Happy but sad

I have a good friend who faithfully encourages me every single day that I write WFTD. I met him in my men’s Sunday School class when I lived in Jacksonville Florida several years ago and we have been friends ever since. He is a great Christian and I have supported him on many missionary trips and enjoyed hearing of his testimony in the prison ministry and elsewhere. He loves the Lord and doesn’t mind telling practically everyone he meets about Jesus Christ.

I realize that not everyone agrees with me on everything, and not all of you receive much (if any) meaning from every WFTD that I write, and I cannot ignore the fact that some WFTD’s are gulp – just poorly written. But one thing I can count on is that my friend will write to me each and every day with a positive comment, even if it’s nothing more than an, “Amen brother!” He also prays for me quite often and I am appreciative.

With that said he is very witty and a great kidder and he often attacks me on many fronts. He works for the Southern Baptist Convention and is a fundamentalist and his strict views on drinking, saying words like “darn”, and other things that I write about often ignore the “heck” out of him. He writes snarky comments and I respond. We have been needling each other in Don Rickles’ style for years.

When my book came out he was adamant that he wanted me to send him an autographed copy free. I’ve given away hundreds of them, but out of meanness I insisted that he pay. He wanted to read it so badly he finally caved in, but as punishment for making him pay for the book, he insisted that I autograph it with a long flowery inscription telling him how great he is. It began something like: “To the most intelligent, Godly, peerless, wonderful, inspiring, etc. etc. etc. person that I know”. When he received it and read his inscription “somehow” I managed to get his inscription messed up and instead of beginning it with, “To:”, I wrote, “From, the most intelligent, Godly, peerless, wonderful, inspiring, etc.”

It was quite funny to hear his howls of protest.

He started reading the book and had gotten to a rather raunchy part of it where I was dating a gal from Memphis and we were taking drugs and engaging in immorality. Shirley, his wife of 51 years, has been fighting cancer for several years and he had taken her to receive chemo and he had been reading my book while he waited for her to undergo her treatment. When they walked back to the car one of his arms held my book and day planner and the other was supporting Shirley. As he got to the car Shirley tripped on the curb and suddenly fell to the pavement. He quickly placed my book and his day planner on the hood of his car in order to help Shirley get up. When he did my book with his “special” inscription on it slid off the hood and went right into the sewer and was gone forever.

He wrote to me and mused about the significance of whether or not this was an “omen” concerning my book. He wondered aloud if God was responsible or satan. One of them didn’t want him to read it. I gathered that he was implying that since the part that he was reading was so raunchy and he was such a saint that perhaps it was God who threw it into the sewer to protect him from me. I sent him ten books the next day and told him to finish reading the DARN thing, (satan will not prevail).

Yesterday his saintly wife Shirley went home to be with the Lord. I cannot imagine how difficult this has to be. They dated for three years and then got married and were together for 54 wonderful years. And now my friend must fight on without his best friend, lover, and soul mate. Her funeral is this Thursday.

This is one of those moments that is happy but sad. We know that Shirley, who “really suffered this past year in particular, is no longer suffering, and instead is with Jesus Christ in paradise walking on streets of gold; she is listening to glorious music from a heavenly choir, and is bathed in God’s glory and radiant light. Her pain is gone, she will never know sadness or sorrow or suffering again. She has achieved complete victory in Jesus. We are happy for her.

My friend is of course happy for her, but he misses her more than words can express and quite naturally he is sad. He must finish God’s purpose for the rest of his life without her at his side and deal with the hole that has been ripped in his heart. It will not be easy.

I wrote to him and told him that only Jesus could fill that void and I was praying that the Holy Spirit would immediately fill him with His glory and comfort and help him deal with the loneliness of losing his soul mate. He understands, but it still hurts and will keep on hurting. He tries to smile, but has to sigh and yes even cry a little.

I ask each of you to stop whatever you are doing this morning and say a prayer for this good man of God and his family as they fight through this happy but sad time. Keep him on your prayer list for a while, he is one of the good guys and I guarantee he would do the same for you.

Peter 5:10
But may the God of all Grace, who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered awhile, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you.