Jerry Falwell

Chapter One Jesus, Jerry, and Me It was a warm spring evening in Lynchburg, Virginia. Monday, May 14, 2007. My husband, Jerry Falwell, and I drove across town enjoying how the Blue Ridge Mountains stood in timeless majesty against an azure sky, dressed in verdant green trees. Their branches waved in the gentle breeze like a benediction. "Would you like to go to O'Charley's for dinner?" Jerry said, the usual twinkle of good humor in his eyes. "It's Monday." "Oh Jerry, I'd forgotten!" On Monday nights O'Charley's offered steak soup, a new dish on the menu. I'd longed to try it again, but I seemed to think of it only on Wednesday or Thursday or Saturday. Most people wouldn't expect a man like Jerry Falwell, who had so many major issues on his mind, to remember a little thing like getting his wife a bowl of steak soup. But then, most people didn't know my husband. The crowd at O'Charley's was light as we slid into a booth. Jerry nodded and waved at some people across the room. We'd never met the young woman who waited on us, but after forty-nine years of marriage, I wasn't surprised by my husband's kindness to her. "Where do you go to college?" he asked. "I go to the community college," she said with a shy smile. "Why aren't you at my university?" Jerry asked. "Liberty University." "My parents can't afford it," she said, shrugging one shoulder. "If you'd like to go to Liberty, I'll give you a full scholarship." Her eyes lit like sparklers on the Fourth of July. "Are youserious?" Jerry assured her that he was serious, and she floated away in a haze of disbelief. She'd had no idea when she walked up to our booth with her pad in hand that her life was about to change forever. But after almost fifty years of marriage to Jerry, I could have predicted it. Once, some children had knocked a baseball over the fence into our yard. Before giving the ball back to them, Jerry wrote a message on it promising a scholarship at Liberty, and then he signed it. "Wait!" he yelled, chasing the kids down the street. "I want to add that it's a four-year scholarship." So I smiled at the young waitress who tried to be sedate but almost jumped for joy asshe walked away. Something else stands out in my mind about that evening. I remember that Jerry ate no more than two or three bites of his food. Instead, he seemed content to gaze across the table, his eyes tracing the familiar features of my face in a most unusual way. It was almost as though he was seeing me for the first time. Or the last. As soon as the thought formed I pushed it aside. Jerry had looked across the table at me for almost fifty years. Still...he focused on my face. I savored my soup, aware of his scrutiny. Young people like our waitress often think those of our generation are trite when we repeat such worn expressions as, "Where did all the years go?" But one day they, like the rest of us, will look up, stunned that fifty years could have been so...brief. That's why, as Jerry watched emotions flicker across my face, I reflected over our life together, and marveled. It had been quite a ride -- not at all what I'd envisioned when I'd married the skinny young man who founded Thomas Road Baptist Church. Back then, neither of us had any idea where our journey would take us. I, for one, am glad. Timid as I've always been, it is best that I did not foresee meetings in the White House, traveling around the world, protestors, death threats, bomb threats, and a kidnapping plot. God's plan for our lives is so much bigger than anything we can imagine, and though I would have shied away from it had I known what lay ahead, I'm so grateful I did not miss it. Neither Jerry nor I imagined that God was forging us into instruments He would use to affect thousands of people and the politics of a nation. We were unaware of the tapestry He'd been weaving all along. We just thought we were living our livesFalwell, Macel is the author of 'Jerry Falwell' with ISBN 9781416580287 and ISBN 141658028X.