Marriage vows kept, McQuilken

Career and community concerns tugged at the bond of love the middle-aged couple had pledged each other in their 20s.
A popular speaker, the wife’s appointment book included speaking engagements, a daily radio program and volunteer work. In her spare time she counseled young adults and enjoyed her six children and grandchildren.
She and her husband celebrated their 40th anniversary with their family at a mountain retreat where they enjoyed gourmet food, homey activities and each other. As she reveled in well-earned glory, he contemplated setting her aside to concentrate on his career as a university president and author. He said he increasingly felt as alone as if he had never had a wife.
A letter to a columnist in the daily newspaper reflected his situation precisely, “I ended the relationship because it wasn’t meeting my needs,” the letter writer said. This university president knew the feeling. He no longer had the deep communication, understanding, affirmation and sexual fulfillment of the past to which the columnist referred. He missed that. He wanted it.
The columnist had advised the letter writer to leave if his needs were not met.
But, according to the Christianity Today Interview, Robert McQuilken rejected the advise so eagerly embraced by many. He weighed his successful 22 years as president of the Columbia International University against his 40 year vow to be faithful to his wife, Muriel, who had begun to disappear into the oblivion of Alzheimer’s.
The university board listed all the ways they needed him. For two years, they provided a day time care giver for his wife so he could continue at the university. It wasn’t enough. Muriel missed him so much that she walked the half mile to his office many times a day. She did not always know him, but when she was around him she was calmer.
In the early 1990s Robert McQuilken stepped down as university president to become his wife’s primary care giver. He continued as the university’s chancellor – a position he could hold while at home. In his resignation letter to the faculty he stated, in part: “One of the simplest and clearest decisions I’ve had to make, is this one, because circumstances dictated it. Muriel, in the last couple months, seems to be most happy when with me, and almost never happy when not with me. … So I must be with her at all times. You see, I promised in sickness and in health till death do us part, and I’m a man of my word. It is the only fair thing. She sacrificed for me for 40 years, to make my life possible. So, if I cared for her for 40 years, I’d still be in debt. However, it is much more. It is not that I have to, it is that I get to… It is a great honor to care for such a wonderful person.”
In subsequent years as her mind continued to erode, McQuilken had only few hours each day for himself. He stayed the course, offering the university input from his home and continued his writing as time and his wife’s needs allowed him to do so.
In 1995 Tyndale published his book, “An Introduction to Biblical Ethics,” Ethics deals with moral duty and obligation. McQuilken did not just write about ethics, he lived it for more than a decade.
Muriel McQuilken died last fall – with her husband still at her side.
In a day and age when men and women justify walking away from their marriage because they don’t feel the love, have the fun and adventure of the past or any other number of frivolous, self-centered reasons, McQuilken chose to honor his marriage vows when others advised compromise. McQuilken’s long years at home with his wife stand as an reminder that our vows of marriage before God are more important than prestigious positions, money or personal comfort.
No one said it was easy, but McQuilken showed that one can choose to do what it takes to honor a pledge to be faithful to the end.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)


Posted

in

by

Tags: