Lisa Barry: If you?ve been tuning in to Gateway to Joy for a while, you probably know a lot about Elisabeth Elliot?s background. More than likely, you know that she has a daughter named Valerie and eight grandchildren. But there?s another person in the studio with us today whom you may not know as well. His name is Walt Shepard, and he?s been married to Valerie for 22 years. Yesterday we got a chance to get to know Walt better. We?re going to finish up this series today with another peek into the background about this most interesting couple. We?re going to pick up where we left off yesterday, so let?s get started.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That?s what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, delighted to introduce again today my daughter, Valerie Shepard, and her husband, Walt Shepard, pastor of a church in South Carolina. They are going to continue their talks together.

Walt Shepard: Val, I?ve got to tell you what it was like up at the Hill?what we called the seminary. When people got word that I was living at your mom?s house, it was wild because of these strange caricatures of your mom?these ideas that people had that she is so aloof and so reserved. What we agreed on up at the Hill was that she was serious.

I?m not sure I?m fair to that word "serious" all the time, because like all boys, you want somebody serious about you. But what the buddies meant by that word "serious" was that the lady was, we?d say today, "focused." The lady had a singular purpose. She wasn?t silly. She certainly wasn?t to be confused with an airhead. And she put people on the spot, because her questions were searching.

But what I found was that the lady was a delight. It was not just two weeks after I moved into your mom?s house that we were in the kitchen. I was sitting at the breakfast table and your mom was at the stove. She looked at me and she said, "You know, I know you from somewhere. I?ve seen you before." I said, "No, I don?t think so." Well, see, by this time I had gotten a shave and I?d gotten my hair cut. I was a little different looking. I was trying hard not to look like I used to.

But she put it together and she said, "Oh, no!!" Just like that?and you know, your life flashes before you several times.

Valerie Shepard: Fear and trembling.

Walt Shepard: She put it together that I was that huge galute who went up to her and said, "Boy, I was just swept away by your comments and I would like to hug you." I was starting to get up by this time, take my plate and put it up and get very busy.

Valerie Shepard: You were hoping that she would not remember that time.

Walt Shepard: Oh, your mom nailed me, of course. She just said, "Walt, why didn?t you hug me?" or something like that. By that time, I was probably out of the kitchen, outside, down the driveway.

But I want to pick up on this thought about how much fun she was. I would hitchhike to school back in those days. Sometimes when it started to snow, it was real easy to look pitiful out there and you could get a ride real quick. There was this one man who used to always pick me up. He was a professor.

Valerie Shepard: This was the first year you were there.

Walt Shepard: Yes. He would say, "You! How can you do that?" I said, "Well, what are you talking about?" He said, "Living there! Living at her house!" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I get the fear and trembles just being around her. I can?t imagine living in her house!" I said, "Well, I?ve actually found her to be a lot of fun. She is a gracious lady."

Valerie Shepard: She has a great sense of humor.

Walt Shepard: Tremendous sense of humor, and can laugh at herself. I?m grateful for the lessons that I learned that weren?t in the classroom, because from your mom I got to learn about these things. She introduced me to Isak Dinesen. And that idea of pride? Remember?a good sense of pride is this idea God had when He made you.

I mean, where do you learn those kinds of concepts that help a man, a young man, in setting his course, and not taking himself too seriously, but learning to take other people seriously, and developing the sense of humor that?s really, I?d say, a major balance in our marriage. I?m just saying that those were the kinds of things that I learned from this lady, who was enjoying?or maybe not enjoying?the reputation of this very unapproachable type woman. So I?m very grateful for that experience.

It was during that time, too, that I finally got the courage to write you something. Do you remember that?

Valerie Shepard: Well, I just wanted to get the record straight a little bit. This was your second year that you lived with my mother in her house. It was in your first year that you had not met her, but during the first year was when you had said to her after her talk, "I wish I could give you a hug," and then ran away.

So when we met at Christmastime or got to know each other at Christmastime from when I came home from my break, I was quite swept away with you. I went off back to Wheaton, thinking, "Boy, he was a wonderful young man." I wanted my mother?s approval in anyone that I was particularly interested in. So when she would write letters back to me, telling what else you had done or what funny thing you had said, I was getting more and more curious.

I came home for a very short Easter break. We got to spend some time together then with the families. My mother?s family was there. We did stay up one night quite late talking and laughing. I remember you made me laugh. You were the first young man that I had been with who I felt completely comfortable and at home with. You made me feel that I belonged with you, even though nothing had been declared between us. But it was at that visit that you asked me if you could write to me. So I said, "Yes, gladly."

You wrote me a nice long letter that spring, and I wrote back. I hope not too quickly, but I wrote back. Then from then on, I hoped for another letter from you. But you, for some reason, decided that you?d better not write back to me.

