In two days, Linda will be 80. On our first date in December 1962, I was 19 and she was 21. Over the years, our age difference has been the source of convenience, fun and disagreement. When we started pastoring, I freely shared Linda’s birthday, hoping that people would think I was older than she. After all, people were not standing in line to hear a 22-year-old pastor. Before Jeffery went home to be with the Lord, he delighted in proudly announcing, “Mama is ahead of Daddy.” However, she was not a happy camper when I shared with the congregation she had just turned 50. Several very chilly days are etched in my memory!
It would be easy to assume our relationship began when a hormonally crazed teenager saw a beautiful young woman and finally got up to the courage to ask her out. That would be very incorrect. Our story is best understood through the lens of divine intervention, a shared vision, and ultimate destiny.
Divine Intervention
Returning home after my first year in college, my mother was eager to look through my yearbook. After some time, she casually asked a question that caught me off guard, “Why don’t you date this pretty girl, Linda Johnson?” I quickly replied, “I wouldn’t date her. She’s a Pioneers for Christ girl!” Let me put my response in context: Her group believed in practically living out Christianity by going door to door and sharing the Good News of salvation. While I, less than two years after yielding my life to Christ, was trying to figure out what I really believed and how ministry should take place. If my mother was displeased with my answer, she did not express it; and the conversation never crossed my mind again.
Now, let’s fast forward seven months. My best friend was dating Linda’s sister. After being introduced to Linda, having spiritually matured to a degree, I was impressed by her devotion to Christ. In complete honesty, I must admit being beautiful with a great figure didn’t hurt. Our first date was the beginning of a wonderful love story. Within three months, I asked her to marry me and to my delight, she said, “Yes.” She invited me to Kentucky to meet her family and shortly thereafter, I asked her father for Linda’s hand in marriage. On spring break 1963, I invited her to Florida to meet my family and we shared our plans for marriage. Later, when alone with my mother, she asked me if I was sure Linda was the girl I was going to marry. After responding, “Yes,” she asked me if I remembered her pointing out Linda in my yearbook. I replied, “I do now!” She then told me a story, that amazes me to this day: “When asking God to deliver you from your high school sweetheart and give you a partner who would stand beside you in ministry; in a vision, I saw a girl with a beautiful smile standing on the other side of a lake. I had never seen her before or again until I saw her in your yearbook.” I marvel that my mother had the wisdom to understand the timing of God and not share what he had shown her until the appropriate moment.
A Shared Vision
As I noted in an earlier blog, prior to marriage, we determined “our life together would be a team effort. In the early years, that was easier said than done. My attention to detail and her spontaneity blended like oil and water. Over time, especially after the children were grown and we could think clearly, it became obvious that her spontaneity prompted fun moments that I would have passed over and formed the basis for so much joy during the holidays… All this was challenged when dementia slowly took away Linda’s ability to provide fun moments for family gatherings; rejoice over discovering that great-grandchildren are even more wonderful than grandchildren; and discuss the unfolding evidence that all history points toward fulfillment in Christ.” Alone, my task is overwhelming; and I am driven to my knees as I seek ways to keep this vision alive and pass it along to our descendants.
Ultimate Destiny
My belief system has been influenced by many gifted men and women. However, no one has ever taught, and continues to teach, me more about living out the life of Christ than Linda. A framed plaque, containing one of her life scriptures, hanging over her bed, says it all:
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever (Psalm 73: 25-26 NIV).
Ron Harvard Ministries 