expression of the way God loves us. They are in union at every level of our human existence and at the highest levels of intensity: body, soul and spirit. 

Some would say, “That sounds like idolatry to me.” I will concede that it could sound like idolatry but not that it is idolatry. Idolatry would mean that you love your spouse more than you love God and that you place them above God.  Idolatry is not possible because it is both the nature and intensity of our love for God that enables us to love one another at such levels. 

Rather than idolatry I suggest to you that it is more likely to become an example of (1) how God loves, (2) how we are to love God and (3) how other husbands and wives are to love each other. It is one aspect of Jesus word when he said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34) and again, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;” (Ephesians 5:25.) If anything, it is evidence of the height, depth and breadth of our love for God.

It is God’s love for us that enables us to say, “Jesus is Lord.” It is His loving lordship that enables us to love as does He. In First John 1 John tells us, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins . . . we love him, because he first loved us. Our love for God and our ability to love like God comes from God Himself. 

Indeed, we are to strive to love as God loves. It is not the kind of love that we have but the priority that we place on the object of our love. God is first among equals only when we speak of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Otherwise, there is none like unto Him in all the earth. Our love is to ultimately be like God’s love for us . . . Agape.”

Now, back to the husband-and-wife expression of love. The marriage relationship is the only context in which love in its most complete and fullest sense (body, soul and spirit) can take place that is morally acceptable to God. Marriage is th only place where love can be expressed at every level of our being and toward God at the same time. This process of learning to love as God loves within the marriage context is the heart and soul of husband/wife oneness. 

It is the relationship between a man and a woman in which every aspect of their live is supercharged by the love of God . . . it is where what is done in the body is in harmony with what abides in the soul and energized by the spirit. It is within this kind of marriage relationship that we will have some understanding of the “breadth, and length, and depth, and height . . . of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge . . . .” (Ephesians 5:18-19).

There is so much that could and probably should be said about the oneness between a husband and wife that obtains this level but suffice it to say that when the earthly journey of one of the spouses living in such a God joined union the effects are extraordinarily painful. My first response when Susan left to be with Jesus was, now I better understand how Jesus felt when he cried out to the Father, My God, My God why hast though forsaken me.” It seems the separation of God for Him was worse that the becoming sin.

The deeper the love in life the longer the pain after death. I have been conditioned by God over more than 60 years of companionship with the same person (almost 55 as a married couple) into the person I am and now for the first time I feel the forsakenness of which Jesus spoke that day on the Cross. With Job “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless, I will argue my ways before Him. This also will be my salvation . . . ." (Job 13:15-16).

Our Wedding Gift From God

December 23, 1966 - When I said "I do"

I married Susan on December 23, 1966. As I looked into her eyes that day and she placed that wedding band on the third finger of my left hand I knew I was the most blessed man on the Earth.  Looking into her eyes I saw into her soul and I knew without a doubt she loved me with all of her heart and soul. I knew that night that no mater what life brought our way she would still love me.

As I saw her standing in that white wedding gown the symbolism of “white” was not lost on her or to me. As the ceremony came to an end and the minister said, “You may now kiss your bride” (Just so you know, he could not have stopped me). As our lips met I experienced not just the physical touch but something wonderful passed between us . . . . I felt as though I had just been touched in my soul/spirit by the love of this wonderful woman. Oh, to be sure we had kissed before . . . plenty of times. There were the “pecks” of affection and the long lingering kisses filled with the passion of young love but . . . . this was different. On Friday night December 23, 1966 with that kiss something stirred within me that night that has never left. I knew I had found the one in whom my soul delights. That has not changed to this day.

It was then that I realized that while I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen let alone met that was not enough for me to marry. It was with that kiss that I began to realize that our love was not born of passion nor of anything else that normally draws a man and woman together. Our love for each other was placed within us by the very hand of God. God joined us as one and my God does not make any mistakes. He acts with purpose and because He does we always believed His love and purposes were a part of the mix. 

I’m sure up until that time in her mind she thought she had wooed and won my heart and  I am sure I thought the same. But with that one kiss that theory was proven wrong. Tt was the growing awareness that the love we had for each other was God’s wedding gift to us. As time went by I discovered that Susan’s love was a reflection of God’s love. Somehow through her life experience she had developed into a young Proverbs 31:30 “Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that fears the LORD, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.”

As the years passed she became more and more into that woman. I remember when delivering her Memorial sermon at her funeral saying. . . . “Susan is not an example of the Proverbs 31woman . . . . she IS that woman.”  I am not trying to say she was without flaw . . . I am saying she is the perfect woman for me. In many ways we were opposites but at the same time we were more than compatible . . . I like to say we were complementary. Only God could match up to people as appropriately as he did us. Our togetherness was a part of His eternal plan.

David and Susan - 2018

She would tell me things like, “You are my rock” and I would say in return, “You are my soft place.” Fast forward fifty-four years and we are sitting at a table saying the same thing. But now, we were marveling at how God had taken two independent young kids (we were 19 when we married) and in 54 years turned us into a single unit. We knew we were facing our final curtain and that not many months were left to us but we were concluding the matter with, “but through it all God had given us a good life and it was made so much better because we did it together.”  Not our way but as best we understood . . . . God’s way.

Susan was my Proverbs 31 woman but she was also a woman. She cared about how she looked . . . . as the years passed she bemoaned the evidence of aging and the changes that made in her appearance. This became even more pronounced as her pancreatic cancer and the chemotherapy ravaged her body. I cried the day she looked at me after seeing herself in the mirror tuned with tears in her eyes said, “I look like a holocaust victim.” 

It as at that point I took her by they hand looked into her eyes, as we often did, and said, “Susan, I don’t love you because of how you look . . . I love you because of who you are.” Then I turned to a picture on our wall from our wedding and said as I pointed at her in that picture and said, “This is the woman I see.” 

Now understand, I am not blind or stupid . . . . I saw what was happening to her physically and I hurt for her. But, I didn’t love her for her beauty. To be sure, in my eyes, she was a most attractive woman and I was always proud to have her by my side at events.  What I fell in love with was her . . . the nice body just a bonus that came with her as a part of the complete package.

The Beauty will fade with time, but heart and soul will always be the same . . . the body will die but the love will never die. Oh, I miss her presence . . . .unless you have been there you cannot understand how much. Our love was deeper than the ocean and higher than the stars. But, changing the pronouns, I prefer the words of Randy Travis who wrote:

Our love is deeper than the holler.

Stronger than the river.

Higher than the pine trees growin' tall upon the hill.

Our love is purer than the snowflakes,

That fall in late December.

And honest as a Robin on a springtime window sill.

And longer than the song of a whippoorwill.

Six months after her passing I am finally getting to place where I can say to the world with conviction the very first Bible verse I remember hearing as a child . . . . “The Lord gives and he Lord takes away, Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

Now you cannot have what we had but if you want it you can have your own version of the gift of God’s love. But you must experience the love of God before you can reflect His love. You can experience the love of God in the person of God’s son, Jesus the Christ. Check it out . . . .it is in the Bible.