59 and Counting

Since yesterday marked the 59^th anniversary of our wedding date, I would like to reflect a bit on the past six decades of our journey as husband and wife, and as a “team” in ministry. I hope you will indulge me the few minutes it will take you to read the following.

Ellen and I met as students at Bob Jones University, when I was a junior and she was a first-year student. Her major was accounting and I was in the BJU ministerial class. She was from North Carolina, having been reared in a pastor’s home; I was from Iowa and my father was employed by John Deere. I was called to preach while attending another college in Iowa, preparing, I thought, to eventually become a lawyer. Ellen enrolled in BJU, thinking she was heading for a business profession, with a resolve that marrying a preacher was not in her future plans. The Lord brought us together in the fall of 1963 when, assigned in the large Dixon-McKenzie BJU dining hall to spend three weeks at Table T-1, we met. I was not thinking of meeting a girl for the purpose of an ongoing relationship; nor was she thinking of meeting a young man at that particular time, to whom she would become engaged and married in August of 1965. But God…

I have said many times that it had to have been God’s leading in my life, for I surely was not smart enough—or wise enough—at that time in my maturing as a young adult to discern that Ellen would make the perfect wife for this pastor-in-the-making. God knew exactly what and whom each of us needed though, and I have never forgotten to thank Him for that “chance” table assignment that brought us together for a family-style meal three times a day for three (or maybe six, I can’t remember) weeks.

In the 1960s, the way couples communicated with each other at Bob Jones U. was the “note system.” At 10 p.m. each night, a “delivery” team would pick up mail written in the girls’ dorms and deliver it to the addresses in the guys’ dorms; and vice-versa. My first attempt at asking Ellen for a date was a note I wrote her through this note system, asking her for a date to one of the campus Thanksgiving Day activities. Sadly, she had already been “asked” for; so I “got in line” and kept trying until finally, for me, it was “pay-day!” The rest is history. We became engaged in the summer of 1964. I was working in an Indiana youth camp that summer, and the way people communicated long distance then in rural Indiana was on a “party-line” phone. There were always “clicks” heard down the line when you got a call from someone, so there was a “party” on the line—of who knows how many folk—listening in. Needless to say, we did not call each other that summer, but picked up our romance when school began again in the fall.

Our August wedding was held in Ellen’s home church, a beautiful, small chapel in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. My family came down from Iowa; and one of my sisters, Mary Ann, and her children, coming to our wedding from Denver, were swept off the highway by one of those Nebraska summer storms, ejecting Mary Ann and her boys out of the VW bug in which they were traveling. The car was demolished, but a family friend, a pilot from Denver, came to the rescue, flying them all to Wilkes County, NC, in time for the Saturday evening wedding. It was a striking demonstration of the grace and goodness of God that a funeral did not have to be planned after the wedding.

We spent a couple of weeks on our honeymoon, visiting National and State parks, traveling in a small trailer that my parents loaned us, pulled by my Dad’s ’64 Impala as I recall.

In late August/early September, we pulled a 4×6 trailer jam-packed with all of our earthly goods, behind the ’64 VW Beetle that I owned, to Minneapolis, where I was enrolled in Central Baptist Theological Seminary. We did not know anyone there, did not have a place to live, did not have a job lined up; but we had each other, with hearts full of love and confidence through faith that God was leading us, and that He would provide for us. We spent one night in the attic of the Minnesota Baptist Convention house, thanks to the goodness of Dr. Arthur Allen. I went job hunting the next day and was hired at the Pako Corporation, the first stop on my list, where I worked for four years—until the day we left Minneapolis for Dallas, Texas, where I was accepted into a graduate program at Dallas Theological Seminary. We lived all our time in Minneapolis in a fully-furnished house that a widow who had just died left in an estate. Our “rent” was $50 a month, and the house was a block from the seminary. When we left the Twin Cities, we had two children, Sandra and Marti, and a thousand dollars in the bank, with all bills paid in full! Driving our U-Haul to Dallas, we were mindful that we knew only one family in Dallas, had no job lined up, and did not know where we would live when we got there. But God….

So, to wrap this up, after Dallas (’69-’71) we lived in Kansas for eight years, where I pastored two churches, then accepted the call to pastor Thompson Road Baptist Church in Indianapolis, where I would be privileged to serve as pastor for the next 40 years. We have been in the “retirement” mode for five years now, still attending TRBC and preaching and helping out at the Pleasant View Baptist Church in Noblesville, IN, a couple Sundays a month. I am serving as part of the Interim Pastor program of Gospel Fellowship Association, directed by Dr. Marshall Fant.

God has been so marvelously good to Ellen, myself, and our three children (yes, our boy, Theo, was born at Baylor U. Hospital in Dallas!) these past 59 years. We would not, if we could, rewrite the script in any way. There were, and still are, challenging times to be sure; but the grace and kindness of our great God has never been absent. I have had my own personal accountant-wife all of these years; and Ellen, never intending to marry a preacher, has had her own personal pastor for most all of these years. It’s been a fulfilling 59 years, and every day we face the “home stretch” with thanksgiving, joy, peace—and, always, expectation!

“Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it….” (Ps.127:1)