I’ve only heard the audible voice of God once in my life.  I was 24 years old and in college.  Five months earlier, Bill had taken me to Colorado and put a sapphire ring on my finger and asked me to marry him.  I was newly divorced and the pain and shame of that failure was fresh.  I never wanted to make the mistake of a failed marriage again.  I knew I loved Bill, but would that be enough?  Would it weather the unforeseeable challenges in our future?  I did not know how to tell that, and so I said, “Yes, as long as God says I can.”

So we were engaged with no wedding date set, waiting on God.  I began asking God, “Is Bill the man I’m to marry?”  And as the days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, many variances of that question came into play.  What if there’s someone else better suited?  What if I or he get fat?  What if I or he change so we no longer know each other?  What if I can’t resolve some of these nagging pressures I’m already feeling about being a step mom? 

“I can’t see the future, God.  I can’t see how I’m going to change – how he’s going to change.  What if it’s only a good fit right now, but won’t be in ten or twenty years?  Only You know.  I don’t have the wisdom I need to make this decision.”  This was my continual prayer.

A couple months before Bill proposed, the Spirit had impressed on me to go back to college, and He was clear about where I was to go.  Bill and I were dating, but God told me to go to a college three hours away.  So I did.  I was recently divorced, with a meager income and a car loan.  I knew no one at the college or the city I was to move to.  I decided I’d just sleep in my car and come home on the weekends, but a couple who ran the local Christian bookstore offered me their couch to sleep on Monday-Thursdays, and their home to stay in while attending school.

The day I heard God was mid-October.  I had come home between my morning and afternoon classes.  I had about two hours in between, and the small bungalow was empty.  I had a long list of reservations about myself, my life, my future, and some very real and hard conflicting feelings going on.  I was on my knees in the middle of their living room literally weeping, praying.  Bill was the best thing that had ever happened to me.  He was kind and good and loving and beautiful in every way.  But there were things in me that were ugly and hard and difficult, and what if I couldn’t get them under control?  These were the questions that flooded me. 

I was literally weeping such that when He spoke, it startled me from a hard cry to an abrupt gasp.  I heard Him before my mind processed what He had said, and my mouth said, “What?”  He repeated it.  “I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.  I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion.”  [Exactly what God said to Moses in Exodus 33:19.]  Audibly. 

I said, “I don’t understand.”  Images began flooding my mind like a movie screen of all the amazing attributes about Bill, one after another.  Then the Lord spoke, “Bill is My mercy and compassion for you.  Marry Bill.”

I knew that I knew that I knew God had spoken and Bill was His plan for my life.  I called Bill that night and told him I had heard from God and we could marry.  We threw a quick wedding together, got married on Thanksgiving Break, I went back to finish the semester, and  now we are over 25 years into this marriage.

So my ode to Bill is also my ode to God, for Bill was God’s gift for me. 

I’m a firm believer in honoring the ones in your life while they’re still living, and not waiting until they’re dead.  They won’t receive posthumous honor, but if we can do it while those we love are still alive, think of the way we can uplift and show gratitude!

It’s not an accident that Bill’s name (William) means protector.  I needed a lot of protection.  I needed a place of safety and refuge to begin to unpack and deal with some tragic things that had happened earlier in my life.  Until Bill, I did not have a safe place to do so.

When you unpack hastily crammed holding places of trauma and abuse, however, it becomes very, very messy.  There are piles of very painful and ugly emotions that do not gently mete out over increments of time.  There are irrational fears, frightening bouts of anger, and absurd insecurities that lend to jealousy, as well as a host of other things that excrete an enormous amount of energy of a very destructive nature.

MY ODE TO BILL

My pain became Bill’s.  He wept with me.  He shielded me from anything he perceived that could cause further damage.  He gave me time and space to sort it out, to heal, to forgive others and myself, to learn and to grow.  He went to bat for me over and over and over.  He defended me against a litany of accusers and critics, taking every blow he could from me.  He required others treat me with honor, or he would remove them from our lives. 

And he did it all selflessly.  He missed sleep.  He was misunderstood and judged.  He worked 55+ hour work weeks of manual labor, then came home at nights and remodeled our home(s) to my liking and to ease our loads at home.  He spent his weekends doing for me and the kids.

I made countless mistakes with him, with family and friends, with our children.  He forgave every one of them.  His love covered all of my sins.  He did without things he wanted or needed to give to me and the kids. 

There were times he was so tired.  We went through a very long season where everything was against us, from financial problems, to relationship difficulties, to home and car repairs, etc.  He was literally exhausted.  I could see it on his face.  But he never quit.  He never threw in the towel.  He’d just take a step back and regroup.

He lived (and still lives) with his own physical pains.  He is on his feet for 10-12 hours a day, lifting boxes, driving a manual truck (until recently).  He never complains.  For 15 years he didn’t get paid for sick days, so he was literally never sick.  He worked when ill, even when he had to pull over and throw up. 

Bill is the epitome of selfless.  He gives and gives and gives.  He loves and loves and loves.  He is also hilarious, and brings a light heartedness to our home.  (I can be a bit intense at times, and my humor is dry, even wry.  Very few people really “get” me.)  Bill never required me to work outside the home, but always encouraged me to pursue my dreams, goals and ambitions.  He was never controlling, but firmly led with reason and love.  I am not an easy person to lead.  He did not endeavor to fashion me to a specific image of wife or mom, but embraced who I was and let me walk out my convictions.

Here’s what Bill did that was so profound:  He freed me to love God and be who God created me to be.  He saw my gifts and abilities and created an environment that I could grow them.  He has built me countless bookshelves, remodeled a bedroom into an office for me, built and remodeled a school room for me and the kids when I taught at home, and even finds me supplies for my various projects.  He let me turn our dining room into a work lab, helped me hang butcher paper from the ceiling so I could write out my notes on scrolls.  He busted his butt every day he knew I’d be teaching or speaking to be the first person there, to help me get overheads ready, or music, or whatever I needed.  He’d be the last person there to help me tear down and pick up.  He’d be the first person to pray and to utter praise for me.

Bill has been Christ in the flesh to me, for twenty-five years and counting.  He would lay down his life for me without a second thought.  He has laid down his life for me.

There’s not a day that goes by that I do not thank God in some fashion for the gift of Bill, for my husband and my best friend.  I know God more and better because of Bill.  I have watched Bill walk out the sacrificial life of a disciple of Christ and a husband intent on his wife’s good.  I am able to walk out God’s plan for my life because of what Bill has sacrificially created for me.

I owe Christ for all that I am that is good, and I owe Bill honor and praise for his obedience to God and his love for me. Bill constantly praises me and talks about how pleased God is with me, but what I know to be true is my ability to be what I am is because of Bill’s love and sacrifice for me.  God handed the messed up, broken individual that I was to Bill; He entrusted my broken life to a man who would lay down his own for me.  Apart from Christ, I have never known such a sacrifice.  I am most blessed.

How great is this God?  I have no way to measure His greatness, but perhaps through Bill’s life someone else can catch a glimpse.