Precious Promises

I met John on March 3, 1974. We were a couple from that day until I said goodbye to the body he left behind on October 3 – 37 years and 7 months, my whole adult life. We both believed from that day on that God had worked Providentially for us to meet. I remember the moment I first noticed him and even what I was wearing. At a small liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, he walked by me on his way to the cafeteria and when he looked at me with his gentle eyes and he gave me his irresistible smile, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed him before and I started hoping for a chance to get to know him. We finally met at a Bible study at a mutual friend’s house, and I found out later that it was orchestrated by him to have a way to meet me. I remember walking in and how he stood up to greet me, again with his great smile and gentle eyes, and with his unconcealed joy at finally meeting me. We took each other’s measure spiritually as the group discussed 2 Timothy 2. I was so impressed with his spiritual-mindedness and became even more impressed when I learned how he had wanted to learn God’s Word when he came here to this congregation to visit at the invitation of one of his high school teachers, Dave Riggs.

To find a young man who sought God on his own initiative and from his own tender conscience reassured me that his commitment to serve God was from the heart. From that day until his death that quality was what I admired and loved most about him.

God used John to help me find answers to my own questions. Before I met John, I had been journaling about my question of what it means to be born again. The second day of my first visit to Raleigh the summer after we met, we studied the subject together and I came to the old Brooks Avenue building to be baptized into Christ that very night. We went back up to school in Minnesota but decided by that Christmas to move to Raleigh to be involved in the campus ministry that was going strong by then.

As John and I went through life together, for 4 years engaged and then 33 years married, the constancy of his love for God and his love for me and the sense of truly being soul mates was precious. I always felt united in heart and mind about God and about as much of his will as we can understand through his word. We enjoyed the freedom to discuss what we thought with each other. I am a ponderer by nature, so that was an important quality in my mate.

We came off our honeymoon to his first job as campus minister for the Friendly Avenue Church of Christ in Greensboro, reaching out to UNC-G and A&T State University. It’s been great to cross paths with some who became Christians during those 5 years as we did at a seminar here a few weeks ago.

When Emily was a year old, we believed God was blessing us with the opportunity to buy a printing business. We learned many hard lessons, first of all having to admit that we really didn’t know how to run a business! At one point when Julia was an infant, we moved to Charlotte to be part of a new congregation there. We were eager to train for outreach to adults there.

After several years there our business called us back to Greensboro during the recession of 1990, right after Ariel was born. We were very thankful to find a buyer for the business in 1995 as we planned to move to Greenbelt, Maryland, to take a ministry position with a young congregation there. John’s dad died right before we moved, and after 19 months there, it became clear that it would be best to return to North Carolina to be more help to his mom.

That was 15 years ago, and since then John has been trying sell health insurance, with varying degrees of success due to the changes in the industry and the bad economy. I must honestly share that it’s been hard to watch him have to deal with the difficulties of that business that was chosen out of necessity and not preference in our circumstances.

Through the years John was in and out of ministry roles – first in Greensboro, then in Charlotte, then in Maryland, and briefly here at Brooks Avenue in 2003. I probably came closest to crossing the line into nagging in raising the question of whether he would think it right to pursue ministry as a career again. The bottom line was that he could never seek it if there was any possibility of his motivation being financial. He needed to feel the certainty that his service to God was motivated solely by his love for God and for people. So in the past few months, he concluded that the answer was that no he would never seek a staff minister role, and I knew I had my answer.

Just as I am certain that God put John and me together, I am also certain that God has provided for us in every way we have needed through the years. Every house we’ve lived in has been exactly what we needed at the time, including the house we’ve been happy in together in Henderson for the past year. Every hard lesson learned, every prayer answered in the nick of time, every time we could look back and see how everything worked together for our good – all of those times helped us learn and grow.

