Sad goodbye's

I'm in a rather contemplative mood tonight. I got word yesterday that the wife of one of my professors (whom I consider a friend at this point) was killed in a car accident yesterday morning. My professor/friend is a pastor of a vibrant church, and has two children in college. He's only a few years older than I am, a rugged outdoors man who thrives in the Pocono Mountains as a hiker and canoe-ist (canoe-er? whatever....). In the blink of an eye, half of his soul was ripped away...last night for the first time in years, this poor man went to bed without his soul mate beside him. What's that like?

I tried to imagine what that anguish must be like, and I just couldn't do it...not that I couldn't be creative enough, I just couldn't bring myself to dip my emotional ladle into a well of sorrow that deep right now. It terrifies me to think of what that would be like. Heck, every once in awhile Shari and I have our "tiff's" and arguments and disagreements, and for brief moments of stupidity I entertain the thought of how much better off I'd be if I were single again. Sanity returns quickly for me, fortunately, and I realize that no matter how much I may be disappointed in my lovely wife right at that moment over that precise issue, my life has been all the better for being joined with her, and those brief moments of discontent don't warrant throwing all that history and future potential away.

But to lay there in bed at night, and to try to imagine what it would be like to have that spot on the other side of the bed empty, vacant, unoccupied...Shari never to be there any more...it's too grievous for me to even fathom! I'm sure it was for my friend, as well...but now he's hit square in the soul with that situation. Like the biblical figure Job, he must cry out, "that which I feared the most has come upon me!" Tonight, and every night after this, he is going to be overwhelmingly aware of the fact that part of his soul is no longer there to be with him, for him to enjoy, for him to drink deeply of. I grieve with him. I've been blue all day with him...I'm in mourning for him, though he's not aware of it, to the best of my knowledge. We haven't spoken yet.

My friend is a professional counselor. He specializes in counseling burnt out pastors and missionaries, those who have given their lives to what they've understood to be God's will and God's work, and yet have, for whatever their private reasons, become troubled, disappointed souls. That has to be a tough job. People who "work for God" have an expectation that the work should pay dividends and feel fulfilling, and that God should be about the business of clearing away obstacles to personal fulfillment and ministry success, for those who have given themselves to His service. Sometimes God doesn't capitulate. Sometimes the reward for a lifetime of difficult service in a thankless mission field is a near-penniless retirement, complete lack of appreciation from former supporters, and complete anonymity and no recognition, at least not in this lifetime. Bitterness toward God is epidemic amongst pastors and missionaries who've been waiting for God to cut them some slack, and He hasn't. In spite of the fact that Jesus predicted that those who follow in His steps would see persecution, and that their reward for overcoming was to be delivered in a future kingdom, the realities of joining with Him in a battle that is against unseen enemies for the salvation of mostly uninterested and unwilling people eventually weigh down even the most confident and fervent faith.

Now my faithful friend, pastor and counselor...now has opportunity to confront his own situation in which God must seem to have fallen asleep at the wheel, and let him down. God could very well have prevented that car accident, or at least prevented his wife's death. While we're so very circumspect to blame God for "causing" the incident, we must in all integrity admit that He could have prevented it, and chose to not do so. My friend's wife is dead, and his soul is ripped apart, because of an act of omission on the part of God...pure and simple. My friend likely had very good dreams of moving into the future of his ministry and his marriage with his wonderful wife, and blissfully going into old age and retirement with her at his side.

Sometimes God allows legitimate, good dreams to shatter...to make room for better dreams, His dreams. Sometimes the cost of knowing God's best dreams is to have our souls torn asunder while looking straight in the face of the horror of watching our favorite dreams crash before us, and knowing the helplessness of our not being God, of being unable do anything to stop the horror from happening. Sometimes God allows the horror that we've feared most to come upon us, and sometimes He feels like He's nowhere to be found, either for the purpose of comforting us, or to take the brunt of our bitter screams.

