Gold Metal Marriage

17 March 2013


Dear Phyllis,


There are two types of successful marriages. There is the romantic kind where the natural sweetness of honey is in abundance and the partners just love each other. And there is another type where each one finds themselves locked into a challenging relationship from which they joyously would prefer to escape. But out of naked obedience to Christ they choose to make a volitional decision to honor and obey the Lord, and do what He commands as partners in marriage. It takes nothing of Christ to make a happy romantic marriage. Many unsaved folks enjoy that. But the Lord is honored the most in a dysfunctional marriage where both partners do their duty to make it work. The Hirotas are one of the finest I know. I am sure I have written about them to you before but for one more time...


When we first moved to Ikoma, in 1982, we went to Seibu department store in Osaka to buy a US oven. Sears had a tie-up with Seibu in those days where we could buy anything Sears from Seibu. The gal who was in charge of the Sears department was a fanatic for Americans, and we became instant friends. We later were a featured article in the Sears catalog in Japan. Kajino San went bonkers telling all her customers about this new American couple who had just moved to Ikoma. The phone was ringing daily with calls from her friends wanting to come meet us. Yasuhiko Hirota was one of them. He was very much into airplanes, and had gone to the states to get a pilots license. When he heard there was a former US Air force fighter pilot living in Ikoma he was slightly under Mach 1 coming out to see us. His first visit was purely airplane talk.


He was the eldest son of a wealthy company CEO. His dad had come from Taiwan as a teenager before the war. After the war his dad started making toys out of discarded coke cans and built it up to a large company making electronics for Sharp. Hirota was a spoiled playboy born with a silver spoon in his mouth. From his youth, he was shortchanged in disciplined but bathed in money. As a result he grew up unutterably irresponsible.


The first time he came to see us was strictly to talk about planes. Quite naturally, we took him with us to a meeting in Jim Blocksom's home. Along with airplanes, Hirota was also interested in any kind of ism coming down the pike, and took an interest in Christianity. It wasn't long after he first started coming that Jim told me that Hirota had accepted Jesus at his house one night. Hirota never bonded with Blocksom but became a regular feature in our home.


Miyuki was an average girl from a lumber business family in a small town in the mountains of Yamaguchi-ken. She grew up hardworking, and had become a successful career business woman. She was engaged in a business that – through no fault of her own – went belly-up, and she got stuck with a terrible debt for bankruptcy. At 32, she was confronted with the dilemma of starting all over again in life, and didn't want to make a mistake a second time. She too was a friend of Kajino san.


A year before then, Kajino had gone to a fortune-teller who told her, “Oh, oh, you are going to die of cancer in September”. It was now June. Kajino san immediately rushed to a hospital for a physical. No problem, but in August she was hospitalized for several weeks. Still no problem. When September came and went uneventfully, Kajino knew she had been taken by a charlatan. Miyuki knew Kajino's experience, and knew she was intensely careful about phoney fortune-tellers. She asked Kajino to recommend a reliable fortune-teller. Kajino told her that the best fortune-teller she knew was Bill Cook in Ikoma. Kajino knew that Hirota was a regular at our house and asked him if he would take this other girl out to see the Cooks. Hirota brought Miyuki out the first night.


When she came to see us, I asked, “What do you want?” She replied, “I want someone to give me advice what road to take in life.” I told her, “You have come to the right place. I know the best One to guide you”. And I told her about Jesus. She was on her way to New York to run a Japanese restaurant for six months, and I told her to come see us every night before she left. The next night, when she came, I planned to lead her to Christ. When I asked her if she wanted to accept Jesus, she replied she already had. “When?” “Last night. I did what you told me.” I couldn't remember telling her how to be saved, but obviously there was enough in the conversation that she asked Jesus to come into her heart. I asked, “Is there any change?” “I don't know but my heart seems different.” It sure was. She was born-again of the Spirit of Christ.


While she was gone to New York, Hirota a wrote her every day. During that time, he was in Los Angeles on business, and had a ticket to return to Japan. But his heart was in New York. Torn between business and romance, he canceled his ticket for his flight back to Japan and went to New York to see Miyuki instead. The ticket that he canceled was on KAL 007 that was shot down.


When Miyuki came back to Japan she had no where to live, and we invited her to live with us. That was one of the best moves we ever made. Hirota was at our house every night holding her hand as they sat in front of the fireplace in our home. Miyuki told me later that the main reason she said she would marry him was so she could get some sleep at night.


The marriage was a disaster. Miyuki went out of her mind. They were radically different. She was a highly responsible career woman, and he was an utterly irresponsible playboy. He was lazy and wouldn't get up on the morning. Worse than that he wouldn't return calls from customers. He had his own business and a secretary, but was more interested in playing war games like a 12 year old with his buddies than attending to business. Miyuki said if she wasn't a Christian that marriage wouldn't have lasted six weeks. But she was tough and put up with unbelievable nonsense.


