“Not the Same Ol’ House Anymore.”

"Carolyn Sandra Daniels, Oct. 30, 1948 – July 20, 2018."

Permit me, if you will be so kind, to spend a few minutes in sharing a few ramblings and reflections on my dearest friend. 

The day after my dad died, and Sandy and I had traveled through the night from Connecticut to get here, the first thing Momma said to me was, “Rick. It’s not the same ol’ house anymore.” No, without “Daddy Cloyce,” as he was widely affectionately called, it was not, and would never be again. It might see happiness, but it would not be the same. Eventually Sandy and I moved down to take over Momma’s care, and when she passed away my siblings so generously let us have the house. It became our home for the next 15 years. One year ago today she went to dwell in another, “eternal in the heavens.” This one has not been the same. A house at its best, is not a home.

I knew that she understood her physical limitations and accepted them as from the Hand that was pierced for her on Calvary, as being in accord with His wise, gracious, and loving purpose. While she was content for herself, I didn’t want her to think I was not content also. In the latter years of our marriage (I wish I had started many years earlier!), I used to close each day with, “Next to being saved, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me in my life, and I’ve had a very happy life,” and “I don’t love you more than anything; I love you more than everything,” and “Next to Himself, TO WHICH NOTHING CAN BE COMPARED, you are the greatest gift God ever gave to me.”  

I once wrote to her—

From East to West, from North to South,

it doesn’t matter where

Familiar parts, or strange and new

I really do not care.

Any season, any clime

will be the perfect place and time

As long as You are there.

In order that she not think I was envious of those who were “free” to go to faraway places and participate in conferences and other great things, I would tell her something like, “There isn’t anywhere I could be without you, or anything I could be doing without you, or anyone I could be with, without you,  that I wouldn’t rather be right here alone with you in this little living room in Wanchese.”  (We lived, ate, and slept in our living room, except when she needed “side time” for the sake of preventing bed sores.)  A doctor once told me she would not be able to come off the ventilator and would have to be placed in a facility far from home. He was wrong about her prognosis, came off the ventilator less than a week later, but I knew when he first said it that my home would be wherever she was.  

  

It was very plain to me that the Lord brought to Himself much more glory through her than through anything I had ever done, and I told her so. I felt that being a caregiver to her was what the Lord had called me to, and I was grateful for it.  

I sometimes used to say to her, that if there was one thing the Mormons believe that I wouldn’t mind being true, it was their doctrine about our being married in the life to come. In answer to the question, “Will we know one another in heaven?” the great Puritan theologian John Owen said we will hardly recognize one another, for not only will we be sinless, but we will be seeing one another with sinless eyes, (i.e., with a clarity of “vision” we are incapable of in this life), but we will know one another. A sinless Sandy and a sinless me! Wow, wouldn’t that be great! Of course, this is not only to want something contrary to Scripture, but it is to vastly underestimate the “exceeding weight” of the true eternal joys of heaven, of which even our highest earthly joys and pleasures are but brief and glimmering tokens. I have no fond dream of the world to come as being a sinless and wiser happily-ever-after re-start of the life that was before. It will be so much better than that! Here below, God distributes the parcels of His goodness to us through our fellow creatures; i.e., fellow believers, our families, and pre-eminently, hopefully, for those called to it, through those godly ones to whom we are united in marriage. But in glory, where the Lamb is the light and there is neither sun nor moon to mediate that light, “being made perfect,” we will behold Him “face to face,” as our departed godly loved-ones do even now in their spirits.  We will not be married, and we will not need to be. We will not “be alone.” All the saints will thrill with joy in the perfect vision of the glory of God which we will behold directly in the Lamb. Even though gloriously reflected in one another, and rejoicing in that, the Lord will be our common portion, our endless fountain of bliss, our overwhelming “good,” more than all we can imagine. Our time for married love and all the blessedness that attends it, is now, “until death us do part.”

I thank God every day for the gift He gave me. As much as I wish she had not had to be taken from me (though I recognize the loving wisdom of God in it), and as much as I miss her (not a day goes by without some tears for my loss), I would not have her back. She is with One who loves her infinitely more and better than I did.

I used to tell her that I thought that it was an amazing thing, that any woman should entrust herself, her earthly life, her moments and days and years to a man. I think any married person husband or wife, should be amazed at their spouse for doing so. By the same token, the time we have in which to do what good we can for one another is so brief. We must never make idols of our spouses, but we must never take them for granted, never allow them to feel that they are, and never assume that tomorrow will be plenty of time to give them our love. 

To all my married friends I would say, while you are here, now, while you still have the opportunity, love your spouse, love them as wisely, as passionately, as thoughtfully, as patiently and generously as you can while you can. Love them even better than you can, through the working of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love. Love them in the great tasks and sacrifices, over the long haul, and no less in the little favors that get asked, the ones that don’t, and the little pleasantries that come and go. And, when you fail to love one another as Christ loved you, as I so often did, look unto Jesus for more grace, forgive one another, and keep loving.