A long and difficult road

Michele Marr

Judy Secor has always been what she calls “a God chaser.”

In her earliest memories she was already looking for God, the God

that was good, the God that was all-powerful, that God she’d heard

others talk about.

As her parents’ marriage unraveled and ended in divorce she

especially yearned to find him. She recalls thinking, “I really need

to get to know this God.”

It’s a desire she believes God puts in everyone’s heart.

“He’s really chasing us but he wants us to chase him,” she said.

But it wasn’t until she was 11 that God and Judy met. She was

living in France with her mother, older sister and stepfather, who

was in the U.S. Army.

Her sister, who was preparing to go to high school in Germany, was

weeding through her belongings when she gave Secor her hand-me-down

Bible. On the same afternoon, sitting in a meadow on a mossy bank

near a waterfall and a pool of water glinting in the sun, the

11-year-old found the Gospel of John.

“Jesus unfolded all about God and all about the Holy Spirit and

all about himself in that Gospel,” Secor said. “It all came together

for me. It all made sense.”

In that moment, she wanted to give God her whole life.

But Secor thought, “I can’t do that; I’m a girl.” To her, giving

her life to God meant she would need to become a pastor, something

she knew a girl could not possibly aspire to do.

Yet before she had time to fret about that, she heard God

reassuring her.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it,” she said he told

her. Though many years and many events would pass before that would

happen.

Secor, who had spent her earliest years in the mid-Western United

States, moved to Europe at 10 when her mother remarried. Secor went

to grade school in France, ninth grade in Germany then finished high

school in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

While it was difficult making friends every few years only to have

to leave them, Secor believes that her travels taught her to be

sensitive to cultural differences.

After high school she came to California to live with her birth

father for three months before starting nursing school at Los Angeles

County General Hospital.

Secor graduated, became a registered nurse and married in 1960.

The next year she and her husband moved to Garden Grove where they

raised four children together. At 33 she was widowed when her

husband, suffering from Huntington’s Disease, shot himself, leaving

his wife to raise their four young children while she worked as a

critical care nurse.

Secor had known grief before, first in her parents’ divorce and

again when one of her children was born with a severe cleft palate

and another had an undiagnosed disorder that caused the infant

unbearable pain when she ate for nearly a year.

“I learned the meaning of intense, searing, prolonged grief,”

Secor said

With her child who had the cleft palate, she learned about the

suffering of the handicapped and how it affects the whole family. But

it was through her infant’s unrequited pain that Secor experienced

what she remembers as a “dark night of the soul.”

Her prayers raged and went unanswered.

“I did not do well on this one,” she said. “I stayed hopping mad

at God for more than two years. In this testing of my character I

failed miserably.”

But she also learned that through it all, no matter what, “God

still loves me.” And that, she believes, set her free, freer than

she’d ever been.

Two years after her first husband’s death, Secor met her second

husband in what she describes as “a story straight from heaven.”

She says she wasn’t yet ready to marry again but “the Lord had a

plan,” she said. “He said ‘It’s time.’”

She had told God she wanted two years to heal from the loss of her

first husband before she would consider marrying again. Two years to

the day, Bill Secor, a member of her church called and invited her to

a Christmas party.

“It was love at first sight,” she said. “He was ugly as sin, he

had beady eyes, a hooked nose and he walked funny, but he had a great

personality and a good heart. He was a good person.”

It was when Bill Secor went to Fuller Theological Seminary that

she finally went to seminary. Her husband told her that he wouldn’t

go unless she went, too.

That’s when she remembered God’s reassurance to her when she was

just 11-years-old.

“Bingo!” she remembers thinking, “This is God.”

She was surprised to find that she was the only one at the

seminary who still held a prejudice against women pastors.

So, with her husband, she became a pastor at Goldenwest Vineyard

Christian Fellowship. And when she was widowed again after 24 years

of marriage, she continued as the congregation’s senior pastor.

She points to the many events in her life that have enabled her to

empathize with the sorrows of others who come into her life.

In the week that Bill Secor died, her son Bruce, who now lives

with her, was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease. Her daughter

Deborah tested positive for the disease, leaving her four children at

risk of having the disease themselves.

“I have had to face the shock of discovering that an incurable,

genetically-caused dementia has rocked our family and now I face

having to watch my son’s life slowly ebbing away,” she said.

Still, she says she cannot remember a time when she did not trust

God even though there have been many times she’s been mad at him.

“I will always be an incurable dreamer,” Secor said. “I know we

are all made of extremely redeemable stuff. I know God has put

greatness in each one of us, and he can pull it out of us, much to

our healing and joy.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].