All Things Beautiful #2 – Ken Williams

“Life Lived and Lessons Learned, All Things Beautiful!”

Sky Blue Pink

Fifty-four years ago, I asked Nancy Jo, the love of my life, what she meant when she described a sunset radiating the color sky-blue-pink. We were newly married and it took years for me to concede the existence of something that sounded more jocular than any attempt to describe a real color. I asked, “Don’t you get purple when you mix blue and pink?” She insisted that on a sunny day she could see sky-blue-pink, particularly at sunset. But we were at the sunrise of our lives together, and it was too early for me to see beyond our five empirical senses, no poetry. Hm, an old proverb says something like, “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

I had a lot to learn and presumed to “help” my naïve bride. We served a congregation of seventy-five in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and during the next worship service, I asked the members to raise their hands if they believed sky-blue-pink is an actual color. Nancy Jo glowed (a shade of pink as I recall) as she witnessed 75% of the congregation raising their hands; haven’t heard the end of it in 54 years. There’s more.

55 years ago following our engagement, I visited Nancy Jo’s parents in their southern Wisconsin country home. I slept in her brother Sherwood’s room and upon visiting her room I spotted a portrait of my fiancé hanging on her bedroom wall. She was the prom queen at her high school that year and she was wearing the beautiful gown, tierra, and jewelry her father bought her. From my perspective, enchanted by her beauty, she appeared shy, humble, with folded hands in front of her, with a smile that radiated a pinkish glow. She was her father’s princess. Sylvanus and Bonnie were proud of their lovely daughter. I didn’t perceive this vibrant incarnation of the radiance of “sky-blue-pink”, not yet.

On the day of our wedding, February 13, 1972, I watched as Nancy Jo, arm in arm with her father walking his princess down the aisle, to present her to me. He and Bonnie anticipated that I would treat her as my queen. That night in our wedding suite, I beheld her radiant pink glow. I’ll leave it there out of consideration for my wife’s modesty. But I think I grasped a bit of what Adam meant when God presented Eve to him and Adam said, “this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” (Genesis 2:23). Wow!

Perhaps it isn’t unusual, but it took time, experience, sorrow, joy, life, for God to mold me into the man that loves Nancy Jo for who she is. Thanks to God’s grace, Nancy Jo’s patience, and the Holy Spirit’s work with me, I who was blind can now see. I see God’s daughter, the way he lives within her, just one of her many admirers, and I believe see as a kind of incarnation of sky-blue-pink.

So, here we are 54 years later, like every other elderly couple, wondering where the time went. During a recent breakfast at a favored restaurant, I looked across the table at my Nancy Jo. We are a seasoned, older couple but her blue eyes radiate the beauty of sky-blue-pink, glowing brightly. Now I see this “color” in the sunset. Perhaps this isn’t unusual since our sunrise of life together is a fond memory. We are looking at the radiance of a beautiful day that is more suited for the coming sunset.

Thank you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Life is worth living.

Stay tuned for All Things Beautiful – Three

Ken and Nancy Williams served for some 25 years in pastoral ministry, and then almost another 20 years serving and mentoring other pastors.  With the heart of a pastor Ken continues to write and blog from upstate New York where he and Nancy live close to their grandchildren.