Divinely Ordained in the Stars

   October 16, 1977 is a watershed date for me.  That was the day I preached a “Trial Sermon” at the Pollocksville Baptist Church.  

 

The little Eastern North Carolina church was full that Sunday and the atmosphere was electric.  “Biggest crowd we’ve had in years,” people said. 

 

I felt the excitement and the warm welcome from this loving congregation.  Following the worship service, we had a covered dish meal.  The food was delicious although I barely had time to eat.  People wanted to meet me, to talk to me, to welcome me.  I remember a very expectant mother telling me her baby was due any day now.  She gave birth to a little boy the next day.  

 

I also remember a young lady who said, “Hello, my name is Joyce, and this is my husband, Ernie.”  And I remember a little girl named Paula Lynn asking me if I was going to be their next “teacher.”  

 

Even though the church would not vote on me until the next Sunday, it seemed like a formality.  I sensed an immediate connection with those folks, they felt like family.  And I think they felt the same about me.  

 

I should have expected people to be matchmakers.  That’s what they do with a young, single preacher.  A couple of years before, I had preached a revival up on Sand Mountain in Alabama.  Each night of the revival a different family invited me for dinner, and each family had an unmarried daughter about my age.  They would make sure I would sit beside their lovely daughter at the meal.  It seems that all of these young ladies had recently received a calling to be a preacher’s wife. But when I left Sand Mountain, I was still a single man.  

 

As it turned out, a member of the Pollocksville search committee also had an unmarried daughter about my age, but she didn’t tell me about it.  She was insistent though that I stay with them until I could get some furniture in the parsonage.  

 

I discovered that they had a daughter early one morning.  It was still dark and I was walking across the hallway to the bathroom.  We were both in our pajamas.  Talk about awkward!

 

Finding a wife was definitely not part of my plan.  But God had a different plan. As the English poet William Cowper wrote, “God moves in a mysterious way.”

 

The Pollocksville Baptist Church voted unanimously to call me as their pastor on October 23, 1977.  When the committee chair called to tell me the good news, he said, “We have had a tragedy.”  

 

On Monday, October 17, the day after my trial sermon, Ernie Koonce took his small boat out on the Trent River.  It was the first day of hunting season.  It was his wife, Joyce, who had introduced me to Ernie at the church.  Ernie never came home.  By the time I heard about the unanimous vote, Ernie had been missing for six days.  

 

The next day I drove to Pollocksville.  I will never forget walking into Joyce’s home and seeing her standing in the hallway.  The stress of the last week was clearly visible.  She walked up to me and instinctively we hugged.  Then she said, “When they find his body, will you preach his funeral?”

 

I preached Ernie’s funeral the day before I preached my first sermon as pastor.  

 

My heart went out to Joyce and her children.  The entire church, the entire community were heartbroken.  I checked on her frequently to see how she was holding up.  Was there anything I could do to help?

 

I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, when my feelings for Joyce became more than just pastoral concern.  I don’t think it happened suddenly, it was gradual, but it was happening.  Joyce felt it too.  By late November she told me that I had done my duty as her pastor.  She was politely telling me not to see her anymore.  

 

But a couple of weeks later, Paula Lynn found me at church on Sunday morning.   “We are putting our Christmas tree up today,” she said.  “Why don’t you come and help us?”

 

When I showed up at the door, Joyce said, “What are you doing here?  I thought I told you that you had done your duty as pastor.”

 

But a little voice behind her said, “But Momma, I invited him.”   

 

It didn’t take people in the church long to realize that something was going on.  News travels fast in a small town.  

 

Christmas was on a Sunday that year.  I planned to leave after church and drive home to Alabama.  Before I left, Joyce and I talked.  The committee member, in whose house I had been staying, told me that I should not see Joyce anymore.  

 

“People are talking,” I said to Joyce.  “Maybe we should stop seeing each other.”  

 

That was a lonely Christmas Day.  I made the long drive to Atlanta and then turned west into Alabama.  I could not get Joyce off of my mind.  I stopped in Anniston to spend the night.  Late that Christmas night, I called Joyce.  

 

“I know what we said, but I can’t stop thinking about you.  I don’t want us to stop seeing each other.  I think I love you.”  

 

Things moved fast after Christmas and by now, everyone was talking!  Joyce’s father came storming into her house one day and said, “Do you know everybody in town is talking about you?  Why can’t you find somebody to date besides the damn preacher!”

 

One day the chair of the deacons came to see me.  “People are complaining,” he said. 

 

“About what?”

 

“They say that when they try to call you, you are never home.”  

 

I talked to the telephone company and they installed this neat device on my phone.  If I was going to see Joyce, I could switch the call so it would ring at Joyce’s house.  Most of the time when I would answer the phone at her house, they would hang up. But there were no more complaints about not being able to get in touch with me.

