Do you know the touching love story of Robertson & Muriel McQuilkin?
Robertson McQuilkin was the president of Columbia Bible College when his wife developed Alzheimer’s Disease.
Robertson had to make a decision: To continue working at the college or to become caretaker of Muriel. Both jobs required 100% of him, so he had to resign from one or the other. He wrote a letter to Columbia Bible College to explain his decision. In it he stated:
…recently it has become apparent that Muriel is contented most of the time she is with me and almost none of the time I am away from her. It is not just “discontent.” She is filled with fear—even terror—that she has lost me and always goes in search of me when I leave home. So it is clear to me that she needs me now, full-time…
The decision was made, in a way, 42 years ago when I promised to care for Muriel “in sickness and in health…till death do us part.” So, as I told the students and faculty, as a man of my word, integrity has something to do with it. But so does fairness. She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years; if I cared for her for the next 40 years I would not be out of her debt.
Duty, however, can be grim and stoic. But there is more: I love Muriel. She is a delight to me—her childlike dependence and confidence in me, her warm love, occasional flashes of that wit I used to relish so, her happy spirit and tough resilience in the face of her continual distressing frustration. I don’t have to care for her. I get to! It is a high honor to care for so wonderful a person.
A true love story! This is the type of loving, self-sacrificing commitment that each of us are called to make to one another when we say “I Do.”
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