Patina

While I was visiting colleagues in Israel, a friend took me to a banana plantation. The bananas had been harvested, and the trees had been cut down, and the stalks had been ground up and mixed with the dirt by heavy tractors pulling massive disc harrows.

Whenever the ground is deeply plowed like at this banana plantation, the big plows turn up some treasures. No, not gold or silver, but nevertheless treasures for people like me who just like to prospect.

Not only did we have fresh plowed up dirt to look through, but rain had fallen the day before we arrived at the banana plantation. The rain had washed the dirt away from the debris that had been plowed. Perfect conditions for prospecting for shards of pottery and pieces of patinaed Roman glass.

What makes these fragments of glass so special? Age. Just as copper and bronze turn greenish as they age, so does Roman glass get coated with iridescent hues of blue, green and even orange. This is the result of a corrosion process that slowly restructures the glass to form photonic crystals. These crystals are what give the material its iridescence.

You have also seen these crystals—or their effects—when you have seen the iridescent wings of a butterfly or a dragon fly, or when you have admired a lovely piece of opal.

Patinas can raise the value of an object because they are not only beautiful, but also a sign of age, thus proving that the object is an antique. One of the best examples of the sheer beauty patina can add to an object is the Statue of Liberty. It is a bronze statue, but over the years the bronze has been covered with a green patina that has enhanced this symbol of liberty.

Over the years I have collected some of those shards of glass. Are they worth anything? No, but they are worth a fortune in the pleasure I had in discovering these jewels.

Just as age adds value to ancient pieces of Roman glass, so it does to humans. Now that I am one of them—senior citizens—I can actually appreciate what life’s joys and struggles have taught me. I just wish that I had been smarter when I was in my teens and twenties to recognize how important it was to learn from my elders.

I was sitting in a metal bouncy chair daydreaming on the porch of my little “shop.” I was thinking about patina and age. Now I could use some patina on my old skin to toughen it up and cover up the age spots, but the thought came to me: wouldn’t it be awesome if everything that I have learned in my life could be put on a thumb drive. Then I could review it and remember things that I have forgotten long ago. I am sure that I have forgotten much more than I could recall today.

Family and friends often help me remember stuff that I have forgotten. “Dad, do you remember that time we …?” Friend: “Larry, I was thinking about when we trekked through the Sinai Desert…” Larry: “What are your best memories?” I ask questions like that to see if they remember something that I do not, and it helps me recall things that I thought I had lost. Now I am not yet afflicted with any disease related to memory loss, but I just have forgotten some great life experiences, and I would like to recall them and enjoy them again.

For most of my life I have heard analogies of a life span and the quarters of a football game. A popular movement was highlighted when the book “The Second Half” was released many years ago. I am in the fourth quarter now, but I actually feel that I am more in the time of the two-minute warning.

I don’t really need a warning whistle as I am aware that my age is about the lifespan of the average male in America. So, I want to make the most of every day and enjoy each day as if it was my last. “Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before.”

No Visa

We had been living in Cairo for two weeks. Our move there came three months after being given the assignment to lead workers in northern Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian Gulf. Our reason to relocate to Cairo was to evaluate this massive city as a possible location for our regional office.

One of our leadership team members, Mike Edens, and his wife, Madelyn, had already spent over 20 years living in Cairo, and they had convinced us that this might be the right place for us to move personnel and establish a beachhead for our work in 35 countries.

Our first flight out of Cairo was to Ethiopia to meet our workers serving there. One of the unfortunate anomalies of the Cairo International airport was that most of the international flights departed during the hours between midnight and 5:00 am. Our flight to Addis Ababa was at 3:00 am, so we arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 11:30 pm.

