AUGUST IMAGINATION CHALLENGE PAUSED
When you get to Thursday and it’s been a good week, but then that same good week hits you with a sucker punch out of nowhere….
You stop, try to make sense of what hit you.
And you slide your imagination vacation challenge a few more days out because your mind begins to fill up with so many memories, there’s no room for imaginings.
Thursday was a great day until it suddenly became the worst day we’ve had in a long time.
Just before dinner we received word that our dear friend died. To say “He was a brother in Christ” is flippant. He was our brother. We have walked together through many joys and sorrows over the years. We were siblings as if we all shared the same parents.
This is his picture, taken at a celebration about 6 years ago, thus the silly hat.
We had just had lunch with him and his wife on Tuesday.
That Thursday, just a few hours before the dreadful call, he texted me that the procedure SHE had revealed everything was A-OK. He was celebrating!
The news….a complete and absolute shock. It is still hard to believe.
Our friend loved Jesus and wanted nothing more than for everyone to know how much they are loved by Him. He cherished his family and would do anything for any of them. And he had a FAMILY! Children, step-children, grandchildren, step-grandchildren… lots of them. And he loved each and every one of them. He leaves a large legacy of love.
He was not always so obviously loving, however. He was, shall we say, less than patient with things that were obvious to him. He was very intelligent, and he was gifted mechanically as well. He could and did solve a large and varied number of problems that would have stumped most people. He was a little gruff at times too. Over the years, however, experiencing the love of Jesus smoothed out those rough spots. Isn’t that true? As we age, we begin to understand that, yes, things will work out. We see that truly, “honey collects more flies than vinegar”. We’ve known him over 40 years. We’ve seen the transformation that can happen when a person desires to know the Lord more and more deeply. God is happy to smooth those prickly edges as we embrace His presence and know His Word.
This friend of ours had a crazy funny sense of humor. Someone even called him a Kingdom comedian. He didn’t take himself too seriously, therefore he was free to share the joy of levity. He won over many a little kid with his Donald Duck voice and he could famously sing “Blue Christmas” just as well as Porky Pig himself sang it. Hilarious! He loved music and played guitar with many a church worship team plus some outreach bands. He once worked hard to get a fellow guitar player to take up bass guitar so he, Hoyt, could play rhythm guitar! (The other guy, who took up bass, loves bass. So, it’s all good!) He sang. He danced the shag. He loved shag. He wasn’t afraid to have fun!
One more thing. He spent hours and hours loving and helping guys who were down and out, struggling guys who just couldn’t seen to get it together. Our friend would take them under his wing and teach them Biblical as well as practical principles, believing that it’s more helpful to “teach a man to fish”. There is much more I could share with you. This was a very special man.
Over the years, death accumulates, each new death becomes harder to bear. We don’t remember just that person. We remember them all- very person we’ve lost to death. And we reconsider our own lives yet again. What is our legacy? Loss never leaves us, even though we learn to live with it. (Hopefully we have been diligent to deal with the grief.) And grief works its craziness… one minute you’re fine and the next, your eyes are leaking and you’re looking for a tissue. You have all sorts of questions, usually unanswerable, swirling through your mind but soon are content to remember the sweet and funny stories about the deceased. Just grateful for having had them in your life.
Knowing we will again see him, and all those who we’ve lost over the years, is comforting and we depend on that knowledge. Knowing Hoyt is happy and in the presence of his Lord, we can’t help but be happy for him. But we will miss him, nevertheless. We still have the sweet friendship of his wife, of course. And his kids. However, the world is a different place without him.
Enjoy the presence of Jesus, Hoyt! Keep ‘em laughin’ and praisin’ in Heaven! We’ll see you again soon!
So, friends, I’ll be posting my Imagination Vacation Challenge later this week- sometime.
I hope you’ve “been” somewhere in past week. If you have, please post it on IN or FB and tag me. I would love to see where you “went”.
Meanwhile, remember: Jesus really loves you, unconditionally. Truly.
God bless you.
Love you!
Two books about grief you might find helpful:
Charles Cash, Choosing to Mourn: My Journey into Hope, Amazon. com
Trisha Frost, Experiencing Father’s Embrace Through Loss and Grief, Shiloh Place Ministries
Pathways and Portals 