Fame Is Trumped By Intimacy

I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.

Song Of Songs 7:10

JOHN WOODEN WAS THE UNDISPUTED BEST AT WHAT HE DID. YOU CAN DEBATE the greatest college football coach of all time; you can debate the best professional basketball coach. But there’s no debating the best college basketball coach of all time.

It was John Wooden, hands down.

Wooden’s UCLA Bruins won ten NCAA championships. No other coach has won more than four. In an incredible three-and-a-half-year run, his Bruins went undefeated for eighty-eight straight games. Now that it seems as though twelve-year-olds are entering the NBA draft, it’s highly unlikely any other coach will ever have a program stable enough to match that string.

After Wooden retired in 1975, he remained so respected that he could hardly enter a room without getting a standing ovation. Many publishers would have eagerly thrown a six-figure contract at him if he would write another book. He could command speaking fees in the tens of thousands.

But Coach Wooden had his eyes on something other than popular acclaim. Rick Reilly, a writer for Sports Illustrated, paid Coach Wooden a visit and soon found himself in something of an awkward situation. How do you tactfully tell a man in his nineties that you hope he doesn’t die because this world still needs him and there’s nobody else like him waiting in the wings?

Coach Wooden picked up on Rick’s message and finally said, “I’m not afraid to die. Death is my only chance to be with her again.”^a

The “her” John referred to was his wife, Nellie, who died in 1985 after fifty-three years of marriage. John was still very connected to this woman. On the twenty-first of every month, he wrote a passionate letter to Nellie, telling her how much he missed her, loved her, and valued the time they had together. Then he would fold the letter and put it on a pile near where he slept.

At the time of John’s death, that stack had more than three hundred letters.

By his own admission, John would gladly leave this world of acclaim if in doing so he could be reunited with the love of his life.

I don’t believe I’m insulting you by saying you’ll never achieve the acclaim of John Wooden. You may be very, very good at what you do—but can you ever honestly hope to be considered the absolute best of anyone who has ever pursued your profession?

So often we ignore our marriages in pursuit of high acclaim—but John Wooden, a man who received that acclaim, would have gladly given it up for more time with his wife: “I’m not afraid to die. Death is my only chance to be with her again.”

So often we ignore our marriages in pursuit of high acclaim.

Sadly, many of us learn this lesson too late. We spend our entire lives ignoring the glory and power of true love and intimacy with one person for the elusive elixir of fame. Let’s learn a lesson from a person who has been there—who has seen both sides and who remains convinced that a relationship with a spouse who truly knows you and loves you and who walks with you is far more fulfilling to the soul than receiving applause from the crowd or adoration from afar.

Of course, most of us won’t even smell national acclaim. Even so, we shortchange our spouses for something much smaller: a corner office, a pay raise, the esteem of our neighborhood friends, two strokes off our golf handicap.

If you’re a wife, you may be chided for showing such concern and attention to your husband. It’s certainly out of fashion to even think about being a devoted wife. And yet, if you will ignore this disdain and truly dedicate yourself to loving this man, you will receive far more in the end than you ever will from others’ approval. Consider the poem “To Her Loving Husband,” written by the Puritan wife Anne Bradstreet:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.^b

Have any of your mockers ever felt such a sentiment about their husbands? Have they ever known such a love?

You can.

Go for something real. Develop an appetite for authentic intimacy. Dive into your marriage, and discover the quiet but profound pleasure of loving and being loved, of truly knowing and being known.