I Will Sing of Loraine

Word Count – 1,404

“Who are your unsung Heroes?”

I considered the question for a while as many famous people paraded before my mind’s eye. I eventually concluded that the only people who have affected me positively and whose lives are so exemplary that I would want to emulate them are my Lord Jesus Christ and my wife, Loraine!

Since we’ve been singing the sweet melody of our Lord for two millennia I’ve decided today, I will sing of Loraine!

I met my wife 26 years ago on a Wednesday morning in a High School Spanish Class. 

“Hi, can I borrow your pencil?”

I turned and found myself staring into a very attractive face which seemed to radiate it’s own personal sunshine. Her eyes were dark and mysterious yet conveyed a friendly invitation to come on in.

I obliged.

“Hi, sure,” I said, offering the instrument.

When she smiled her entire face participated. I returned her smile thus beginning an adventure spanning 26 years and counting.

Long after our first meeting, my wife confided in me that she was motivated by pity that day. She said I looked like a lost puppy in need of an owner, that’s why she came over.

We’ve laughed at that many times over the years.

She introduced me to her all female clique, which consisted of a close friend and her cousin, Debbie, whom I fell in love with at first sight. We never actually got together, her cousin and I, but all through High School I had eyes only for her, so Loraine and I just became really good friends.

She knew I was on my own, my Dad had died the year before and my Mom was living 6,000 miles away so she’d bring me lunch and ensure I had something to eat every school-day.

After we left school our friendship grew deeper and stronger so that we became more like brother and sister. I visited her home and met her mom and her younger brother and sister. 

She stopped by my place on many occasions and we’d spend hours reading and talking. When she needed advice I counseled her about her relationship with her boyfriend and she was always there for me when I needed someone to lean on.

The way we became romantically involved could have come right out of the movies. I had recently broken up with my steady and she’d just split with her first and only boyfriend. We were at her cousin’s birthday party and for the first time since we met I saw Loraine as a woman.

I had never seen her as female before - just as a friend - not as a girl or a woman or as anything else but my friend.

So when this happened it hit me with the force of a revelation! It’s like I was seeing her for the very first time. And I liked what I saw… Very much!

When I eventually worked up the nerve to tell her I liked her and wanted to be with her she laughed in my face. Not a dainty little chuckle but an all out, bust-your-gut, belly-wrenching, tears flowing out of your eyes laugh.

I found out afterward she really thought I was being funny that’s why she laughed so hard. But I was serious, I informed her she was going to be my wife and she thought I was crazy!

Another one of the many things we still find humor in today, although we can say that I had the last laugh on that one.

Anyway, we met at seventeen and were best friends for six years so when I told her we were going to get married we were twenty-three years old.

She had been born again and filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking with tongues and prophesying at age sixteen but became disenchanted with the church because of the hypocrisy she saw in the Christian adults around her and eventually back-slid.

I was a heathen of humongous proportions searching for the truth in all the wrong places. In my quest I found the Occult, Astrology, Numerology and False Religions.

To speed up my story, we eventually hooked up, she became pregnant and we started living together. This did NOT go down well with her strict Pentecostal Mom. I wanted to marry her right away but she had reservations about making the big step so we waited.

The day we eventually got married she re-committed her life to Christ and unknown to me started praying for my salvation. Every morning at 4:00am she slipped off the bed, went into the living room and passionately prayed for my conversion.

She never preached a word to me - Not once!

We got married on February 26^th 1988 and this daily intercession went on everyday for 5 ½ months until I was gloriously Born Again on August 11^th 1988 two days after my birthday. I always tell people I celebrate two birthdays in August.

I’ll never forget that fateful day, it took hours of skilled debate and convincing for me to actually pray that prayer of salvation and receive Jesus Christ as my savior.

Beside me, there were four other people present, my wife, Loraine, her cousin, Debbie (yep, the same one) and two other really great friends of mine, Troy who was like a brother to me and his wife, Diane, each of them working in harmony with the others to break down my religious defenses against the truth of the Gospel.

But what was working on the inside more than anything else was the example I had of Christ, which I saw in my wife’s day-to-day living.

I remembered more than once when I was sick and she laid her hands on me and prayed a simple prayer that instantly raised me up healed. I remembered hearing her pray in tongues and literally feeling the power and presence of God fill the room.

I wanted so much to have that same power she had.

But even more than this were the times when I saw Christ-likeness demonstrated in her attitude and in the sacrifices she made on a regular basis for me and for others. There wasn’t one prejudiced or selfish bone in her body, she treated everyone equally and willingly gave of herself both to people she knew and strangers.

Over the last 20 years I’ve been privileged to see the untainted love of God demonstrated through Loraine in numerous ways.

Like when during one of the lowest periods of my life when she found out about something that I wasn’t very proud of, she, having every right to act otherwise, instead forgave me and lifted and restored me to dignity and self-respect.

Another time she counseled me through months of extreme pain, frustration and confusion when I thought my very sanity was at stake. Through my own fault our marriage was being torn apart and it didn’t seem as though our family would survive, she stepped up to the plate and through the most selfless act I have ever witnessed laid down her life on the altar of sacrifice saving our marriage, our family and my sanity.

Knowing Loraine for the past 26 years has changed me profoundly!

I was terribly abused by my father physically and emotionally, so I came to this marriage as damaged goods but through the healing balm of my wife’s pure love I have not only survived but flourished to the point that I can minister healing to others because I myself am healed by her generous and unselfish love.

In the past, when we watched movies and some character said that their spouse was the very air they breathed or they couldn’t live without them I would comment that that was so much mushy Hollywood nonsense and that in real life people didn’t talk like that!

But over the years I’ve grown to appreciate my wife so much that I’m actually feeling those movie feelings.

I’m at the place now where it really is difficult to imagine living without her and I do feel at times that she’s as necessary as the air I breathe.

Loraine, my sweetheart, my best friend, my lover, is my hero.

Through her life I have experienced the Spirit of Jesus Christ more profoundly than I ever have in any other way!

You ask me, “Who are my unsung Heroes?”

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