A Love Story: C.S. Lewis & Joy Davidman
For years I have been fascinated and enthralled by the love story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. It is not a typical one, not one that would set most young hearts a-flutter, but I’ve always found it beautiful. When they met for the first time in person in 1952, Lewis was already in his mid-fifties, a confirmed bachelor with no intention to marry, an established professor at Oxford, and a world-famous Christian author. Joy Davidman Gresham was a Jewish American, fifteen years younger than Lewis, former Communist, Christian convert, who was (unhappily) married, with two young sons. She was a poet and accomplished writer in her own right, though life circumstances perhaps prevented her from achieving the full potential of her intellect. Lewis and Joy had begun a correspondence when Joy and her first husband, Bill Gresham, converted to Christianity and were seeking guidance. This relationship in letters allowed for a depth of communication on an intellectual level that both Joy and Lewis must have been craving their entire lives, a matching of wits of two unique and brilliant minds.
To severely abbreviate a story with many complicated motivations and circumstances: just a few months after returning from her first trip to England, in 1953 Joy moved to England permanently with her two boys, and it wasn’t long after that she obtained a divorce from her first husband, partly so that he could marry Joy’s cousin with whom he had been having an affair during Joy’s first trip abroad....