Suzanna and Samuel were married forty-six years. They didn’t have an easy time of it. They possessed strong personalities and definite opinions. Case in point: politics. Suzanna supported King James II while Samuel preferred his successor, King William. One day at family prayers, Samuel prayed for King William, but Suzanna refused to “Amen” his prayer. Samuel regarded her slight as unforgivable and pressed for an apology. Suzanna agreed to ask for a pardon if she was proven wrong but would do so only for the sake of expediency. She said to do otherwise would be a lie and therefore a sin. Samuel left the house upset, “You and I must part for if we have two kings, we must have two beds.” Samuel was gone six months! They reconciled only after King William died.
Suzanna Wesley (1669-1742) was a remarkable woman of faith and prayer was central in her life. Not that everything was smooth sailing. Nine of her and Samuel’s nineteen children died in infancy. Their home burned to the ground twice, and Samuel spent time in debtor’s prison. Suzanna homeschooled their ten children. Her daughters received the same rigorous education as her sons, a practice unheard of in those days. Two sons became influential Christians: John Wesley was a leader of the First Great Awakening in England, an evangelical renewal out of which Methodism was birthed, and Charles became one of the church’s great hymn writers.
Suzanna’s children remember their mom with a towel over her head, as a means of finding solitude for prayer. I love her candor and passion in prayer: