A good meal was shared by all, it was indeed a good evening. My wife and I dressed in our best and drove out west to a beautiful country club where we visited with friends and started to make new ones. It was the annual Christmas party for the large auto dealership I where I worked as a manager. Life is a unique gift not to be taken lightly.ĭecember 9th 1997 was a crisp night in north Texas complete with a star-studded sky. Live, and love, and learn, all day every day.
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One day the eternal day will break out and darkness and every evil will forever be no more. The good news is eternal life trumps all of our troubles and trials. Good men and women, holy people, die in auto accidents, fall victim to cancer, and even are tortured and killed because of their faith. But, God is faithful! Even if you put your whole trust in Christ and follow Him the days of your life it might not end well…on earth. To my young friends: No, life isn’t fair. So, I’ll keep hope alive, keep dreaming big dreams, and trusting my God and who knows? It is such hope, a fresh optimism at the start of each new day, that gives texture and vitality to living and causes an old man to walk with his face into the wind and his eyes on the horizon eager for the next challenge. Maybe it’s true as well for what some folks would consider old fools. Give up? Never! Often when I go to my tool box it’s the old tools that are the best ones. Others have great minds, wonderful dreams, and fresh ideas trapped in bodies too worn out and disfunctional to give real meaning to what they imagine. Some people’s bodies function well long after their minds have stopped being useful. I am disappointed that minds and bodies don’t usually age at the same speed.
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I still have a jest for living and count myself among the most fortunate to have the life I have. Don’t mistake this seeming pessimism as me giving up on living, nothing could be farther from the truth. There are things I would like to do that will not happen, not only because of the brevity of life, but other reasons as well.
Every mans battle christcentered full#
It isn’t easy to stand flat footed and look reality full in the face. I have quite a “bucket list” but most of those things are no more realistic than the visions of a little boy who hopes to take on the super-powers of his super heroes on TV. Often I’ll catch myself dreaming the dreams of a much younger man, not one who is riding at a quick gait into the sunset. You see, my body is aging at a faster rate than my mind. My problem is the distance between today and that day, whenever it is. If God and His Word are reliable (and they are!) I am not only ready, but some days eager for that transition. I don’t dread it one bit so far as I can tell. Sixty six years of high mileage, mostly on bad roads with little maintenance, has left me with my share of aches, pains, and scars to remind me of the “good old days”. This month, Lord willing, I will have my 66th birthday. I started to notice the ages of people whose obituaries were in the Dallas Morning News, and that maybe half of them were younger than me.Īfter being remarried to a wonderful woman in 1999 and our shared ministry to people in grief for about eight years, my personal mortality is never far from my consciousness. And, back home in the mountains of North Carolina aging aunts and uncles and alcoholic cousins were dying. Meanwhile, in the small community where I lived in North Texas, friend after friend lost battles to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and old age. Now death was really personal, and ugly, and unavoidable forever more. And then in December of 1997, only 10 days before her 44th birthday, my Jeanine suffered a fatal heart attack. Three years later my father died and my grief was painful and lasting. My wife was not good at grieving and although it was seldom if ever mentioned, her parents deaths were always standing in the shadows of our minds. Within a short time span my wife’s parents both died, she suddenly with heart failure, and he from a combination of heart ache and lung cancer. The decade of the ’90’s was the decade of death for me. Perhaps it was several months after I began my second half century of living that I started to face the reality of dying.