It was a terrible scenario that she was locked into. Hirota's father had warned him, “If you marry that girl I will cut you off.” His dad was a frightening man that terrified everyone, including Miyuki. He didn't want his son to marry an ordinary girl like her. Hirota had taken a stand and married her anyway, but now she was stuck being cut off by the father-in-law with a husband that was incorrigibly irresponsible. But she was determined that she was going to obey Jesus and be a scriptural wife.


Shortly after they were married, Hirota's mother came down with cancer. They led his mother to the Lord on her death bed, and she had a clear testimony of being saved before she joyfully left for heaven.


Miyuk's mother was a dyed-in-the-wool idolater. She and the eldest son would go every morning at 5:00AM, an hour, to a mountain to worship an idol. When Hirota's mother died, Miyuki's mother had to come from Yamaguchi for the funeral. That was the first time she had been to Ikoma since her daughter had been married. At the funeral, some friends of Yasuhiko and Miyuki were talking to her mother. After the funeral Kosugi asked Miyuki, “Do you know that your mother is a Christian?” “No! Really?” Man howdy, was she saved! Her mother was as tough a Christian as they come. Through Miyuki's letters to her mother, she had told her enough about Jesus that she had gotten saved on her own. She had never been in a church or met a Christian, but she had given her life to Jesus, quit idolatry, and was reading the Bible everyday. Miyuki was ecstatic to hear that her mother was saved, and she became her closest Christian friend to this day.


There is no question, but what Miyuki is the dominant one, and is miles in front of her husband in every department. But she was determined to be a scriptural wife. Like no one I have ever met in my life, she has pushed him up from the bottom. She has forced him to become a responsible man of God. And he is. She refuses to take the lead and always puts him up front. She is just a very strong force behind the scene.


By nature Miyuki is not a cook or home-maker. She never had any interest in cooking before they were married. Rosemary was a top-of-the-line cook, and when Miyuki lived with us, Rosemary taught her cooking. Today Miyuki's cooking is as good as any I have ever tasted. Today she is famous for her world-class cooking.


Probably their greatest triumph was Hirota's father. As I mentioned before, he was a tough, fearsome, business man. But in his latter years the situation was radically changed. At one point. Hirota was able to talk his father into building a huge duplex American house for both of them to live in. With his age, his dad's health failed. He had diabetes, and Miyuki was responsible for cooking for him. She studied nutrition to fix the best possible food for him. He was extremely hard-head, and very resistant to the Gospel, but, with failing health, he found himself being led along like a little lamb by his daughter-in-law. She was wonderful in taking care of him. He got in a revolving door scenario of hospitalization until he finally arrived at the last stop. Hirota told him, “Dad, the only way you are coming out of this hospital is in a box.” That got his attention. One day one of the nurses asked Miyuki, “Does Ojii san (old man) practice any religion?” When Miyuki asked why the question, the nurse replied, “Ojii san refuses to eat any food until he prays to Jesus.” This was the first indication that he had changed flags. Shortly after that some relatives heard that he was on his death bed and brought some idols from Taiwan to worship. He threw them out saying he would only worship Jesus. It was a tremendous occasion when they laid his body to rest knowing that they had seen both his father and mother safely arrive in heaven.


I have no idea how they made it financially. Hirota's business was a failure. He was a computer genius and got in with a couple of Christian construction companies – both of which later went under. Years later I asked Miyuki how they were keeping food on the table, and she replied, “I have no idea.” But somehow they were. Hirota is really a gifted man. He is highly knowable about many subjects. He was into several businesses and somehow there was always some income.


Both of them are in their 60s now. Yasuhiko is following his father's weakens with diabetes. Through that, his eyesight is failing badly. He no longer drives a car. He still uses his computer but has to get his eye up to the screen to see it. Miyuki is showing the same loving care for Yasuhiko that she did for his dad. And, to his credit, he has been a faithful husband and done his best to be the head of their home.


I said they are one of the finest marriages I know. It is hard to imagine a worse combination, and a text book for a dysfunctional marriage. There was no natural sweetness of honey in their marriage. But simply out of grim determination to honor and obey Jesus, both of them have done their part and proven the grace of God in overcoming reaction to the other. Both of them have had to learn to die to themselves and live for the sake of the other. Thirty years have passed. Miyuki still gets irritated and, no doubt, she is a challenge to Yasuhiko, but they have honored the Lord like few couples I know. They are gold gold medalists in heaven in my book.


See you next week,
bill