My friend has faith...he takes God at His word, even in the face of circumstances that completely contradict it. He believes God keeps His word, even when circumstances defy it from coming to pass. He will cling to God, and consider it an honor to exercise faith, and be willing to pay a high price in terms of personal suffering, to be counted as worthy to live the life of faith. He won't feel like it, but he will. He will dig deep, and find the strength in the very center of his soul to passionately pursue God, in the very midst of his heartache...and eventually he will find Him. And eventually, the price my friend has to pay now in order to know God better will be reckoned as worth it...not now, maybe not for awhile. But he will know God better at some point through this, and will be able to both grieve the loss of his wife deeply and simultaneously praise Him for allowing the very good dream to shatter and be replaced by a higher dream. Not now, not for awhile...but some time yet to come.

Only those who know God intimately can simultaneously grieve the loss of a good dream, and rejoice in the hope of knowing a better dream as a result of the loss. Those who do not know God can only grieve, or rage over, the loss of their dreams. They have no other hope.

My friend has hope....

First entry...worst entry.

I love to run...and sometimes I run too much, over do it and injur myself. "Sometimes" is too lenient...I do it practically twice a year or so. And when I don't run for awhile, I lose all the conditioning effects that I worked so hard to acquire, so that by the time I start over, I'm practically out of shape and a "beginner" all over again.

I like to keep a running log, to track my frequency, distance, time, etc., of my runs. I have a catch phrase that I usually put on the very first log entry of a new running "streak"....it goes "first run...worst run." That's because the first run back after a lengthy layoff is usually the hardest, most disappointing run of the "streak" that is yet to come. I feel like crap through most of the run, and hurt like heck for the next few days afterward. It takes me about 6 weeks of consistant running before I begin to feel like "myself" again, and can glide along at a "reasonable" or "respectable" pace over an extended distance.

I've been a "runner" even when I'm not running, for over 20 years. I had a wonderful track and cross country coach in high school who showed us not only how to run competitively, but how to love running for the sake of running. He actually ran with us (as opposed to the previous cross country coach who used to ride his Honda motorcycle beside us) while we trained, and put in the sweat with us on very long weekend runs. He took us out on weekend running retreats in the backroads of the country, where we slept in a rustic barn on the most uncomfortable cots I'd ever futilally tried to sleep on! He lived running, and thus so did we...and some of us still do. One of my former team mates recently qualified for Boston. Running is in my identity, even when it's not in my actual practice.

For years I've loved the quotation of the British missionary Eric Liddell, from the movie Chariots of Fire. Liddell's sister is chastising him for his seeming preoccupation with running, as he is an Olympic contender in the short sprint races. She thinks he needs to get his focus back on God, the mission field, and going to China. Running seems to her to be a frivolous interest at best, and an idol distracting her brother away from the "true work" for God in the mission field. Liddell answers her concerns with this: "I know He made me for a purpose...for China. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. To give it up would be to hold Him in contempt."

That's how I feel about running...I feel God's pleasure in me when I run, and to ever stop coming back after a leave of absence would be to deny God the pleasure of my running, to hold Him in contempt! What an incredible thought! I HAVE to run because it brings my Lord pleasure!?! We typically think that only our inconvenience or our suffering brings Him pleasure, and we base that on a warped, inaccurate inkling of what we think God is really like. There is nothing like the feeling of being set free to bring Him pleasure...there is no personal pleasure like it!

An acquaintaince of mine counsels sex addicts, typically men. One new client came into his office, and declared at the start of the session, "I've had sex with a hot babe, while high on drugs, on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. If you can't offer me anything else that will give me that kind of rush, I'm not going to waste my time here with you!" His "pleasure" had the three most powerful componants that comprise lust: warped immitations of beauty, power and risk. Nothing but lust can compete with lust, and there's nothing akin to this warped idea of pleasure that can compete. But....if one can think outside the box of the warped mindset of lust, there is a richer, deeper, higher and more noble pleasure that lust has no capacity to touch...being in the center of God's will and flowing with His pleasure! (And that's exactly what my counselor acquaintance offered this man in response to his challenge!)

Perhaps this entry won't be my worst entry at all. Perhaps....someday I can honestly say, as Liddell...."when I blog, I feel His pleasure!" Time will tell.