Our taxi dropped us off at a convenient spot for check in for Ethiopia Air. We were early enough that there was only a short line, and soon we found ourselves standing in front of the check-in agent. He requested our passports, and we handed them over the counter. As he opened one of the passports he said very cheerfully, “Welcome to Ethiopia, Mr. James.” As he thumbed through my passport, he continued and said, “We are happy that you are traveling to Ethiopia, Mr. James.” And then he looked up at me and said, “But I am sorry you will not be going to Ethiopia tonight, Mr. James. You see,” he said, “you do not have a visa, and to get to Ethiopia this evening you must have a valid visa before departure.”

Puzzled by this request, I asked if we could get visas in the airport at Addis, and he said no.

In communicating with our personnel in Addis, no one had mentioned getting a visa. We had already lived overseas for many years and were certainly aware that visas to many countries were necessary, but we depended on the people we were visiting and the travel agent to inform us.

We had used our colleague’s travel agent to book our tickets, but they had not mentioned a visa either.

There was no need to argue with the desk agent as he was doing his job, so we said thank you and hauled our bags to the curbside to return by taxi to our apartment.

Once we finally arrived in Addis, we learned that a few of our workers in Addis Ababa had some fun talking about their new leader who did not know that he needed a visa to travel. I did not like hearing that as I had been traveling overseas for 20 years, and I certainly understood the necessity of visas in many countries. I admit I was angry that they had accused me of being a rookie traveler. Didn’t they know that we had cut our teeth in West Africa which was so much more primitive than Ethiopia? Had they not heard that we had been traveling and living in several countries for longer than many of them had even been in Ethiopia? Plus, one of the workers in Ethiopia had worked alongside us in Burkina Faso before she married a worker in Ethiopia, but she was enjoying ribbing me about being a rookie. It was all in fun, but my immediate reaction was to get angry. I was already stressed about meeting all the new personnel in the region, and a couple of our meetings had not gone well, because some of the personnel took out their anger about losing their former leader on me.

My anger subsided and I decided to let them laugh at me, and we would find some fun in all this. Staying angry about this would only hurt me and Cheryl and our relationships with the workers. I decided to laugh heartily with them when the no visa story came up in conversations. This strategy worked out well as some of the more creative workers made a song about their leaders missing a flight because they did not know they needed a visa to travel.

This is a fault of mine and I have known it for many years. I get angry too quickly. But I have learned over the years that it is not bad to get angry. It is bad to get angry and stay angry. So, now when I get angry, I say to myself, “Get angry and get over it quickly. Do not stay angry.” Anger, like a cancer, can eat away at your heart and mind and make you so bitter that you lose the countenance of Christ in your temperament.

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” James 1:19-20 NIV.

Service Station

One of my granddaughters (we have 13 of them!) heard me say that I needed to find a service station, and she asked me, “What is that?”

I told her that it was like a gas station, but gas stations do not have any service. Of course, that brought up another question: “What does service mean?” Wow, that’s a loaded question for me, and I thought yes, what does service mean today. You go to a counter to order tea or coffee, and they flip the tablet around and ask you for a tip and the choices are 18% or 20%! For what?? For taking my order and making my tea? I am paying them to do that. Of course, there on the bottom of the page is “custom tip” where you have to take time to say, “I don’t want to leave a tip.”

Now I am not one of those people who either leave no tip or a disgusting tip in restaurants or with the taxi or whatever. I have two grandchildren whose incomes depend on restaurant tips, so I am aware of how these people make their living. Whether it is Waffle House or a classy restaurant, I strive to leave a good tip. I love it when a server is attentive to our table in a restaurant and one who anticipates our needs. I enjoy rewarding their service.

I went on to explain to my granddaughter that long ago when you went to a gas station an attendant would not only pump the gas, but they would also clean the windows of your car, check under the hood  to make sure that your oil, radiator and battery were ok, and they would check the air pressure in your tires.

I did not go into all this but in the “old days” it was common to visit the service station to buy tires, batteries, to have tune-ups on your car, to get your oil and filter changed, to get new belts and hoses and other automotive repairs.

I recall a good friend of ours and fellow church member back in the late 70s who was a gasoline distributor and owned service stations, struggled over the decision to build her first convenience store that sold self-service gasoline. After a few months she was elated and planned to convert other full-service stations to convenience stores because they enjoy a higher and more consistent profit margin than just selling gas.

