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Becoming
Mrs. Lewis:
The
Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis
By Patti Callahan
“The Christian
Conversion of A Woman In Love”
Thomas Nelson (https://www.thomas
nelson.com) published Patti Callahan’s historical novel Becoming MRS. LEWIS: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis on October 2, 2018.
nelson.com) published Patti Callahan’s historical novel Becoming MRS. LEWIS: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis on October 2, 2018.
One could call Joy a feminist of her day
– she was Jewish, atheist, communist, and progressive in her views – one of
which was a woman had just as much right as a man to speak her mind and she
spoke her mind.
We learn of Joy’s promiscuity and her
reason behind her promiscuity with other men – to find love, to search for
love.
When she meets fellow atheist and fellow writer William Lindsay
Gresham she is truly in love and the two marry on August 24, 1942.
The two continue to earn their living from writing,
and have two boys, David “Davy” Lindsay and Douglas Howard.
Joy is faithful to her husband, but is torn
between the rules of motherhood and wifehood and the desires of being a writer
- she would rather write her poems and
fiction than spend the day arranging her dining room table with the most
fashionable dinnerware.
(God) he entered the fissures of my
heart as if he’d been waiting a long time to find an opening. Warmth fell over me, a river of peace passed
through me. For the first time in all my
life, I felt fully known and loved.
There was a solid sense that he was with me, had always been with me.
The revelation lasted not long, less than
a minute, but also forever; time didn’t exist as a moment-to-moment metronome,
but as eternity. I lost the borders
between my body and the air, between my heart and my soul, between fear and
peace. Everything in me thrummed with
loving presence.
My heart sowed and the tears
stopped. I bent forward and rested my
wet cheek on the floor. “Why have you
waited so long? Why have I?” I rested in the silence and then asked, “Now
what?”
He didn’t answer. It wasn’t like that – there wasn’t a voice,
but I did find the strength to stand, to gaze at my children with gratitude, to
wait for what might come next. Pages 10 – 11 (Timeline of Jack and Joy's life. Copyright granted by Thomas Nelson Publishers).
Then in the spring of 1949 she comes across an
old issue of Atlantic Monthly from September of 1946, which contains an
article called “C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics” by Beloit
College Professor, Poet, and Episcopal Priest Chad Walsh. (Right)
The article “C.S.
Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics” was a feature about C.S. Lewis, the author
of the Chronicles Of Narnia series, who had converted from atheism to
Christianity.
Joy was inspired and read
every book she could find by C.S. Lewis particularly his books on philosophy
such as The Great Divorce, Pilgrim’s Regress, and The Screwtape Letters. Over the dinner table one night Joy and her
husband Bill decided to write to C.S. Lewis and question him about God.
Joy’s spirits lift the winter of 1950
when she and her husband finally receive a letter from C.S. Lewis (Right) where he
describes God the Father as the “Hound of Heaven.’ He also feels a connection with Joy because
both were atheists before their conversions and both are searching to make
sense of God and who He is: I believe I
have spent my heart since that moment attempting to make sense of it all. But
are we to make sense of it? I’m not
quire sure that is the reason for our encounter. Page 24
Joy also asks Jack questions about theology and
mythology and Jack responds: It was Tolkien
(have you yet read his work?) who convinced me of the one true myth – Jesus
Christ. It wasn’t an easy conversion for
me, but one of an all-night conversation at the river’s edge. Page 37 (Right Tolkien)
Over the next two years the two abandon their
last names and call each other Joy and Jack and write to one another about God,
literature, intellectualism, philosophy, theology, mythology, the Bible, and
their own writing works. Joy also
reveals her past to Jack – her being Jewish and her former communism. She also reveals to Jack the state of her
marriage to Bill – who by now has returned back to his drinking and
cheating.
By the winter of 1952 Joy’s health is
deteriorating due to an abnormal thyroid and severe fatigue, in addition to the
stress and trauma of living with Bill, which now include his verbal rages. Joy’s deteriorating health is nothing new to
Joy – she’d been having health problems all of her life, but this time she
feels completely depleted emotionally, physical and mentally.
The doctor warns Bill that if Joy does not get
her rest she will never recover from this bout of illness. As a result, it is agreed that Joy will take
a recuperation trip to England where she will do research on her non-fiction
book she is writing on King Charles II.
Joy’s first cousin
In the second week of August of 1952 Joy
boards the SS United States and sails
to England where she resides for six months.
During her six-month stay she meets with C. S. Lewis and his brother,
Warren. (Left: C.S. and Warren) Jack and Joy develop a friendship
that is based on their love of God. They
also have deep conversations that are intellectually stimulating, allows for
friendly debate, and a mutual respect that is not found in most male-female
relationships.
In December of 1952 she waits to receive money
from Bill so she can return home. She
senses Bill is extremely cold to her in his letters and suspects
something. When she reads Bill’s letter
her suspicions are well founded – Bill reveals to her that he and Renee are in
love and want to get married. He
recommends that she should find her own lover.
Joy is devastated, feels nausea boiling, feels her body chill cold, and
yet deep inside she had suspected. Even still all she can do is slam her fist on
her typewritten pages, scream, and weep.
She finally resists the urge to lay down in bed and instead dresses and
ventures out into the England cold:
I walked the
streets like the dove from Noah’s ark in search of mooring but finding only
water, endless miles of ocean and nowhere safe to land. It was of course all my doing, the ruin in
which I found myself. What did I think
would happen if I left Bill with the perfect Renee? What id I think would happen if I chased
peace and health across an ocean?
I
had destroyed my own ark. Page 168 (Left: Noah Sent Out This Dove attributed to Julius Schnorr young Carolsfeld in 1860. )
On January 9, 1953 Joy finally returns to
the Gresham farmhouse and refuses to leave.
She is determined that she will be brave, claim her children, claim her
right to her own home, and then decides that eventually she, Davy and Douglas
will move permanently back to England.
She files for a separation from Bill and in November of 1953 she and her
boys sail to England.
The British Government sends Joy a letter
stating that she is no longer a legal immigrant of England and if she is not
married to an Englishman she will be deported with her two boys back to New
York. Jack insists she cannot leave and the
two marry in April of 1956 in what is a love of marriage but lacking any sexual
consummation.
Then something happens – something that
shocks them to their core and even questions how much time they have together on
this earth. Finally Jack admits he is in
love with her and wants a real sexual marriage;
for Joy she finally realizes the Man she truly has fallen in love with
is the Trinity God, and this falling in love with the Trinity God enables her
to love Jack with an abounding, pure, love that encompasses all four loves that
exist –
Eros (sensual, romantic,
sexual love),
Storge (love between family members such as parents
and children, and siblings),
Philia (Love shared between
Christian brothers and sisters),
Agape (the highest of the
four loves, which defines God’s immeasurable, incomparable love for
humankind. It is divine love that comes
from God. Agape love is perfect,
unconditional, sacrificial, and pure).
All along Joy had been craving a real
marriage with Jack; but deep down inside what she craved for was her love for
God to be all encompassing. Finally she
can say to Jack what Ruth says to her mother-in-law in the Book of Ruth Chapter 1
Verse 16: For where you go I will go, and
where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my
God.
