For the Love of Larry

Carolyn’s Personal Story

For the Love of Larry

(excerpt from "How To Walk With God...)

I learned a few years ago that I couldn’t be my husband’s Holy Spirit.

Much of my ministry involves counseling Christians with marital problems — problems that often stem from one partner having greater enthusiasm for the things of God than the other does. I have more than a little experience in this area. By my own admission, I made every mistake in the book when I first “went wild” with the Holy Spirit.

You know how they say you should be locked up for six months after you get the Holy Spirit? Well, I was one who needed to be locked up.

But no one locked me up in 1979 when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit at a black Pentecostal church in Atlanta. Finally free from my early commitment to atheism and later a bondage to religion, I proceeded to do all those things I now counsel married people not to do: I talked nonstop about God, hounded my husband about the Holy Spirit and left Bibles and other Christian material in obvious places throughout the house for him to find. When all that failed, I resorted to complaining and badgering.

Because they’re not responding to all this wonderful stuff you’re telling them, you begin to feel unloved and lonely.

My husband, Larry, got far more than he bargained for when God-talk began to invade our lives. The woman he had married in 1971 was an avowed atheist whose hero was Madelyn Murray O’Hara. Before I met Larry, I had dated only Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. Larry believed in Jesus but was not a practicing Christian.

From the very beginning of our marriage, the spiritual battle was on. For the first five years, Larry says our fights centered around my aggressive efforts to convince his Christian colleagues that they were believing a lie.

Then, in 1976, what I had considered to be completely unbelievable became undeniably true to me. Two dramatic spiritual encounters — one with an angel — demolished my atheism and started me on yet another journey toward truth.

Not knowing much about churches, I joined an Episcopal church where my master’s degree immediately qualified me for the vestry board. After two years of infighting on the board, however, I left that church for a small Assemblies of God congregation that I had at first resisted.

There was so much love there I thought it was fake. But within three weeks I was hooked and several months later I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. Yet another round of conflict began at home.

As long as I was in the Episcopal church and it was intellectual and all I did was go to the vestry meetings and service on Sunday, I had no problems with Larry. But once I heard about the Holy Ghost, if there was a meeting within a three-hour drive, I was there with my Bible, notepad, pen, tape recorder and highlighter. I neglected my home and I neglected Larry.

Three times that year my husband threatened to divorce me if I didn’t forget all this God stuff.

In early 1985, I decided to cut back on my church activities and concentrate on my career as an educator. But in September of that year — then head of the language arts department at a private school — I became a full-time staff member at my church. Now I found myself devoting more time than ever to the church. Sixty to eighty hour work weeks were not uncommon.

All that ended in 1992 when the church underwent a split. During the 18 months it took me to recover, I formed my own ministry. And that, proved to be the beginning of the best phase of my marriage.

I had been doing a lot of good things, but I can’t say they were right things. I learned that not all good things are right things. The change in our marriage was gradual and came when I stopped being so crazy, which was a progressive thing for me.

Since 1992, Larry has been my number one supporter — even though at times our house has become a haven for any number of young people who have needed supervision, including a lesbian drug addict on probation for a drug trafficking conviction.

I’ll go overseas and be gone 21 to 28 days or I’ll go to the soup kitchen to feed people and work with the homeless, homosexuals and drug addicts. Most men would not tolerate their wives being involved in all that.

I’ve been to jungles. I’ve been on the streets working with David Wilkerson in rough areas of New York City. But Larry’s never asked me not to do anything related to my ministry.

Today, I see Larry as “God’s mouthpiece” for my life. I confer with him as ministry opportunities arise and have confidence in his advice even though he is not Spirit-filled.

I take the blame for our problems because I didn’t know how to follow God while living with a spouse who was in a different place spiritually. I did it in a dysfunctional way. I tried to be his Holy Spirit.

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