I am convinced that is why many gas stations today have pumps that won’t give you a receipt. The display on the pump says, “Clerk has receipt.” They want you to come into the store and buy something else. Gasoline has a small markup so I am told, so why do they increase the price of gas 20 cents overnight, but it takes two weeks for the price to drop 20 cents??

At the age of 12 I had my first paying job. I worked at my uncle’s service station on Saturdays. He paid me $.50 an hour to wash windows, check air pressure and check the oil. I carried around a metal milk case to stand on as I could not reach all of the windshield or check the oil without it. I received zero tips. I learned that no matter how well I did my job, some people were just snotty. They would not even say thank you. But that did not keep me from doing my best because when someone praised my work, that was a huge encouragement to me. I learned a lot about customer service in my first job. I also learned some people skills that have stuck with me all my life.

Break time was my favorite part of Saturdays. I purchased a nickel coke and a nickel package of Tom’s peanuts. You guessed it. I poured the peanuts into my glass bottle of coke.

I love the anonymous quote that goes something like this: “The more memories you make, the richer the tapestry of your life becomes.”

It is never too late to make some memories. For those of us who are seniors, we need to make memories for our children and grandchildren. Go make some memories.

Stylite Tower

Imagine sitting in a forty foot prayer tower in the ancient Middle East and never leaving for the rest of your life.

The people who did this were called Stylites, which literally means pillar saints. They were part of a religious movement that took place about 1500 years ago in the Middle East.  Christian penitents lived on the top of towers and practiced degradation of their bodies, believing it would help the salvation of their souls. They would isolate themselves from the rest of the world, starve themselves, face harsh weather conditions, and pray.

While there is much written evidence about the Stylites, there is little that is left physically about their lifestyle. One of the only Stylite towers that remains in the world is in Jordan at a site called Umm ar-Rasas.

It’s not one of the most famous spots in the country for tourists, but one of my friends who lived in Jordan took me there because it was a good site to go prospecting for relics. Our destination was about 30 miles southeast of Madaba, Jordan. A church in Madaba houses the oldest cartological representation of the Holy Land—a mosaic map in the floor of the church. Tourists and pilgrims come from all over the world to see this marvel, but only a handful each week make it to Umm ar-Rasas.

Through the years I have loved to prospect for relics. I should have been an archaeologist as I enjoy discovering very old things that others have overlooked. Maybe that’s why I love to browse antique shops today or look for shark teeth on the beach.

Anyhow, before we ever went to see the ruins of this ancient city, we went to the “tel.” In ancient Middle East, the “tels” were the garbage dumps. As the harsh hot weather dries out the soil on the mound of dirt and debris, the infrequent rains wash away the loose dirt exposing plenty of pottery shards and other small treasures. At least they were treasures to me. They may be worthless to most people, but the real joy is in the discovery of these little jewels.

After we had spent a couple of hours prospecting the tel, we walked on over to the ruins of the city of Umm ar-Rasas, one of Jordan’s five UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One can tell just how large and important Umm ar-Rasas became by what you’ll find there today. Not only are the ruins of a large city there, but one can find the ruins of at least 16 Byzantine churches – plus the infrastructure to support thousands of residents. The largest of the ancient churches was St. Stephen which has the largest excavated ancient mosaic floor in Jordan.

To me the most fascinating thing about this forgotten city is the 40 feet tall prayer tower. Men would commit to climbing up into the small open aired room at the top via some sort of scaffolding, and the scaffolding would be removed either for a defined period or until they died. Their only contact with another human was once a day when their waste would be lowered in a basket tied to a rope, and food and water would be retrieved by the Stylite. They would receive enough minimal food and water to just keep them alive.

Looking back, one may question the sanity of committing to be a Stylite. Why would a person self-inflict so much physical pain and depravation and emotional stress to literally break their spirit to please God? However, no one can question their commitment to Almighty God. No one can deny their vow of prayer and supplication.

