[I do feel like I need to share with you the internal struggle I have with sharing personal information in such a public forum. There are two reasons that I have determined for my motivation to do this: one, it helps me to share my pain – there’s a part of me that wants the world to know what I am missing, what you are missing, what the world is missing. The second, more altruistic reason (since the first is pretty self-indulgent), is that I have heard from many people since Bob’s passing that this event has caused them to draw closer to their spouse, examine their preparedness if this were to happen to them, and/or examine their relationship to God and their calling. So my prayer is that this sharing will be a blessing to someone in a way that enriches their life, their love, and their relationship to their Creator and Savior.]
Since much of our relationship was long distance prior to our engagement, we wrote many letters – his letters were often more than ten pages. This letter was written almost exactly twenty years ago, a month before Bob proposed to me in June of 1990. This excerpt was found on page six, as he pondered our future together:
“We are going to laugh and play and work and think and rest in each other’s arms when the day is done.
We will walk and talk and smile and fight and touch and lose our minds together.
We will hold hands and dishes and children and diet Cokes and diet Pepsis and each other’s hearts. And we will model love to everyone who touches our lives.
And someday, when I am eighty-five and you are seventy-one, and the end of our lives is just ahead, we will still be holding hands. I will know you and you will know me, and we will look into tired eyes, still full of joy and longing, and we will be so glad, so supremely happy we walked this path together.
I never want to say goodbye to you, Renita.
I want to be clumsy with you, clunky with you and klutzy with you. I want to be corny (like now) with you and embarrass myself with you.
I want you to see me fully, as I am without attempts to impress. I want us to share – not the facades not the attempts to be what we are not and never could be – no, I want us to share what we are, I want us to be ourselves with each other, and still love each other deeply and passionately. And oh! How healing that will be!
We are going to do it right. We are going to find out what love means, and we are going to do it right.
We are going to test the promises of God with each other, and with His help, we are going to prove that love is the greatest gift of all.
Am I being pie in the sky? Or am I letting my idealism run wild without check? No! For it is in insecurity and doubt, in looking for problems that failure exists! It is through confident faith in God and each other, in not allowing doubt to sidetrack us that “doing it right” finds full flower!
So I have a vision for us. We will love each other, dearly and deeply and kindly and warmly and passionately and truly. We will do it right.
Not because we can. Because with God’s help, we know we can.
No! We will do it right because we will to do it right. When we go into this, we must go into it absolutely committed to being the very best we can be for each other. We must go into this without self doubt nagging at us. Our insecurities and doubts will always exist, but they must not set the tone for our relationship. Our love and our faith and our values and our vision for perfection must set the tone!
You with me?
If so, I have something to say to you. And something to ask you.
But not right now.
I don’t know if we "did it right." We did work hard at not letting our insecurities and doubts set the tone for the relationship – but we didn’t always succeed. We seriously questioned on a number of occasions whether or not we had lost our minds – or at least whether others thought we did. We worked hard at letting our love, our faith, our values, and our vision set the tone – but there again, we didn’t always succeed. Bob had a vision for us and he courageously pursued it. We didn’t make it to 85 years old and 71 years old. Only God knows why. Bob got his wish in not saying good-bye. I wish I could say the same.
I now have to have a new vision and the words from the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” keep going through my head:
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light
Be thou my wisdom and Thou my true word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Thou my great Father, I, Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one
Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
Riches I heed not nor man's empty praise
Thou mine inheritance now and always
Thou and thou only first in my heart
High King of heaven my treasure Thou are
High King of heaven my victory won
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun
Heart of my own heart whatever befall
Still be my vision O Ruler of all
And now a few words from Bob in 1995, on his 41st birthday, reflecting on life and death. [For those of you with kids, you should be used to listening through a child fussing - for those of you not used to it, it may be more difficult to hear:-).]
[If you who were not able to attend Bob’s Memorial Service and would like to hear it, an audio recording is available at the Madison Square Church website at www.madisonsquarechurch.org (along with other great messages!); click on resources, then on sermon recordings, then find 2010-03-30, Bob Reed Memorial Service.]
