She called him her “Mr. Steady.“ She would write it on love notes, address him by the endearing moniker, and even occasionally refer to him as such when talking with others. The husband God had given her was in every way her opposite — but Wisdom knew that his calm, introverted, and consistent nature would be a wonderful complement to her enthusiastic, extroverted, and spontaneous spirit.
When Eric and I first stepped into full-time ministry, I was completely unprepared for the spiritual attacks that hit us full force. Financial difficulties, false accusation, health problems, discouragement, and exhaustion became a normal part of our lives.
At first glance, his life seemed like a dismal failure — his untimely death a senseless waste. Robert Jermain Thomas was a strong, well-educated, talented young man who left for the mission field in China with his wife in 1863.
My fingers glided over the small, wooden jewelry box, tracing the cluster of painted florals that graced the top. I noticed one of the hinges was broken, but that didn’t stop me from gingerly lifting the lid to peek inside to see what treasures lay within.
My body had been sounding an alarm that something was seriously off, and my symptoms were growing increasingly strange. What began as a small rash had grown into an unsettling set of problems: numbness in my toes, tingling in my hands and feet, sharp and quick bursts of nerve pain throughout my body — it felt like my nervous system had been turned up to high. While laying down, my heart would pound and I felt like I was breathing through a filter.
My anxiety was rising as I rifled through every possible place I could think of. After two days of searching, I was still coming up empty-handed. I dug around in the garage, in my junk drawer, in the pile of hardware, in the purse I had worn to the store to measure for a new hinge … everywhere I could think of.