Perhaps the Stylites were very sane people whose commitment to the Lord was so great that they felt unworthy of a “normal” life? Or was that their calling to serve?

I am thinking “How I would react if the Lord called me to a life of prayer and mortification?”

The Middle East has been in the headlines again for the past year. We wonder what it would take to attain real peace in the Middle East in our children’s lifetimes. With hostilities once again going on and all the sophisticated war instruments that man has developed, two major weapons being used are forced starvation and depravity of a home.

Maybe Israelites and Palestinians need to be more like the pillar saints and commit to more praying and less fighting. Don’t we all?!

Sunday Best

Easter weekend! Lots of last-minute shopping going on to buy some “Easter clothes.” Much of the shopping is for children who will get a new outfit to go to church on Easter morning or to go to a family lunch or Easter egg hunt.

My parents tried to teach me many things as I was growing up, and one thing I caught was that we wore our best clothes to go to church. If we were going someplace else like a wedding, a funeral or to pose for pictures, my folks would say, “Wear your Sunday best.”

When I first started working with Chick-fil-A’s foundations, there was an unwritten apparel rule for men at their corporate offices: long sleeved dress shirt with a Chick-fil-A tie. Right after I started working there, one day I was in Truett Cathy’s office, and the first thing he said to me was, “Where is your Chick-fil-A tie?” I looked down at my tie, and I had on a regular tie that I thought was a nice one. I had only accumulated two of the branded ties, and I did not want to wear them every day. He went in his closet of goodies in his office and brought me a Chick-fil-A tie and told me to take off my tie and put on the correct tie.

After Truett passed away, that dress code passed also. Dress at the home office became more casual. I did not mind the ties going away, as I have never been a fan of neckties. However, I continued to wear a long sleeved dress shirt to work each day. And I added a sport coat on occasions as I wanted to look my Sunday best.

Over the past twenty years the dress at our church—and most churches—has also changed. We have all sorts of dress represented in our small church. I have not yet heard of a designation that summarizes Sunday dress these days—like business, business casual, casual, etc.

I am one of three or four men who still wears a sport coat to church. I don’t have any quarrels with what others wear. We all should wear what we feel most comfortable wearing. But I still like to honor the Lord by worshipping corporately at my church and others I visit in my “Sunday best.”

The changes in what people wear to church reflect broader cultural shifts in apparel over the last few decades. The whole of American culture has dressed down. The result has been generational arguments about proper church dress. Those like me (the Sunday best group) believe informal clothing could reflect an irreverent attitude toward the holy God of all universes. Those who prefer very informal clothes (I am talking shorts, tank tops and flip flops style here) say that their apparel displays a more genuine approach to God.

Can either side back up their views with scripture? As far as I understand, there is no persuasive exegetical evidence to argue that more formal clothes are inherently more respectful of God than informal dress. Church dress is a cultural and tradition-based preference.

Finally, three thoughts: 1. I am OK with people wearing whatever they want to wear, and I will not criticize them. They may be wearing their Sunday best even if they are not dressed like me. I am just happy that they have chosen to worship with our congregation. 2. There is not much to argue about here as those oldies like me are dying out anyhow! 3. I love the third verse of the old hymn (those are the songs that we use to sing in church!) entitled “Give of Your Best to the Master.”

Give of your best to the Master;
Naught else is worthy His love;
He gave Himself for your ransom,
Gave up His glory above.
Laid down His life without murmur,
You from sin’s ruin to save;
Give Him your heart’s adoration;
Give Him the Sunday best you have.

Truism: Character

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."
--H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Poutine

After a friend from Brazil who was our house guest this past week and I had made a business visit in Chattanooga, we asked someone in the office for a suggestion for lunch. He told us that we must go to Kenny’s on Market Street because it was a popular local deli. 

