If you live in Tallahassee or have recently visited, you undoubtedly are aware that my good friend T.K. Wetherell will be delivering the message at Honey Lake Church this upcoming Sunday at 11:00. I say that because T.K. has arranged for his buddy Skip Smelko to put signs and banners all over town including the FSU campus. Anywhere and everywhere you go you’ll see T.K.’s smiling face looking at you.
I spoke with him on the way back from my dad’s funeral last night and he told me he was ready to deliver the message of a lifetime. I mentioned that it better be good, because the last time he spoke it was a crowded house. This time with his blanket bombing marketing blitz whereby he wallpapered the entire city and surrounding countryside with his smiling mug, even more folks should show up and I didn’t want him embarrassing us. (You might want to get there a little early for prime seating, (my Bible study class begins at 9:30 . . . hint – hint.)
T.K. and I haven’t been friends for decades like so many of his buddies, but in the few years that we’ve known each other, we’ve become best of friends and our friendship is one that is very special. We both love hunting and fishing of all types; however there is nothing that we enjoy more than turkey hunting. He told me someone at the feed store in Monticello told him he’s already heard his first spring turkey gobbling, and exhilaration is already building for the upcoming season. He excitedly told me all of the preparations he has already begun to make in order to get ready.
Recently T.K.’s bout with cancer took a big turn for the worse and it made it very painful for him to walk. He was limping around grimacing and it was obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to walk around turkey hunting this season.
I gave it some serious thought and presented him with my plan to remedy the situation. I told him I’d throw a wheelbarrow in the back of the truck and wheel him to one of my prime spots and dump him out, and he wouldn’t have to walk so far on that “gimp” leg.
He looked at me with those steely blue eyes and snarled through clenched teeth, “I’ll walk!”
I responded, “Fine! My arthritic back is too fragile to wheel your lazy butt around anyway and besides I don’t know where I’d hide the wheelbarrow!
Before you send me a bunch of letters accusing me of being insensitive, you need to understand that T.K. does not want to be coddled and is definitely not looking for sympathy. He’s comfortable with his lot in life, and has an attitude that he has expressed to me a million and a half times, “Me and God can handle anything!” (I’ve tried to correct him dozens of times stating that he should be saying, “God and I”, and not “Me and God”), but it’s to no avail, because he’s stubborn, hard-headed, obstinate, bull-headed, immovable, willful, mulish, bolshie, inflexible, pig-headed, intractable, and obdurate, but aside from that he’s flexible like me).
No matter how boorishly he presents it, I love T.K.’s attitude! Yes, he got dealt a lousy hand on this cancer stuff, but he didn’t “go home to die” as the learned cancer specialists at John’s Hopkins Hospital told him; (that just maybe he might live 2 years – over TEN years ago).
Instead of following their idiotic advice he decided he would live life to its fullest and fight it, and I’m happy to report his latest doctor’s report, (from his new doctors at M.D. Anderson in the great state of Texas) has him improving yet again due to the latest chemo cocktail combo that he is indulging in. In fact it is working so well he is now walking without pain and I’m cautiously optimistic and no longer dreading having to wheel him around in a wheelbarrow in the dark with mosquitoes buzzing around my head.
I think what T.K. likes most is that I don’t make a big deal out of his struggle with cancer. He knows that I understand that we’re all facing a death sentence at some point, and life is uncertain at best. (The way he gets excited and shoots that big 10 gauge cannon he hunts with, I’ll die before he does due to him blowing my head off when he excitedly sees that next big gobbler.)
I think it bugs him enormously for people to look upon him with pity and sorrow as though they were in mourning wearing sackcloth and ready to start bawling at any moment. He just wants to be treated normally and does not want or need the pity. He is assured of his salvation and knows that God is in control and He will take him home at the perfect time and he is fine with that.
We are born – We live – We die – We live forever in paradise; that is the fate of the Christian.
T.K. will tell you all about it this Sunday, (even if I have to wheel him in there in a wheelbarrow and unceremoniously dump him out in front of the pulpit).
Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
February 5, 2014 – Click here to listen