A Legacy of Honor: How They Honored Each Other

by Marilynn Chadwick

Mom and Dad suffered two especially hard losses as a young couple. When I was about two, Mom delivered a baby girl who died shortly after she was born a few weeks premature. Today’s neonatal technology could likely have saved the baby. I have no memories of this incident.

Tragically, the very same thing happened again when I was five. This one I do remember. There were two of us kids at that point. My sister Susan and me. Mom went into premature labor again and delivered a baby—another girl who also died soon after birth. But Mom, just 28 at the time, somehow managed to keep life moving forward in our home. I know she had a deep faith, and I’m sure it was her faith and her courage that gave her the strength to persevere. She and Daddy kept hope alive, and two years later welcomed my youngest sister, Janice, whose name means “God’s gracious gift,” into our family.

I’m a mother myself now, and a grandmother. So when I look back at those times in my mother’s life, I don’t know how she kept going. She and Daddy had to be grieving. Yet I’m amazed at how little she allowed those terrible losses to impact our lives as children. By that I mean that she and my dad didn’t retreat to fear or hold us back from a normal, active, and happy childhood. Mom kept moving forward for us—evidence, again, of her self-sacrificial nature and her servant’s heart.

Mom had been an only child and always wanted to be part of a large family. So she especially loved Daddy’s large family. And Daddy loved hers. They were a team. Family was their priority.

They also shared each other’s interests, like a love of the outdoors. They enjoyed camping. Some of my favorite childhood memories—even into my teen years—are of our family camping trips every summer. To the beach, to the mountains. To historic sites such as Colonial Williamsburg and Kitty Hawk.

Mom and Dad both had keen minds. They loved good books and good movies, and made sure we had access to those things growing up. They appreciated education, patriotism, and the land. Our people were mostly a collection of educators, farmers, and those serving in the military. Being native Virginians, they especially loved all things Virginian.

Honor was present in so many ways in our home, though typical of their generation, they didn’t flaunt it. I guess you could say Mom and Dad were good, solid, honorable people who came from a long line of good, solid, honorable people. They all had long-lasting marriages and were proud of their heritage. And they passed that legacy on to us.

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This series is adapted from the book, 8 Great Ways to Honor Your Husband by Marilynn Chadwick. To download your free PDF copy of this book, please visit our website by clicking here!

A Legacy of Honor: Keep Calm and Carry On

by Marilynn Chadwick

My dad honored my mom, but I also saw how my mom honored my dad. Looking back, I can see some of the reasons their marriage remained strong. Sometimes when we’re in the middle of daily life as it’s happening, we don’t fully realize the truly heroic nature of the people right in front of us. It all seems normal at the time. So it’s been special for me to take a look back at the life my parents lived and the legacy they left me. As I reflect, I feel enormous gratitude for their sacrifices that paved the way for the life I have today.

We’ve been talking about the importance of how to create a legacy of honor. So it has helped me to think back about Mom and Dad’s life together with honor as my lens. How did Mom honor Dad? What are some ways they honored each other? And what kind of legacy have they left to those who come behind them?

During our growing up years, Mom was Dad’s helper in the best sense of the word. She was a true ezer, the Hebrew word for “helper” as described in the Creation account (Genesis 2:18). Mom was strong and kind. And she was his rock of support. I remember how Mom built Dad up. She believed in him.

Mom had stopped teaching school when the kids came—family was everything to Mom. She especially loved Dad’s parents and his three sisters and their families. She even took an interest in Dad’s sales force—“Daddy’s men,” as she called them—and sometimes we got together with their families.

Dad’s job as a regional sales manager with a large company required quite a bit of travel. Mom never complained. She simply kept life going for her three daughters. But invariably, most of our life crises seemed to hit when Daddy was away. Like the time I tried to do a cannonball dive into three feet of water and didn’t tuck quite fast enough, hitting my head on the bottom of the swimming pool. After Mom and I took a fast trip to the emergency room and 27 stitches later, Dad finally made it home.

Recently, when I asked Daddy to describe some ways Mom had honored him, he pointed back to that incident. “I never worried when I was traveling,” he said. “Even when you cracked your head open, I could always count on your mom to handle things. She was always so calm.”

Daddy’s right. Mom honored him by her strong resolve and her ability to keep the family on track in his absence. The popular World War II expression “Keep Calm and Carry On” was originally created to inspire the Brits to keep their courage during the war. And I think it described my mom quite well. It is also a characteristic of honor we can all embrace.

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This series is adapted from the book, 8 Great Ways to Honor Your Husband by Marilynn Chadwick. To download your free PDF copy of this book, please visit our website by clicking here!

A Legacy of Honor: What’s His Secret?

by Marilynn Chadwick

When people meet my now 97-year-old dad, they often ask me, “What’s his secret?” “How does your dad look so young and stay so sharp?” Daddy would be the first to tell you that part of his secret is that he had a great wife. He was married to my mom for nearly 70 years.

My mother was nearly bedridden for the last ten or so years of her life. A ruptured appendix and complications from a subsequent surgery robbed a once robust grandmother of her ability to walk. Some of her ability to think and talk faded, but enough of her razor-sharp mind remained to make conversation possible, though difficult. Daddy insisted upon caring for her at home, with the help of nurses’ aids to help him with wheelchair transfers and daily care.

If you asked them, Mom and Dad would each say they “married up.” Mom would always tell us three girls how lucky she was to find Daddy. And Dad said he was just glad his “turn in line” with the other young men who wanted to date Mom finally came. To which Mom would answer back, “Well I was hoping you would ask me out!” In her last years, Dad would look at my mom, lying in the bed after he had just brushed her hair, and say to me, “Doesn’t she look pretty?”

Few could imagine the daunting challenges Mom and Dad faced on a daily basis just to live at home. Dad would do all of the grocery shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. On top of that, he would perform medical procedures for her each day. Catheters, baths, diapers. There were also occasional trips to the emergency room and hospitalizations because of infections.

Dad’s caregiver role began after Mom’s ruptured appendix. Even then, he managed the daily cleaning of Mom’s open abdominal wound for weeks after her emergency surgery. Sometimes, his bad back would flare up, but he would keep at it.

In good times and hard times, Mom and Dad honored their wedding vows. That just by itself is a legacy of honor which they have passed on to David and me, to our children, and their children.

A legacy of honor must be tended to and cared for so that it can grow and mature for generations to come.

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This series is adapted from the book, 8 Great Ways to Honor Your Husband by Marilynn Chadwick. To download your free PDF copy of this book, please visit our website by clicking here!