After we were seated in Kenny’s, the server gave us three pages of menus each on an 8 x 10 piece of paper. I thought that was an inexpensive way to have a menu, but I imagine the real reason was that these menus made it easy to make changes to the prices. There was a regular menu, a specials menu, and a beverage menu. My eyes went first to the regular menu and the first thing that caught my attention was “Poutine.” 

Poutine is a dish of French fries topped with cheese curds and a brown gravy. This fine dining selection originated in Quebec in the late 1950s.

I first enjoyed Poutine in Montreal in 2011 with my Quebecois friend and a team of Chick-fil-A Owner/Operators. Any old French fries will do, but the keys to the best Poutine are the cheese curds and the brown gravy. 

I have tried Poutine in several restaurants over the years, but none of them outside of Quebec have been successful in serving “real” cheese curds. Cheese curds are small moist pieces of curdled milk that are a by-product of cheese making. When you bite into them they are kinda squeaky and taste a lot like cheddar cheese. Curds are actually cheese that has not gone through the aging process. 

I even had poor Poutine at a restaurant in old town Montreal just last fall. We were vacationing with our traveling friends in northern Vermont, and we decided to take a day trip to Montreal. I was not excited about seeing Montreal again, but I do like me some Poutine, so I was all for this road trip. 

The Poutine was disappointing. Old Town caters to tourists who don’t know the difference in good or bad Poutine. I should have been wary of finding the good stuff in the tourist area, but that is where our friends wanted to eat. 

Back to Kinney’s. The description at their deli said that their Poutine included cheese curds , but the cheese was just globs of mozzarella cheese. Their gravy, however, was the real thing.

We have a restaurant in our town that had Poutine when it opened. It was OK, but their gravy was not Quebecois. Before the restaurant was one year old, they removed Poutine from their menu. I think it was because the people who really knew Poutine were disappointed in it, and those who had never tried it didn’t like the sound of eating curds on their fries or they looked at the calorie count! 

Some of us are guilty of treating people like some people treat Poutine (or other menu entrees). It sounds strange and foreign. Poutine sounds like Putin, so some people don’t like it because of the way it sounds. Ever have a negative feeling whenever you hear people speaking a language you do not understand? 

One of the ingredients of Poutine does not rouse the taste buds. When we encounter a food item that turns us off, we ignore it.  We are afraid to try it. When you see a woman dressed in a hijab or a Jewish man wearing a skullcap—called a kippah—does it turn you off or do you have negative thoughts? Would you be willing to engage them in a conversation?

I confess that even after living in other countries and traveling in over half of the countries in the world, I still struggle with engaging some people who may be different from me. Recently I started a conversation with a Sikh who was wearing a turban. He was at the checkout of the convenience store, and there was no one behind me, so I began to ask about his family and what part of India they came from. Would you believe that before I left the store we were talking about our grandchildren? 

One day while I sat by my mother’s bed as she was dying, I was thinking what a provincial childhood and youth I had experienced in Mississippi. I prayed and thanked God for giving me a lifetime of cross cultural experiences. 

While I was meditating, God led me to think about the different cross-cultural encounters I had experienced just during that particular day in Mississippi. Early that morning I bought gas from a Gujarati Indian at a Circle K. I bought donuts for the nursing home staff from a shop owned and operated by a Cambodian family. I had a long visit with the nursing home physician who was a first generation immigrant from Somalia. Before meeting me, she had never met anyone in Mississippi who had ever been to her country or who could talk about some good things about her country. 

You can turn your nose up at Poutine, but don’t do that to your fellow pilgrims on this earth who were created to relate to people around them and live in harmony with each other. God loves each of us equally. 

“So Peter opened his mouth and said: ‘Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.’” Acts 10:34 ESV

Team Lift

Every time I have begun leading a new team, I have spent a lot of time learning about the people I would lead. In some cases, I have inherited an existing leadership team, but in most new positions I have had the opportunity to choose the team that I led.

