Few could dispute that Adoniram Judson was the greatest missionary of the modern era, which most church historians would mark around the beginning of the 19th Century. He would, no doubt, be the first to say that he was most happily married to three wonderful women over his short span of sixty-two years.

The first, the remarkable Ann Hasseltine Judson, whom he married February 5, 1812, sailed with him fourteen days later on the brig Caravan to Calcutta, India. Ann died 12 years later at 37 years on October 24, 1826, the victim of many long dreadful months of disease, death, stress and loneliness.

Judson continued untiringly at his lifelong goal of translating the whole Bible into the Burmese language. When he finished it at last in 1834, he had been labouring on it for twenty-four years. It was printed and published in 1835.

In April of that same year, he married Sarah Hall Boardman, widow of fellow missionary George Boardman, who had died after helping to evangelize the Karen people. The Boardmans had eight children. Sarah's health began failing and physicians recommended a return to America.

Sarah was prostrated by illness on the isle of France where there was little expectation of her recovery, but they continued their passage toward America after an absence of twenty years. Though she had a longing desire to see once more her son George, her parents, and friends of her youth, she was constrained to say, "I am in a strait betwixt the two – let the will of God be done." Sarah died en route at St. Helena on September 1, 1845.

In a public notice that Judson prepared concerning the death of Sarah, he wrote the following words, that should be an encouragement to every preacher and Christian worker and their wives on this earth:

"I constantly thank God that he has blest me with two of the best wives; I deeply feel that I have not improved those rich blessings as I ought; and it is most painful to reflect, that from the peculiar pressure of the missionary life, I have sometimes failed to treat those dear beings with that consideration, attention, and kindness, which their situation in a foreign heathen land ever demanded."

On September 4, 2008, my wife, the former Wanda Lee Hillenburg of Springfield, Missouri, and I celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary.

We were married on a Friday night in 1953 at the High Street Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri. The officiating minister was "Bud" Worthington, the pastor that I worked with at Temple Baptist church in Marshfield, MO while attending Baptist Bible College.

We spent our first night at the Wagon Wheel Motel about fifteen miles West on US 60 and spent our Honeymoon at my folks house in Wichita, Kansas attending the Baptist Bible Fellowship meeting at the Wichita Baptist Tabernacle. My folks were on vacation and my little sis didn't pester us much.

Three children and nine grandchildren later, we are looking back on these fifty-five years of serving God together in two churches as the only way that we would have wanted to have spent a life time on this earth.

However, my only regret are the times that I have not been as patient, loving, understanding and kind as I should have been. When I read about Judson and what he went through in the 19th Century, he had an excuse for not always being considerate, attentive and kind. But in 20th Century America with the lap of luxury I have enjoyed in comparison with what those people went through, what is my excuse?

I will always remember the tribute that Dr. Noel Smith, my professor of Theology at BBC and Editor of the Baptist Bible Tribune, wrote about his wife after she died. One line in the essay I will never forget. He said, "If I could just bring her back, I would let her roll the windows clear to the top in the summer time." For you young bucks, there was no AC in the cars back in those days. Mrs. Smith didn't want to mess up her hair. So apparently there were plenty of arguments in the Smith automobile over that issue.

What do you get your wife on her 55th? Well, I went to Jockish flowers across from the old IBT location, and Chis Jockish made up the biggest bouquet of flowers with some of her favorite yellow roses right in the middle. Then I put the card that I searched and searched to find just the right verses, and took it to her.

The majesty of the moment was in its simplicity. There is nothing more to be said or done that can say more than two people sharing fifty-five years of all that goes into fifty-five years together and still loving God and loving each other more now than when the journey started more than a half century a go.

Following are the words of the card that I found by Linda Lee Elrod:

I've told you so many times
That I love you, and I do.
On our anniversary, though,
I wish I had another way to express it,
A way no one else in the world uses.
If only I could create a star just for you,
brighter and more beautiful
than all others, it might give an idea
of how you light up my existence…
Or if I could give you
Your own personal rainbow,
With each color representing
A facet of you that enchants me.
It might come close to showing you
How much color you bring into my life.
If only it were possible
to take all the feelings I have for you
And mold them into a sunbeam
Which would keep you warm forever.
Then you know,
Without the slightest doubt,
What a difference you make to me.

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Proverbs 31:28