Category Archives: Long Marriages

A Good God

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Last weekend we marked the 21st anniversary of my father’s death in 1991. Dad was a late bloomer. He dated only one woman and didn’t get started on that project until his 40’s, but that slow start never disadvantaged him. He and Mom made it to their 50th anniversary, and I remember well the party we planned for them.

Several members of their original wedding party from 1941 were able to join us, bringing their remembrances with them. Granddaughters modeled Mom’s wedding gown and a bridesmaid’s dress, and a Chicago bakery recreated their wedding cake. The celebration was like an exclamation point at the end of a good marriage, because the very next month God called Dad to heaven.

Whenever something happens with unusual timing like that, it’s probably God’s way of getting our attention. He orchestrates things purposefully and hopes we’ll learn from it. What message might have been buried within the unusual timing of Mom and Dad’s 50th anniversary being followed so quickly by Dad’s death?

One lesson might be the importance of waiting to make big decisions until God gives the green light. When Dad’s 20’s and 30’s were passing him by, he could have panicked, wondering if he’d ever find the right girl. Would he miss out on married love, a home with children, grandchildren?

Marriage is a decision of considerable consequence, and Dad wisely waited until all indicators pointed to the right time and the right woman. But marrying at 42 made it seem unlikely he and Mom would reach their 50th. God, however, said, “Just watch me.” Dad’s late start had been the Lord’s perfect choice after all.

A second thing we can learn from the timing of Dad’s death is that God has control of our calendars. We write and rewrite them, but God makes last- minute rearrange- ments whenever he chooses. So we learn it’s a good idea to remember whose endorsement we should seek before we make our plans.

One last thing we can learn from the Lord’s timing with Dad is that God is good. Scripture tells us God delights in giving gifts to his children, and Dad’s making it all the way to the 50th was one of them. The trick for us now is to remember that the God-is-good character quality is still a part of God, even when his gifts might seem few and far between.

Our Lord doesn’t change. He was a good God before 1991, has been good since then, and will be good throughout eternity. If he does or doesn’t show that to us, it has no effect on whether or not it’s true. God himself put it best when he said, “I am who I am.”

Dad’s been gone a long while, and sometimes we think it’s a shame he’s missed 21 years of family life. But of course he’s having his own special good times in God’s family, where the Lord’s goodness can be visualized every single day.

“No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” (Psalm 84:11)

A Familiar Prompt

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Two years ago, when I was a new widow, Sundays were the most difficult day of every week. Apparently this isn’t uncommon for a woman who’s lost her husband, since he was the one she’d spent every Sunday with, from sharing a hymnal, to a brunch after church, through an afternoon nap.

In the beginning I couldn’t sit in a service without tears and usually had to make use of the two tissues in my pocket. Just seeing a couple seated side-by-side in the congregation was enough to produce a wave of distress. If the husband put his arm around his wife or took her hand, it was over for me. These simple gestures were poignant reminders of what I’d lost, and it took over a year to become sorrow-free in church again.

During this second year, however, attending church hasn’t been nearly as difficult. To the contrary, it’s been a blessing. This morning, though, without warning, something popped me back to that first year. All it took was seeing a man’s wedding band.

He was sitting in front of me and had his arm over the back of his daughter’s chair. His ring was identical to Nate’s with milgrain-style edging. I focused on that ring and thought of Nate’s wedding band hanging on a gold chain in my bedroom at home. It was on a necklace only because it had been taken off his hand before we buried him, but it was never meant to be jewelry for me.

Many young grooms opt out of wedding bands these days, but Nate was delighted to wear his. The day in 1969 when I put it on his finger was, he told me, one of his lifetime highlights. He was glad to display his ring as a sign that he was married and never tired of talking about his family.

No marriage is without its difficult places, though. Often couples are taken by surprise with the tough stuff that comes along: career disappointments, accidents, bone-deep fatigue, physical handicaps, parenting challenges, unexpected deaths, money shortages, severe illness. Any one of these can swamp a couple.

God explained his purpose for marriage when he said it wasn’t good for people to spend too much time alone, but marriage isn’t always easy. His idea was that there be two people bonded in a show of togetherness that could defend their union against any common enemy, no matter what it was. In other words, “Whatever has threatened you has threatened me, too, and we’ll fight it together.” As Mom used to say, shared burdens are cut in half.

This morning, my glimpse of a stranger’s wedding band brought a jumble of thoughts as I sat in church missing Nate. But tears didn’t factor in. While staring at that familiar-looking wedding ring, I felt God prompting me toward gratitude, because Nate had been the one who saw to it that we made it through even the hard times.

“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12a)

 

A Man of Integrity

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Today is the 20th anniversary of my Dad’s death in 1991. He married for the first time at 42 and was privileged to hit the 50 year mark with Mom, shortly before he died. Although he didn’t have even one health issue at the ripe old age of 92, a fall that splintered his pelvis into 13 pieces proved fatal. Although a young person could have tolerated traction for so long, immobilizing an elderly man worked against his survival.

Dad was born in 1899, a fact we children flaunted on school playgrounds. Mom used to say he was a contemporary of D.L.Moody who died 3 months after Dad was born. As a kid I used to reason that older was wiser, so Dad must have been the wisest father around.

The first child of parents who’d immigrated to America as teens, Dad spoke only Swedish when he walked into 1st grade at age 6. But he was quiet and observant, quickly learning English and other American ways, like how to avoid the knuckle-smack of an angry public school teacher.

He lost a little brother to pneumonia when he was 12, and his mother to TB at 13. After helping raise two younger siblings then training with the Army during World War I, he rode a streetcar to Northwestern University and emerged with two degrees. He navigated the Great Depression as a 30-something, and worked tirelessly to preserve his dying father’s real estate business.

My sister, brother and I loved hearing stories about the early 20th century, viewing him as a walking, talking history book. As a kid he chased after horse-drawn ice wagons hoping for loose chips on a hot day, and watched donkeys drag wagons of dirt out of hand-dug tunnels, Chicago’s eventual subway system. The city was paved with mud, election results were announced with fireworks, and all of it fascinated us.

Dad was honest to a fault. If a letter arrived with the stamp uncanceled, he’d say, “You can’t reuse that stamp, you know. It did what it was bought to do, and using it again would be robbing the postal service.” Letters only cost two cents then, but his statement was more about integrity than money.

Despite a bumpy background, Dad never experienced self-pity or bemoaned his losses, accepting life as it was. Although he wasn’t demonstrative and rarely shared his emotions, we all knew he loved us and would do anything in his power to help us. We also knew he gave 50% of his income to God’s work at the peak of his business career, which spoke volumes about his faith priorities.

My siblings and I were given a gift in Dad, but also a responsibility. Scripture says, “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” (Luke 12:48)

And then there was Dad, who had much taken, but gave more than he’d been given anyway.

“Those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2)