Who Are the Extra-Ordinary People?

Uncle Larry

This past week the social media, as well as the television news channels, have put together montages of all the celebrities that have passed away this past year. People make comments about how sad it is to lose so many talented people in one year. They might also make comments about how good or inspiring this or that person was, although they may not know who that person was in the everyday. They are only speculating about their goodness or inspiration through some movie they starred in or a song that inspired and influenced them.

Usually I don't pay that much attention to all the celebrity hype. I don't follow movie/television stars or singers. It doesn't matter to me who they date or what they may be saying about the political process.

However, I think that maybe it shocks people to think that this person they have admired for so long, this person who has played a certain inspiring role on the big screen, this person who has sung the most beautiful love song, this person has died. How can that be?

Then I began to think about those whom the Preacher and I have lost within this past year. The Preacher lost his little sister and just this week I lost my uncle, my mother's little brother. Where is the montages of their lives? Why are their deaths not announced on the television news?

It is because they were just ordinary people. The little people. The people who live in fly-over country. That's what the media might say. But in our hearts, they were extra-ordinary. Their lives were not little and they lived here with us in this beautiful fly-over country. They were good people, they did things in their lives that inspired others. Maybe they didn't inspire the whole nation but they inspired their families.   

My uncle was a kind-hearted person. He was only 10 years older than me. My grandparents waited 10 years between their first two children and their last two children. He was funny and he had a great smile. I remember him so well. My brother and I used to stay all night with my uncle and aunt - we enjoyed being with them so much.

Unfortunately, the Preacher and I were not able to go back to Indiana to attend either one of our family member's funerals, but that doesn't mean that the loss is any less. We both have shed tears for those who we consider the bright stars in our families.

Death does come. It will come for us all. It doesn't matter who or what you have done or are doing in your lives. It doesn't matter where you live or how much money you make. What we can know is that through Christ there is a beautiful life after this one. It says in Revelation 21:4, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Our loved ones went on to be with the Lord this year and we know that they both are in pain no more.

So, when we look back upon this year and remember the celebrities who have passed on, don't forget that there may have been even bigger stars in our families that we have lost, and maybe we should be celebrating their lives during this last week of 2016.

Love from the Preacher and I

The Preacher Walks Into the Deep Waters To Love

Early in the morning the Preacher received the family's call. The woman who called wanted to let the Preacher know that her mother-in-law was on her death bed and was asking for prayers for her husband's family. Death would be coming at any time. The Preacher told me that we must go to see this family, to be with them in their time of need.

The nursing home, where the family was waiting, was not very far from our town. I told the Preacher that I would drive him and when we arrived that I would stay in the car and read a book and wait on him.

You see, I don't do well in nursing homes, especially when the person is in a bad way. I blame this on my mother. If she couldn't find a babysitter she would take us to the nursing home where she worked. She would leave us in the common living room with all of the 'old people'. To a young girl these people were scary. The people were sitting in their wheelchairs, some strapped in, were sleeping with mouths wide open, some would be yelling or screaming at nothing and others would drool getting their shirts soaking wet. Watching this was a very scary experience!

The Preacher and I arrived at the nursing home. I tell him again that I will stay in the car and wait. He says to me, "No, come in and say hello to the family." We were greeted by the family who were sitting in the common living room. After we exchanged "how are you's", we were escorted into the mother's room. More family members were surrounding her bed. The mother asleep, mouth wide open, trying to grasp this life's final breaths.

Me, I'm looking for a way out of the room, but the Preacher, he takes a seat right next to the sleeping mother and begins rubbing her shoulder ever so tenderly. Then he begins to ask the family questions about their mother. Questions like – how many children did she have, where did she grow up, where did she attend church, what did she like to do. All of the children began to tell stories of their mother and they began to show us pictures and some paintings that she had painted herself years ago. Their eyes brightened as they went back to a place of remembering.

The Preacher asked if he could say a prayer for the family before we left them. We all bowed our heads but the Preacher reached over and spoke the prayer words directly into the mother's ear.

The family thanked us for coming and we left to go about our day of living. Later that evening we heard that the mother, in the afternoon hours of that day, had taken her last breath and left this world to suffer no more. 

I began to think of how wonderful this man is, the Preacher. He too is not crazy about these types of visits, but unlike me, he doesn't look for a way out. He walks head on into the dark waters of fear. He is compassionate. He loves people and that love overtakes any uneasiness that he may feel.