 

Many of the men in Pollocksville would gather at Clifton’s gas station on a Saturday night.  They would drink and gossip.  Joyce’s father walked in one Saturday night just in time to hear the father of the unmarried girl in her pajamas tell the guys that they had planned for me to marry their daughter, but Joyce had messed everything up by “going after the preacher.” 

 

By the way, I did marry their daughter.  It was a few years later.  I performed her wedding!

 

On Valentine’s Day, 1978, I gave Joyce a small necklace.  I told her that I could not afford a ring just yet, but I wanted her to marry me.  She immediately said it was too early.

 

I agreed, but said when the time was right, I wanted her to be my wife.  

 

She said yes.

 

We thought the talk would die down, but it did not.  It was becoming a major distraction.  Joyce’s birthday, April 9, was on a Sunday.  I decided to address the congregation.

 

I told them that I wanted to share something personal.  I said, “You called me to be your pastor and you are free to ask me to leave.  You all know that Joyce and I are seeing each other.  We think we love each other.  We would like to ask for your understanding as we seek God’s will for our lives.”  

 

That was the day that everything changed.  The talk slowed down.  For the most part, people moved on.  But the committee member with the daughter, the one in the pajamas, did not.  She cornered Joyce after church that Sunday and told her that she did not come from the right family to be marrying a preacher. She was not “good enough” to marry me.  Her words hurt.  Joyce never forgot them.  

 

I knew that it was time for us to decide if we wanted to marry or not.  Well-meaning people were telling me that I was making a big mistake, that I just felt sorry for Joyce.  I felt the need to talk to someone who was wise and trustworthy to give me some good counsel.  

 

Dr. Theodore Adams was one of the most distinguished and respected men in Baptist life.  He served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia from 1936 to 1968.  He served as President of the Baptist World Alliance.  He had been on the cover of Time magazine. In 1978, he was serving as a Visiting Professor at Southeastern Seminary.  

 

He was kind and compassionate, a grandfatherly figure.  I made an appointment to meet with the great Dr. Adams.

 

I told him the whole story, about Joyce’s tragedy and how I had become very close to her.  I also told him about the uproar in the church and that I had even addressed it from the pulpit.  I listed all the reasons people were telling me that I should not marry Joyce.  She was seven years older.  She had three children.  She didn’t have the education that I had.  I was just feeling sorry for her.  

 

When I finished, the kindly Dr. Adams looked at me with an understanding smile and said, “Well, son do you love her?”

 

“Yes,” I said.  “I really do love her.”

 

“Well, what is stopping you?”

 

“But Dr. Adams, you know she is seven years older than me.”

 

At that he laughed a hearty laugh and said, “My mother was 10 years older than my father.  They had a remarkable love story, and you will too.”

 

I felt like I was walking on air when I left Dr. Adams’s office.  That appointment had been planned, but what happened next was an unplanned, serendipitous blessing.

 

Dr. John Carlton was our genteel, silver-haired Homiletics Professor.  His very presence exuded wisdom and decorum.  He spoke with a Shakespearean voice; his language was poetic and imaginative.  To hear him read from the King James Bible was to hear the Scripture sing.  

 

I shared the story and my visit with Dr. Adams.  Dr. Carlton listened with intensity.  I will never forget his response.

 

He had a habit of crossing his left arm over his chest, with his left hand cupping the elbow of his right arm.  He would take his index finger of his right hand to make an important point, or in this case, a proclamation.  

 

“Raaay,” he said with his melodious tone.  “This was divinely ordained in the stars.”  

 

A Papal Blessing could not have been more powerful.  

 

On Monday night, August 7, 1978, Paula Lynn, Della, and Knight walked us down the aisle of the Pollocksville Baptist Church.  When Rev. Donald Myers asked, “Who gives Joyce to be married to Ray,” Paula Lynn answered “I do.”  Then Della said “I do,” and Knight said “I do.”  

 

We were married on a Monday night because the deacons refused to give me another Sunday of vacation, even though it was my wedding.   But that was okay.  Seven was our special number and we were married on August 7 at 7 p.m.  

 

Dr. Adams was right, ours became a remarkable love story. Joyce wanted me to write a book about it . . .  maybe I will.

 

I used to tell Joyce that on average, women outlive men by seven years.  That means that we will both die at the same time.  But then came dementia.

 

As we neared the end, there were many things that Joyce had lost.  But whenever someone would ask Joyce how she was doing, she would look at me and say, “Tell them how many years we have been married!”

 

Joyce was my best friend.  She passed away at the Hospice House 48 years to the day I asked her to marry me, Valentine’s Day.  

When we celebrated Joyce's life at a packed First Baptist Church, Paula Lynn walked beside me into the sanctuary, just as she had 48 years before.  Della and Knight walked with us too, along with my two sons-in-law and my five grandchildren.  

 

They said our marriage would not last.  They said I just felt sorry for Joyce.  They pointed out that Joyce was seven years older and had three children.  But Joyce and I enjoyed over 47 years being husband and wife. We never stopped loving each other.  Of course we didn’t, because it was divinely ordained in the stars.