Today is my husband’s birthday. I probably shouldn’t share his age, but he’s kicking off his sixth decade.
(But I’m MUCH younger. I mean, he practically robbed the cradle. ;) )
For as long as I’ve known him, he’s joked with people who ask his name, saying it’s Clint but that he also answers to Mr. Wonderful. His kids and granddaughters find that hilarious (some of the time, at least!).
What makes it so amusing is that while I am aware that he IS wonderful, he is also one of the most humble people I’ve ever known.
I talk about his work and his ministry fairly often, but I haven’t written about his history. In the Easter devotional Olivia and I wrote two years ago, I noted that ‘someday’ I’d tell Clint’s story of ministry call.
I guess someday is today.
I have shared the story of how Clint and I met: he lived a town over from us in South Jersey, and our fathers had been in high school at the same time in the same town. Clint wanted to go to West Point, and my dad was a 1965 grad who often recruited likely high school students to pursue an appointment to the Academy. He began talking with Clint, and they became friends.
Eventually, during his second year at West Point, Clint asked my dad for permission to date me. Daddy said yes, and the rest is our history.
We discovered early that we had a common bond of faith. Clint had been raised Roman Catholic; while I was Presbyterian, my grandmother was Catholic, and through my own reading and studies, I had a good grasp of the doctrines of the Church. We had many long discussions on what we believed and what we didn’t.
In the course of our nearly 37 years of marriage, we’ve attended at least seven different denominations in five different states. We are not truly one thing nor the other when it comes to religious affiliation.
We lived in Hawaii for the first five years of marriage, stationed at Schofield Barracks. At the end of that time, the Army was downsizing post-first Gulf War, and we had two small daughters, so Clint decided to end his military career. He took a job with a medical sales company, and we lived in Wisconsin for two (very long) years.
Shortly before we moved from Hawaii, Clint’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Within a little over two years, it had metastasized to her brain, and we knew our time with her was very limited.
Clint was able to find a job in hardware that allowed us to relocate back to South Jersey, working for a well-known retailers’ cooperative. We moved over Labor Day weekend in 1994, and in early November, Clint’s mother died.
Her death was not an easy one. Mom was in hospice care at home for several months, and her disease was such that she struggled to communicate. Spending time with her was heartbreaking. She was only fifty-five, and she expressed often her fear of being forgotten, her distress at leaving her two children and (at that time) five grandchildren.
My father-in-law attended an evangelical church at that time, and a (perhaps) well-meaning pastor came to visit Mom one day while Clint was there, too. She was asleep, and the pastor shook her awake to pray with her. Clint was outraged, furious, and who could blame him? It made an already hard time even more painful.
Clint was only 29 when his mother died. Later, he told people that he was the absolute worst family member of a hospice patient, but I disagree. He was a son losing his beloved mother. He felt deeply the pangs of unresolved conversations from the past; he’d always been very close to his mom, and they both struggled to adjust to a new relationship after Clint and I were married. I am confident that if Mom had had more years of life, everything would have worked out. But we didn’t have that time.
Over the next fourteen years, we had two more children, moved to another house, and changed churches twice. We grew in our faith, both as a couple and individually. We homeschooled our kids and struggled to care for both of my parents, who battled cancer and ultimately died of it.
The day my dad died, Clint was in Florida interviewing for a job with a paint company. He’d left the hardware coop and experimented with small business, but ultimately, he was offered and accepted the position that took us to Florida. We made the difficult decision as a family to live apart for a year; our oldest daughter was in her senior year of high school, and my mom needed support after losing my dad.
Not too long after my mother had also died and we all moved to Florida, Clint left his job with the paint company. He knew he was being called to something else, but it took a few months to determine to what. The next spring, he applied to Asbury Theological Seminary in Florida and was accepted.
I never doubted his calling over those three years of school, even when we faced challenges. We did seminary the hardest way: we had no church family, no support, and for most of the experience, no church to attend. Once Clint graduated, getting a job was an uphill battle.
Ultimately, he took a chaplaincy position with a hospice company, even though he admitted he didn’t feel at all qualified and worried that his experience with his mother’s death would impede his role now.
On the contrary . . . living into his memories of how he’d felt while losing Mom, Clint became a most excellent, caring, patient chaplain to those who were battling illness, facing age, and preparing to transition into the next world. After he left hospice chaplaincy, he eventually transitioned into community chaplaincy, ministering not only to the aging, the ill, and the dying but also to the families of lost loved ones in the context of funeral care. And he does most of it without any salary or expectation of payment at all (the funeral homes sometimes provide an honorarium for funerals).
I know I’m biased, but as a witness to his work, I never fail to be touched and astounded by the love with which he ministers. People pour out on him their grief and heartbreak, and he listens, offering comfort where he can and presence where he can’t do anything else to help. All of this is offered regardless of belief, creed, affiliation, or lack thereof. There are no limits when it comes to whom he helps.
He’s not perfect, of course, and when mistakes happen, when calls are missed, or he’s late to a service, he is far too hard on himself. He never feels as though he’s doing enough, and he seldom feels qualified.
But as the woman who’s been lucky enough to be Mr. Wonderful’s wife, I know the truth. I know that he selflessly serves his Lord however he is called, never questioning the circumstances or the need. He has given up so much in the service of his calling; I wish he knew as well as I do how many people his love has touched and healed.
God took Clint’s experience of grief and loss and turned it into the chance to make a difference for hundreds of other families. I know that it is God’s work Clint is doing, but it’s also important to note that it is Clint who has said yes to God, over and over again.
I couldn’t be prouder of him or more in awe of his devotion to his ministry and his people.
Happy birthday to my very own fabulous leading man, Mr. Wonderful. <3