I envy this. This love. This Jesus kind of love. I do pray that someday, I too, will be able to put behind my fears so that I can walk head on in and love like this.

Love from the Preacher and I

His Light Always Shines Toward Life

This is the Smith family, the way we looked many years ago. This picture is of our niece's wedding.

Since this photo many more of our niece's and nephew's have gotten married, had children, and some of us have moved to various parts of the country and even abroad. We also have had some of our family go to, what Jesus calls, 'sleep'. We have lost the woman who held this family together, Joan, or you may have known her as Grandma, the mother of the Preacher, and we have lost the Preacher's sister, Brenda.

There is a line in Mat Kearney's song, "Closer to Love", that says "I guess we're all one phone call from our knees." That call came for us this morning. Today we learned that the Preacher's sister, Michelle, the baby of the family and the one sitting to the left of the bride in the picture, went to be with the Lord this morning. She had been having heart problems for some time and she knew that her time here on this earth was short but she was okay with that. She was okay with going home to be with her Savior, and to be able to see her mother, her father and sister again.

Within an hour of receiving that call the Preacher received another call telling him that a man in our town had also passed away today. A man that the Preacher considered a friend.

The Preacher had to write an article for our church's newsletter today. He wrote his article about his sister going to sleep, he wrote about his friend's passing, and he wrote about believing that Christ's light will always chase away the darkness. After reading his article I asked him if I could share it with you today. He told me that it would be okay. 

Here is his article:

"The phone rang today right in the middle of a morning run.  That is not my favorite time to get a call because in my mind I am about to set a 5K world record or at least a personal best.  But I saw the pic on the incoming call, it was my brother.  He doesn’t call that often so I assumed it was important and I gave up the gold to answer the phone.  In that instant when I heard a fragile voice on the line I knew that it was something important.  He said “Michelle died of a heart attack this morning.”  Michelle is our sister.  She is the 4th of our little family of 6 to go home.  Linda and I talked and prayed for her husband Greg and her daughters and grandchildren.  Within the hour I got a second call.  It was Greg.  He too had that frailty of voice as he told me the news.  My sister struggled with a weak heart for a decade or more.  He had left early this morning for work and she called to tell him that she was having trouble breathing but was going to a regular scheduled Doctors appointment.  The neighbor found her slumped over in her van in the drive way to their house.  My sister was what the Bible calls a “Believer.”  She seemed to struggle sometimes with accepting and understanding people.  But Jesus, she never seemed to doubt.  To me she was a woman of extremes.  If she was angry she was very angry and you knew it.  If she was blessing you, you knew it.  You were blessed beyond expectation.  When she loved she loved large.  Jesus was always the object of her love.  She doubted herself sometimes and sometimes she doubted her two brothers.  But her faith was like a life line that she clung too.
     As I was talking to her husband I had gotten a third call.  I saw the name.  It was a young lady that I had done a wedding for.  Her dad is a friend and she grew up friends with Samuel.  I listened to the voice on the machine and heard the fragile break in her voice also.  The same lilt I had heard two other times this morning.  Just a simple, “Could you call me please.”  I called her back and she said, “My dad died this morning and we want to know if you would do a service for him.”  I told her that I love her and her daddy very much and made plans to meet later in the day.  In some ways my friend and my sister were alike.  They both loved large.  Both struggled with health issues for years.  They were both gregarious storytellers.  Both lived in-between the extreme edges of joy and sadness.  Both left this world with in the same hour.  But in one particular way they greatly differed.  I do not know if my friend understood how much Jesus loved him like my sister did.  About a month ago I called my sister.  She told me her health was continuing to slip away.  That she struggled to live life well.  But she said, “I am okay with it, I am ready to go home when He is ready for me.”  My friend on the other hand in some moment of doubt or desperation took his life.
     Jesus is the Way.  He will always be the way, in the light or in the dark.  He is the way to life not away from it.  Always toward life.  That is true if we believe it or if we do not.   But believing it brings a light into the darkness, believing it now chases darkness away.  You see I remember another phone call.  This one was 24 years ago.  It was my sister Michelle.  She called me in Florida from Indiana to tell me that she was going to take her life.  We talked about life and love and faith.  We talked about Jesus.  For hours it seemed.  As we did the light of his love began to flicker in her soul.  A light that continued to shine all the way to the other side today."

Please pray for our family, for our brother-in-law, Greg, and for Michelle's girls.

Thank you and Love from the Preacher and I