My newly updated and re-released book, A Lifelong Love: Discovering How Intimacy with God Breathes Passion Into Your Marriage looks at marriage as a three-legged stool: spiritual intimacy, relational intimacy, and devotional intimacy. Many couples ignore the spiritual intimacy, some forget about building relational intimacy, and I haven’t heard many people at all talk about devotional intimacy (more on that in coming weeks).
This week I’m going to run the epilogue in full, as it captures the picture of a sweet marriage that fulfilled both parts of a lifelong love. It was certainly lifelong, and it was certainly love. Jim and Anne’s story is what I long to see many other couples come to know. Please let me introduce you to my friends Jim and Anne Pierson:
If you looked up “lifelong love” in a “sermon illustration dictionary,” you’d likely find Jim and Anne Pierson. This couple has been my Halley’s Comet for much of my adult life, passing by every few years. I met them in my twenties while working at Care Net; they ran their own ministry with a similar emphasis named Loving and Caring. We’d see each other at conferences and conventions and catch up on each other’s lives and ministries. They saw my children grow up.
When I left Care Net in my thirties to focus on writing and speaking, I was still invited to the conferences, and Jim was a shelter to me. I’m an insecure introvert, called to an extrovert’s job, and Jim was a solid place of refuge between sessions. Anne was always such an encouraging presence; she believed in me. She spoke so passionately of how God was using me, in a way I had to believe her, even in the face of my insecurities. Having done what I had just started doing for over a decade, Anne was a wonderful role model.
Jim was a giant of a man; I’m guessing if the scale didn’t reach 350-400 pounds, it wouldn’t be of much use to him. His large girth carried an even larger heart, as he was dad, disciple, pastor, counselor, and mentor to so many people. Though he could be hilarious (I once saw him hold up a hotel-sized bath soap in front of his belly and ask an entire room, “So, they think this is going to be enough?”), Jim usually worked behind the scenes. Anne was the teacher, the speaker, the trainer. Jim ran their book table and kept Anne’s life on track.
There was one time Jim stole the spotlight, however. Before every one of Anne’s workshops, just after she was introduced, Jim would slip into the back of the room and belt out the Stevie Wonder tune, “Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful?”
The largely feminine audience ate this up, to see a husband affirm his wife so well.
Sadly, Jim had a long and difficult death. He contracted an unusual form of an aggressive cancer that, when diagnosed, doctors said would send him home to the Lord within a couple weeks. Jim hung on for seven months, but they weren’t easy months. They were often brutal months, though sprinkled with some incredible times of ministry. So many people had to cycle through his hospice room to say good-bye, Anne thinks he was holding on for their sakes.
The medical costs associated with his end-of-life care would have bankrupted Jim’s family, except for the fact that a wealthy businessman that Jim had led to the Lord showed up shortly after Jim’s diagnosis. Jim had discipled this man via telephone on a weekly basis for years.
“He made me a much better man, a much better father, a much better husband. I want to cover the costs of his care, Anne.”
“I don’t think you realize how much this is going to cost,” Anne protested.
“I don’t think you realize how much of an impact Jim has had on my life,” the man responded. “Please, let me do this for him.”
After Jim finally died, Anne went to her first conference with a heavy heart. Jim had always been there for her, and she had to brace herself to be introduced and to not hear Jim break out with his Stevie Wonder song.
Sure enough, the introduction ended, Anne looked up, felt enveloped by the silence, and then apologized. “I’m sorry,” she told the crowd, “I just need to pray.”
She bowed her head to find strength in God, and when she opened her eyes, someone had placed a flower in a vase right in front of her. Anne was startled, thrown off.
“What’s this?” she asked the crowd.
A woman in the front row explained that she had woken up that morning and felt impressed by God that Anne would need something encouraging right before she started speaking. She told her husband to go get a flower in a vase.
“Where am I going to find that?” he asked. “We’re not from around here.”
“Just get it,” she said.
So he did. Anne then told the gathered audience about how Jim had always sung to her before she spoke and how she had dreaded opening up her eyes and hearing nothing, and how much that flower meant to her, evidence that God was still with her even though her husband wasn’t and God would see her through. As you might expect, there was a serious run on Kleenex in that room. And the husband, who admitted that he had protested his wife’s request rather vigorously, told Anne, “I’m going to be a different husband. I had no idea how much those small things can really matter.”
Jim had discipled another man in his death.
The first time I saw Anne after Jim’s passing, I was fighting back tears approximately every 15 minutes as we remembered her wonderful, godly husband. As she dropped me off at my hotel, she paused to tell me, “I’ve had such a good life, Gary. Such a good, good life, investing in others, and sharing that with Jim.”
Though people always spoke so highly of the gifted Anne Pierson, for every one time I heard her name in ministry circles I heard “Jim and Anne Pierson” a dozen times. They had that blessed single identity. They were a unit; two individuals who were very much a single couple.
Jim and Anne had so little of what most people think constitutes a glamorous marriage. Having spent their entire married lives in ministry, they had so little money that Jim felt he needed to get permission from Anne to leave his daughter a small gift in his will (less than $10,000) to buy a new car. They didn’t look like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Jim’s passing was covered by a local newspaper, but it didn’t make the evening news or even Christianity Today. But how many people do you know who can look back at a simple but spiritually fruitful life and honestly say, “It’s been such a good life, Gary, such a good, good life, investing in others and sharing that with my husband?”
You don’t have to be beautiful (though Jim and Anne are, in every way). You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be famous to experience this. You just have to be what Jim and Anne were: worshippers of God, intent on seeking first His Kingdom and His righteousness, investing in the lives of others, and reaping eternal rewards.
God wants this for you. He wants you to say goodbye to your lifelong love with similar words, “It has been such a good, good life, a rich life of investing in others and sharing that with my spouse.”
We began with Jeremiah 31, so let’s end there. After God says through Jeremiah, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt” (vv. 3-4a), He adds, “I will make them walk by streams of waters, on a straight path in which they will not stumble; for I am a father to Israel.” (v. 9)
God will make us walk; God will lead us on a “straight path” and keep us from stumbling. Why? He is our Father, and, once we are married, also our Father-in-Law.
“They will come and shout for joy on the height of Zion, and they will be radiant over the bounty of the Lord…Their life will be like a watered garden…for I will turn their mourning into joy and will comfort them and give them joy for their sorrow…My people will be satisfied with My goodness, declares the Lord.” (vv. 12-14)
Anne looked at me behind glasses with eyes that have seen many decades, but those were satisfied eyes, eyes convinced of God’s goodness, grateful for every day.
Married life, offered in service to God, is such a good life, such a rich life, such a rewarding life. Let’s give ourselves fully to it and we, like Anne, will be doubly blessed with a lifelong love.
Ivan Muhenda says
Wooow!! That’s all I can say for now. I need to spend some time meditating about what you have written. Woow!!
Moses Choo says
My wife is very supportive since I married her in 1987 and in April 2018 I was diagnosed with lung cancer stage 4 Papa God is a good good Father.
Alvin Gee says
What a sweet story. Thanks for sharing.
Sue says
Such a beautiful tribute to two very beautiful people of the Lord! Just reading it made me tear up. It does remind me a bit of you and Lisa. Now if only she would sing out at one of your conferences! Lol.