All things Jackie

Jackie is my wife of twenty six years.

Some people you just can't oversell, you can't exaggerate their greatness, their personality, their love. That's Jackie.

If I had a sentence to describe my wife, without any question and without much thought it would be this, "Love believes all things." Let me repharase it for her, "Jackie gives everyone, even Jeffrey Dohmer, the benefit of the doubt." She believes the best about all.

As a mom, she always believes the best about her kids. "Hey hon, Jeff is out with these boys and they are going to the riverbed with some girls and I heard they had beer." "Now Honey, You know Jeffrey would never..., and besides those kids need love too. They're all good kids." ...Whatever!

As a pastor's wife, she's seen and heard and experienced some of the cruelest things, and been so wounded as a mom of five, raising kids by grace in a glass house, but she always had this disbelief that the intentions were bad... "It must have been a misunderstanding, if they only knew they would never..."

And don't get me started on my favorite group to pick on... anyone Hollywood. "Oh look Honey, you said all Hollywood marriages fall apart, look at so and so they've been married for twenty some years." If there is any virtue and if there is any praise and I mean any... my wife chooses to thinks on these things.

As for me... she believes in me. She believed in me when I would go to church with a hangover. Never judged, never said a word. She just knew that in there somewhere was a good husband and dad. The Bible says that your husband can be won over to God without words when they see your Godly life. I've told many a woman that in counseling as they have come to fix their husbands. Rarely will they recieve that by faith. My wife did. I am who I am and where I am in large part because I had a wife who believed that her God could make her a husband and father for her kids.

It's a tough life for a gal like Jack. People may be talking behind her back. She doesn't think they are. They may give her the cold shoulder, she thinks they are havin' a bad day. And even if people treat her mean right to her face, she just chooses to believe it wasn't about her... even though it hurts.

I want to be a cynic. I've seen enough crap to know that people are mean and Hollywood is messed up and the church is filled with hypocrites and Pharisees. Don't waste your breath... she just won't believe it. And she will always say, "I wonder if Jesus thinks that about them." Ugggh, hate it when she says that!

In our ministry to the hurting, to those who have fallen and haven't gotten up yet, to those who've been told they were a failure from the time they were little... we need the spirit of Jackie. Someone who believes in you. Someone who just stands beside you and shares your life, deeply believing that your okay, you're just going through a phase, the best is coming, you don't even know how great you are yet.

For twenty six years today (Happy Anniversay Sweetie) I have had that kind of love poured over me. It has kept me when I was afraid of tomorrow, when I was in my deepest pain, when I felt like I was in way over my head... again. No matter what she is always there, believing in me.

For that, my best friend, the love of my life, and for so much more... I love you.

PS Hollywood is messed up... ask anybody.

BC