The Healing Journey

November 16, 2023

For years, Bobbie Wolgemuth started her day in a bright red wingback chair, reading the Bible, praying and meditating, while her husband Robert concerned himself with “more important things” — calling clients, reviewing proposals and finalizing contracts.

The former president of Thomas Nelson Publishers and author of more than 20 books, Wolgemuth shared his experiences in a column titled, “The one key thing my wife taught me to do after her death.” For more than 14 years, Bobbie went to that chair, which she called her early morning “altar.”

In 2012, they discovered she had Stage IV cancer after an appointment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando.

“I wish I could adequately describe what I felt that day, but the right words are beyond my reach,” he wrote. “That visit to the second floor marked the beginning of a 30-month trial that ended on a chilly October day in 2014. Bobbie had been nothing short of a warrior. I tried to be too.”

Bobbie died at 64. The day after her funeral, Robert walked to the cemetery, looked at her grave and asked, “What am I going to do now? What am I going to do?” And he cried. After almost 45 years of marriage, his world was turned upside down. “My new reality stared me in the face,” he wrote. “But, wiping the sleep from my eyes, I knew I had an assignment. A new destination. Bobbie’s red chair.”

He sat in it and said, “Lord, I’ve been a lazy man. I’ve watched my wife start her day with You for all these years….As long as you give me breath, I intend to start each day with You.”

“You likely don’t have a red chair in your living room or study,” he wrote. “But you have a place to sit. To lift up your eyes and your heart — from yourself and Earth’s demands and problems, to Heaven. And to embrace the wonder of a loving God who is eager to meet with you each day. My sincere hope is that my story will inspire you and that you’ll purpose to start meeting with the Lord, reading His Word, and praying. If it does, you can thank that old red chair and my faithful, late wife who showed me what to do with it.”

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