I am often tempted to fear and dread the next hard thing that I know will happen in my life as it does in everyone’s life. Just last week as I looked out the bay window into our wonderful back yard, I thanked God again for our home in which we just celebrated the first anniversary of our move, and I felt the familiar temptation to wonder when the next difficulty would come, yet I felt less dread and more peace that God would help me face it with faith in his love and care. I felt a sense of having grown in that. Now that it has arrived in the form of my worst nightmare, losing my other half, the man I’ve been with for so long, I know that even in this God WILL carry me through, will continue to provide, and will bring good out of it, just as he has every time before this.

A person is never prepared to lose a spouse or a father, a brother or friend. Losing one suddenly who is only 58 can never be anything but a shock. But during this surreal week, I have been very thankful for many things. I’ve been thankful for every year and day and minute that I was privileged to share with John Decatur Greenwood. I’m thankful for each of our 3 daughters, for how lovely they are inside and out and for them knowing how much their dad loved them. Good daddy-daughter conversations with each of them recently gave them cherished memories. I’m thankful that I was with him when he suffered his cerebral hemorrhage so he didn’t have to face it alone and so I have no doubt that nothing more could have been done. I was thankful for the many hours of waiting for the organ donation arrangements to be made so I could have time to try to absorb the fact that his body had completed its work of housing the soul and spirit I so loved, to reach the point of being ready to let it go so others could receive the gifts of life, health, vision and healing that he wanted to give as an organ and tissue donor. I was thankful that we could plan this celebration of his life with no rush, that I’ve had this whole week to prepare for today, to feel protected by the cocoon of love, care, comfort and help of more people than I ever could have imagined would be so concerned for me. I’m thankful to hear and read the expressions of so many who have stories to tell about his impact on their lives, and to reconnect with friends from past stages of our lives together. I am thankful that all my daughters live in easy driving distance and that we were able to be together so much both at the hospital and at home. And most of all, I’m thankful for the indescribable comfort and peace I have in knowing that John is with his Heavenly Father and his Brother Jesus and that because he is not in time any more, he knows already that I’m there with him even though I’m stuck here in time for awhile longer.

I can see that John’s work here on earth is done, not just because he’s gone but because I can see in hindsight so much fruit of his life that it doesn’t feel unfinished even though it feels cut short. I know of no regrets that he would have had except for the relationships and events of our lives that he would have wanted to experience: growing old together as we share graduations, weddings, grandchildren, seeing his daughters as mothers and sons-in-law as fathers. He loved to see God work in the lives of people, to watch them grow and change. He loved being an elder and having the opportunity to be involved in trying to help as many people as possible learn more about God and grow in their faith.

John was never pushy. If someone was ready to buy insurance, he was good at selling it to them. If someone wanted to learn more about God, he was a great teacher. If someone wanted to understand him, he was willing to be real and vulnerable. He had so much to offer that I often felt was just waiting for an opportunity for him to use his talents. Whenever that happened, it was a great experience for me to watch God use him. I always wanted more people to have the ability to see in him what I saw. The last few years as an elder gave him that opportunity, and he gave himself wholeheartedly to it.

John grew a lot over the years in his patience, his vulnerability, his humility, and his desire to understand others. He was a good example of the balance between knowing we’re all a bunch of sinners and not using that as an excuse. He wanted to experience God helping him to grow and change. He met my definition of a good husband because he was willing to hash through things when I needed to, he wanted to have good communication, he tried to understand my perspective, and he respected me and allowed me to be myself. And he was fun to be with and made me feel appreciated, which every woman likes!

Someone told me that one of the hard things I’ll face now is finding my own identity as “me” again and not as half of “us.” My hope is that the freedom I’ve felt, especially in the past few years, to be myself with him will make it easier to learn to function as me alone again. I don’t want to have to do it, but since I must, I will. I will also try hard to learn to accept help from others, and I believe the offers of help I’ve received this week are sincere. So please help me learn to ask for help. Thank you to everyone who has offered and given it already! And thank you so much for your appreciation of John’s heart and life and for sharing with me today in this celebration of that life.

Filed under: Personal Subjects |