Walt Shepard: Well, there were a lot of things that probably helped me to decide that. But probably the big one was fear. Just?"Is this really from the Lord? Should I pursue this? Should I even act like it?" I was struggling with how young you were.

When I had some free time at your mom?s house, my favorite thing to do was to go over that scrapbook where she had got all those pictures of life with the Waorani people, formerly called the Auca people. Seeing y?all?s jungle experiences in picture really got to me?trying to imagine this gracious lady, who is the epitome of what a hostess has and is and imagining her in this village with huts with no walls, being the object of their scrutiny from sunup to sundown, and even being laughed at over and over again all day long and looking for some help from her daughter, who would look at her and just shrug. Whenever your mom would try an attempt at the Auca language, you would sit there and guffaw and go "Get a load of this!" as if to expose her as the bumbling missionary to all those men and women.

I was being worked on by those pictures and those glimpses of you as a little girl and getting hopeful. "Lord, could this be the right one?"

Valerie Shepard: And my mother has teased since then that she was getting to groom you to be my husband, though she never mentioned that particular thing to me. She did not tell me that she hoped you would be my husband someday. But I knew that she really enjoyed you and thought you were great.

So it was that summer that your parents happened to be in Wheaton at the same time that I was in Wheaton in summer school. You had told your parents that my mother was going to be there, because she was speaking at the Wheaton Chapel. I got to meet your parents. Shall I tell the little goat story?

Walt Shepard: Sure.

Valerie Shepard: Well, we were sitting at the table, just my mother and I and your mom and dad and talking about this and that. Again, nothing had been declared between us yet. But your father, who had a great sense of humor, said, "Well, you know what the African custom is when a young woman?s family decides on the young man that their daughter will marry. The young man"?is that right?

Walt Shepard: Yes. The young man is the one who is looking for the wife. So it?s the young man?s parents.

Valerie Shepard: The young man decides on which family. The parents decide on which family their son will marry. So that young man?s family takes a goat over to the young woman?s family as a gift as a down payment. Your father said to us?us, sitting there totally innocently?"So we?ve got a little goat out in the car." We were just incredulous. We laughed. We smiled. But inside, my heart was going pitter-pat.

He took us back to the dorm after that. Of course, we laughed, but we didn?t say anything more about you and me doing anything serious. We got back to the dorm. He dropped us off. As he said goodbye, he said, "That goat will be coming along pretty soon."

Walt Shepard: I would have died a thousand deaths if I?d heard that.

Valerie Shepard: Of course, I was just again incredulous that he would be drawing these conclusions that we were going to be together.

But anyway, one of the things that you and I said over and over again to each other, after you did ask me to marry you, which was the following December?that fall that followed that summer. You asked me to marry you and you said, "One of the things that makes me very sure that the Lord has brought us together is both our parents have confirmed and affirmed of our loving each other." We were both so thankful for that.

Walt Shepard: It?s been a real blessing all along, hasn?t it?

Valerie Shepard: We?ve had 22 years of good marriage, a wonderful marriage. It?s gotten better and better. We know that.

But we just wanted to mention a few things my mother taught us both. One thing was that we marry a sinner. She prepared the book, LET ME BE A WOMAN, as a wedding gift for us that we got right before our wedding. Did we get it the week of the wedding, I think? We took it on our honeymoon and read it together. She taught us that we?d better be ready to deal with the sin in each other?s lives, and I?m sure we weren?t ready. But of course, that?s part of what marriage does to you. You see reality.

We were committed. We knew that we had to be committed to each other. Neither of us have ever had thoughts of divorce. There have been difficult times just because of hurt and sin, but I knew always that I would stay with you.

The other thing she taught us was that?I remember you using the expression, "She put the boots to someone." She did speak directly and clearly, seeming to understand a situation and get to the heart of the matter.

Walt Shepard: Like a heat-seeker missile.

Valerie Shepard: A heat-seeking missile. She helped us to see that in our marriage we would need the forgiveness of Christ continually. We would need the grace of Christ. She loved us, and we were so thankful for her love and approval and for your parents as we got married. So we can look back on 23 or 24 years ago and say, "Thank You, Lord, for putting us together in that way."

Walt Shepard: Amen.

Lisa Barry: What an encouragement. Thank you, Walt and Valerie, for being our guests this week. I hope if there are women listening today who are single and desperately want to be married that you?ll take comfort from today?s program, because the message was not that God promises marriage for everyone, but that He is going to do the very best thing for those who leave the decisions to Him.

If you?d like to read a copy of the book that Elisabeth wrote for Valerie and Walt, it?s called LET ME BE A WOMAN. You can get it through Gateway to Joy. For information on how to purchase that, you can write to us at Gateway to Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. Or you can find us on the World Wide Web at gatewaytojoy.org. Today?s program has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Elisabeth begins a brand-new series on Monday, where she asks the question, "Whatever happened to obedience?" This is Lisa Barry, inviting you to find out more the next time we meet for Gateway to Joy.