A Promise Kept (Part 3) - Robertson McQuilkin

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A Promise Kept (Part 1) - Robertson McQuilkin
A Promise Kept (Part 2) - Robertson McQuilkin
A Promise Kept (Part 3) - Robertson McQuilkin
A Promise Kept (Part 4) - Robertson McQuilkin

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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A Promise Kept

Day 3 of 4

Guest: Robertson McQuilkin

From the series: What God Has Done

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Bob: In the late 1980s, Robertson McQuilkin's wife Muriel was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Over time, her condition became worse and worse. Here is Dr. McQuilkin.

Robertson: It's like I was traveling away from her in the olden days, and I would recount our times together, our love times, our fun times, our crisis times. I'd rehearse those, and it was just delightful. It was like I was there. I was living it over again. And so now I'm on a little longer journey.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, August 13th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We'll hear about a long journey and about a promise kept on today's program.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. Often, when I have theh opportunity to speak at one of our FamilyLife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences, which I'm going to be doing in Philadelphia, by the way, coming up in November. I'm looking forward to going in early for a cheesesteak and then spending a weekend at the conference in Philadelphia.

Dennis: We'll have more than 60 of these events throughout the fall. And I just want to say, Bob, and excuse me for interrupting here, but …

Bob: That's all right. I'll just think about the cheesesteak, you go ahead.

Dennis: I know, I know, you're all over the cheesesteak and trying to find a Cheesecake Factory to go visit. Number 70 – or which one is it now?

Bob: It will be close to that by the time we get there, I think.

Dennis: Number 70 – think about that, folks. Anyway, this is serious. We've got to get – we've got to have intervention for Bob, I think.

But, you know, I run into listeners all the time who have been listening to FamilyLife Today, some for a few months, some for several years who still have not been to a Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference or those who went a number of years ago and whose lives have dramatically changed because of just the water that's under the bridge. And it's time, folks, it's time to go back, it's time to get a wheel alignment and to go take a weekend, a Friday night, all day Saturday, half-day Sunday, to sit and soak and have some fun, build some romance, build your relationship. You're not going to be asked to do anything publicly. You're just going to have a blast together as a couple.

I just want to ask you a question – when it the last time you really did something great for your marriage? And if that means going to Philadelphia to hear Bob, then join him at the Cheesecake Factory and get over there, but get to one of our 60 Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences this fall and take advantage of what I believe is the finest biblical training in the world on marriage and family.

Bob: You feel pretty strongly about this, don't you?

Dennis: I do. I've given my adult life to strengthen marriages and families, and I don't know of a better weekend for couples to spend. It's going to enrich their marriage with the right thing.

Bob: Well, what I was starting to say was that whenever I get the chance to speak at one of these Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences, I tell folks about Dr. Robertson McQuilkin and share with them his example of sacrificial, unconditional, 'til death do us part love that he demonstrated for his wife, Muriel.

Dennis: One of the things you've said that has kept you going are all the memories – memories of her wit and kind of how she would flash back at you. And there is one story I want you to share with our listeners where she rebuked you. That's just a classic story that I think points out the differences between men and women in a beautiful way.

Robertson: I think you're referring to the time we were – in the evening in bed discussing some earth-shaking theme, which I do not remember. And I was just demolishing her arguments with superb logic.

Dennis: Are you saying you were arguing with her?

Robertson: Discussing. If I ever do seem to be prevailing in a situation like that, then I start feeling bad about it. But she didn't wait for any sympathy or pity. She just reared up on one elbow and flashed those gray-green eyes at me, and she said, "Well, let me tell you something. Logic's not everything, and feeling's not nothing."

Dennis: When I read that story, I thought, "That is a great statement," especially for a man to hear.

Bob: You know, those stories, and Dennis talked about how there is comfort in those memories, but I would think, mixed in with the comfort of those memories, would be an ongoing sense of loss. I mean, that's how she was. But that's not how she's been over the last seven years.

Robertson: No. It's like I was traveling away from her in the olden days, and I would recount our times together, our love times, our fun times, our crisis times. I'd rehearse those, and it was just delightful. It was like I was there. I was living it over again. And so now I'm on a little longer journey, or she's on a journey, and, no, it's pure pleasure to recount those.

Now, if I was wire up, if I was programmed in my head so that I was thinking about, "Oh, but I don't have this anymore," "Oh, but what if it hadn't been this way," then, sure, I could get bent out of shape. And I don't take any credit for it. I give the Lord credit for anything good that I ever think or do, but I don't feel any immediate intervention on God's part. It's just that's not the way I am. I know you'd like to have me feel an agony and a pain and a wrestling and a battle, because that would help a lot of people, and I wish I could, but, frankly, that's not been my exp...