At This Time...

I have mixed feelings.  I'm not sure how to write them down.  I'm sad, but in a happy way.  I'm missing a good friend, and yet, I'm glad he's gone.

This makes no sense, does it?

Recently a good friend of mine passed away.  For many years, since he way very young, he suffered with arthritis that was calcifying his joints, and it was impossible for him to lay down or stand upright.  He was in so much pain, more than I can imagine.  Therefore, I am missing him, and yet I am so very grateful that he has gone to a 'better place', as a lot of people say.  He stands tall, he has no pain.

Any yet, though all the years of pain, he always had a smile.  He never lost his humor, and one of his daughters wrote that if he could be, he would be at his own funeral making jokes.  He was the sort of man that could light up a room when he entered it.  You didn't have to see him, you felt him.  He had a wonderful spirit about him.

For many years he worked as a Court Reporter, and some times those courtrooms had stairs.  He would get up them, somehow.  There was a judge that he worked with that would carry his heavy equipment from where he saw him to the courtroom; he worked with many judges.

He worked until his health made him retire.  He had 6-bypass surgery, and many heart attacks before and after.

But he kept going.  When he found out he could work and make just so much money without losing his disability, he did!  Working with disabled consumers, he drove 45 miles one way to work 3 days a week, until his fatal heart attack.

He touched more people's lives than we can count.  I have the privilege of typing up the many poems he wrote through his 40 years of marriage, and some poems wrote for him; some letters he wrote to his daughters, and some things his daughters wrote.  It's hard to get through all of them, emotionally, but it is helping me see just how great a man he really was.  On the mortuary site guest book are many things people had to say to his wife and daughters.  It is so heartwarming, the things people have to say.  They are not just words, you know, people always write nice things because the person is gone, but these things are sincerely written.  Having known him, I know these things are what come from the hearts of his friends and co-workers.  I am just privileged to be a part of this.

One of the things he had kept, I wanted to share with you here.  It is awesome, and maybe it will help you to think about your friends and neighbors, maybe even family.  After all, we are all to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with all we come into contact with, aren't we?  So, here it is:

A LETTER TO MY CHRISTIAN FRIEND

My friend, I stand in judgment now
And feel that you’re to blame somehow
While on this earth I walked with you day by day
And NEVER did you point the way.
You know the Lord in truth and glory.
But NEVER did you ever tell the story.

My knowledge then was very dim,
You could have led me safe to Him.
Though we lived together here on Earth,
You NEVER told me of the second birth.
And now I stand this day condemned,
Because you failed to mention him.

You taught me many things that’s true,
I called you friend and trusted you.
But I learned now that it’s too late,
You could have kept me from this fate.

We walked by day and talked by night,
And yet you showed me not the light.
And you let me live, love, and die,
And all this while you knew I’d never light on high.

Yes I called you friend in life
And I trusted you in joy & strife . . .
And yet in coming to this end,
I see you really weren’t my friend.

            Signed Your Lost Friend,
                Author Unknown

May you have a beautiful week.  Ponder what your loved ones mean to you, and if you don't tell them every day how much you love them, maybe you should start.  A hug, a kiss, a short note, a poem...  Tell them!  We never know when any of us will be called Home.