This morning I was musing over how strange it feels to be
starting a new married life after so many years and so many experiences with my
first wife. I can relate to what missionary Adoniram Judson wrote after
marrying for the third time: “I seem to have lived in several worlds, but you
are the earthly sun that illuminates my present.”
Judson was the kind of man who needed a wife. He was
unabashedly romantic, exalting “conjugal love” as our first “duty” of earthly
love. “Happy those,” he wrote Emily, “who find that duty and pleasure coincide.”
Judson was 24 when he married the lovely Ann Hasseltine,
affectionately known as Nancy.
They sailed off to Burma
that same year where they served under great hardship for 14 years until Nancy’s death at age 36.
Adoniram suffered as a widower for eight years. I know he suffered because I
know what it is like to feel the need for the companionship of a wife and to be
deprived of it.
Love came again when he married Sarah Boardman, the widow of
his co-worker George Boardman. His expressions of love for Sarah reflect a love
like no other. It diminished in no way his love for Nancy. But Nancy
was gone, her remains buried under a hopia tree in Burma. Adoniram and Sarah would
serve and love for the next eleven years until her death in 1845.
The death of Sarah hit Judson as hard as the death of Nancy had, yet the very next
year, at age 58 (a “senior citizen” back then) he married Emily Chubbuck,
“scarcely more than half his age,” the critics scorned. Yet she served with him
in Burma
until his death four years later. Her literary skills were of great value at
that stage of the ministry. What's more, she gave birth to four children by Judson!
Adoniram Judson’s marital history stands in stark contrast
to that of many Americans today, especially those in show business! In Wikipedia
we read:
Spouse(s)
Ann Hasseltine, 1812-26 (her death)
Sarah Boardman, 1834-45 (her death)
Emily Chubbuck. 1846-50 (his death)
Death is an agonizing end to a marriage, but it is an end. The relationship will be,
must be, forever different. The brilliant and godly Adoniram Judson understood
that. He understood that as long as God ordained that we remain on this earth,
life and service and love must go on—till death us do part.
