Lemuel, I Found One!
By Joe E. Trull
On September 6 fifty-three years ago I persuaded a young girl barely out of high school to leave the security of her own life for the chartless seas of being the wife of a Baptist preacher.
During that first decade of married life we passed through some chaotic times—I completed my final two years of college and seven years of seminary education. She somehow found time to bear and raise our three children, hold down two full-time jobs, acquire two years of college and seminary education (she later graduated from U.T.), and filled the role of pastor’s wife at three student churches.
With a woman’s “know how” and “make do,” Audra washed dirty faces and dirty clothes, ironed shirts and dresses every Saturday night, and stretched the budget beyond our meager means.
She did not have a home of her own until we moved to our first full-time church in Austin in 1965. Yet in all of those moves into the “parsonage,” where the furniture never matched the chartreuse and pink drapes, the wallpaper bulged from the wall when the winter wind blew, and the tornado shelter was better than the manse—she always managed to change every house into a home.
Through it all she has listened to statements like, “Our former pastor’s wife did it this way!” Usually she smiled—sometimes she cried. She has been scrutinized by pulpit committees, interrogated by busybodies, and mistreated by those who were upset with her husband—yet she has remained sweet and calm through it all!
Her job description includes answering the phone at least a thousand times to explain she did not know how to reach her husband (pre-cell-phone world), smoothing the ruffled feelings of many distraught members, and listening patiently to tearful tales of woe with empathy and concern.
She has also listened over and over to the same old humorous stories told by her pastor and always laughed at the right time. She has endured the same sermons time after time, and not gone to sleep. Over the years I have learned to listen to her gentle criticisms and take heed, because she is almost always right.
Without grumbling or questioning, she has journeyed with her husband from the plains of Oklahoma to the mountains of East Tennessee, and from the hill country of Austin to the West Texas town of El Paso. She even joined me in a brief stay at Richmond, Virginia, before going to the “foreign” world of New Orleans, where we lived on a seminary campus for fifteen years.
While in New Orleans, we fled hurricanes, endured the demands of weekend interim pastorates and weekday teaching jobs, taught hundreds of ministers and missionaries, and once again lived in a home not our own.
During all of these stays, we were far away from our families Yet, she never rebelled or complained, even when her husband was grumpy.
She has continued to listen, encourage, understand, sometimes caution, but always support and believe in her husband, even when he lacked faith in himself.
For these last ten years, we have enjoyed “early retirement,” working side-by-side in our home producing this Journal—she serving as secretary, proof-reader, bookkeeper, and associate to the Editor, who could not produce this bi-monthly publication without her help.
Fifty-three years together. What a wonderful life!
In the Old Testament, King Lemuel asks a rhetorical question, “Who can find a capable wife, for her price is far above rubies?” (Prov 31:10). This was a cynical observation on the scarcity of good wives.
Well King Lemuel, I have news for you. I found one!
–JET
Editor’s Note: This article was adapted and expanded from an article first written in 1971 and is used by permission of the author who insists the article is even more true in 2008 than it was then.
