Storm Stories: Charlie's Victory (Part 2) - Charlie & Lucy Wedemeyer

Storm Stories: Charlie's Victory (Part 1) - Charlie & Lucy Wedemeyer
Storm Stories: Charlie's Victory (Part 2) - Charlie & Lucy Wedemeyer

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Storm Stories:  Charlie's Victory

Day 2 of 2

 

Guest:                        Lucy and Charlie Wedemeyer

 

From the series:       Storm Stories:  Charlie's Victory Part 2

       

 

Bob: What causes someone to persevere in a marriage relationship in spite of incredible hardship?  Here is Lucy Wedemeyer.

 

Lucy: I think it goes back to the marriage vows, "for better, for worse."  I don't think anyone ever dreams that the "for worse" part will ever be a part of your life.  As he began to deteriorate and was struggling with just staying alive, how can you abandon someone when you made that commitment?  

 

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, August 8th.   Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  We will get a close-up look today at what genuine love, commitment, and self-sacrifice really look like in a marriage.  Stay tuned.

 

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Friday edition.  I'm not sure exactly how to describe this week.  It's kind of like true heroes week, you know, great love stories week.  We started off hearing about John and Donna Bishop and the remarkable story of how their marriage has gone through the incredible trial of him having lost his memory completely, and they had to start their marriage and their family over again from scratch.

 

Dennis: Yes, and Donna was really the key to that because she loved him in the midst of his illness, and the story we're going to hear on today's broadcast is a continuation of another love story, Charlie and Lucy Wedemeyer, where she also loved and is still loving her man in the midst of great suffering and great trial.

 

Bob: Yes, Charlie and Lucy were married in 1966, and 11 years later, Charlie was working as a football coach in Los Gatos, California.  They had two children and, all of a sudden, Charlie noticed that there were things he used to be able to do that he couldn't do any longer – things like buttoning his buttons.  And so they went to the doctor, and the doctor said, "You may have a year to live, maybe a year and a half," and as it turns out, Charlie has beaten those odds.

 

Dennis: Slightly – 31 years he's been alive.

 

Bob: Yes.  When we interviewed him, this was more than a decade ago, he had already survived for a decade and half.  He is in a wheelchair, he's on a respirator full time, and all he is able to move are his lips and his eyes, and that's how he and Lucy communicate.  She reads his lips and, as our listeners will hear, she interprets what he is saying.  And as we've already said this week, this goes down as one of the top stories we've heard on FamilyLife Today in the years that we've been doing this program.  And here is part 2 of our conversation with Charlie and Lucy Wedemeyer.

 

Dennis: Bob, when Charlie and Lucy speak to audiences, they warn them.  In fact, in their book, "Charlie's Victory," they wrote down the warning they give people when they speak to them in large audiences.  They say "Sometimes in our lives, we'll all be faced with some circumstance that will seem too difficult to cope with.  When that time comes, we have to make the choice, because God gives each one of us the power of choice.  We can choose to be miserable, feel sorry for ourselves, throw our own private pity party and cause everyone around us to be miserable, too.  Or we can choose to face our trials with God's help knowing that we'll come out on the other side as stronger people for the experience.  We all have that choice."

 

And, you know, you all have really come out on that other side, although, Lucy, as I think back to the struggle that you've been through in facing Charlie's illness and caring for him – in fact, the nine years that you picked him up out of bed and without nursing help for all those years, Lucy, there had to be days when your strength, physical strength waned, and your emotional strength ebbed.  It had to seem like it was unbearable.

 

Lucy:  Well, it was, and I sort of made a pact with myself that I wouldn't cry in front of Charlie.  I didn't want to let down, you know, I always wanted to be up.  I'm always kind of an up person, and one particular afternoon, Cully (ph) had helped me get Charlie in a borrowed van to go to the doctor.  It was the first time we were putting Charlie in the wheelchair and trying to transfer him.  And as we got to the place, and we were attempting to put him into the wheelchair, we couldn’t.  It was a struggle.  It was so difficult that I began to have this lump welling up in my throat, and I thought, "No, no, I am not going to cry."  And so I said to him and to Cully, "Excuse me, I'll be right back," and they kind of looked at me with these faces like "Where are you going?  We have an appointment."  

 

And I jumped out of the van, and it was a busy parking lot, and I went to the back of the van, and I sort of knelt down behind it, and I cried out to God, I said, "I cannot do this anymore.  I cannot."  It was really miraculous because right then and there, without truly understanding what it was to have a personal relationship with Jesus, the Lord absolutely enveloped me with this wonderful blanket of warmth, of comfort, of this peace that it was going to be okay.  It was like this little void in me, in the center of me, was filled.  And I got up, wiped my eyes and marched back to the van and opened the door, and Cully looked at me, he says, "Mom, are you okay?"  And I said, "Yes, I am fine."

 

And really from that day forward the Lord gave me a new resolve that allowed me to go through everything and be calm.  It was as if God had said, "This is your mission," you know, "to help Charlie, to keep him going, and I have bigger plans."  Little did we know.  And Charlie's saying, "I thank God every day for Lucy because He, God knew beforehand, that Lucy would be the one that would stand by my side throughout our difficult circumstances, and I must say that whenever someone is diagnosed with a terminal disease, 72 percent of their marriages fall apart."

 

Dennis: You know, Bob, as I prepared for the interview, I watched a PBS special about this couple and this, of course, was something that was created back in the mid-1980s, and I sat there with my three daughters and wife and watched Lucy's commitment to Charlie, and Charlie's commitment to his family and to life, I just sat there with emotion welling up in me at the enormous commitment that ...