On one occasion my job was to lead 500+ workers scattered across thirty-five countries from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. I chose our leadership team, and we scheduled a retreat in the UK for team leaders and their spouses. This was going to be our first meeting with these team leaders who led workers engaged in frontline strategies. I had never met any of the team leaders as I was asked to transfer to this part of the world from leading workers in Eastern Europe.

I was nervous about encountering the team leaders as they all knew that I had almost zero exposure to their region. I had been chosen, I was told, not for my experience in the Arab world, but for my leadership skills in other parts of the world.

Several weeks before the meeting, I started learning everything I could about the families of each team leader, and then I started praying for each member of their family by name. I had photos of the workers, but none of their children. The first night we convened at the retreat center north of London, and I led our first session. First, I introduced myself, telling them about my family—not just names, but I gave them some details and asked them to pray specifically for each of our family.

Next, I started at the end of the back row, and I did not ask them for their names, but I called out their name, then stated the name of their spouse and their field of assignment. I then called the name of each of their children and told them I had been praying for them.

It was a stressful situation because once I started calling the names of the spouses and children, I had to do this for all forty team leaders. I made it through, and the group gave a spontaneous round of applause. I did not do it for accolades, but I did it to personalize a relationship with each team leader from the very beginning.

The leadership team and I had been nervous about this first meeting to cast the vision for this part of the world, but after that first meeting, the ice was broken, and a positive “esprit de corps” had already been established.

At break time in the afternoon session on the next day, one of the team leaders asked me if he could make an announcement. As the meeting began, he came to the front of the meeting room, but it was not an announcement that he wanted to make. He told me that he was representing all the team leaders, and he kindly asked me to lie down on the floor. He instructed me to trust the team leaders who began to gather around me as I lay there on my back. Each one of them only put one finger under my body. All at once they pushed my body upward with dozens of index fingers and lifted me four feet off the floor. 

It was an incredible feeling for my 180 pounds to seemingly be floating in the air as the team leaders kept me suspended in the air for what seemed to be two minutes as someone prayed for me and my family. This was one of the best expressions of love and care from a team that I have ever felt in forty years of leading people.

My favorite scripture on team building is I Peter 4:8-10 which states, “Above all, love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

If you have had a similar experience with a team of which you were a member or the leader and would like to share it with me, please send it to me at this email address: lcox@coxnichols.com.

Truism: Expectation

People usually end up pretty much where they expect.

Mimi IIII: Left Behind

After kids, grandkids and great grandkids picked out what they wanted to keep from Mimi’s possessions, my brothers, their spouses and Cheryl and I worked long hours to bag and box up my mother’s earthly possessions to give to a Christian thrift store. We could not believe how many clothes Mama had tucked away in three different closets and in nooks and crannies. Some of them had never been used because she was saving them.

 As my mother moved into her senior years, she became more and more adamant about saving for future use. Her kids and grandchildren would give her gifts for special events, but she would rarely use them because she wanted to save them. This is a trait of the silent generation as they experienced many hardships during their childhood and youth.  

Mimi was born in 1930, so she was part of the silent generation which includes people who were born between 1928 and 1945 and lived through the Great Depression and World War II. When the Silent Generation grew up, cultural and social influences emphasized qualities like hard work, loyalty, and thriftiness.

Mimi did not have much in material possessions, but the items from Mimi’s home that we picked out to keep will remind us of her. However, we cherish the legacy that my mother left more than anything. That legacy is all about the values that our Pete and Mimi left behind. They practiced their values more than they talked about their valuables, and that helped shape me into the man I am today.

The most important value that they instilled in me was to love the Lord God with all my heart, all my soul and all my might and to worship Him and serve Him daily in my family. with my friends, and in my church.

Another value that they imprinted on me was to persevere in the face of adversity. My parents showed me the meaning of resiliency. They often told me that when I experience challenges not to tuck my chin and feel sorry for myself, but to get off my butt and get to doing something about it.

My mother and dad had an extremely strong work ethic that included pursuing tasks until they are completed well and working as hard as needed to get a job done. Often, they told me, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”

While growing up I hated my parents’ frugality. I did not have all the “things” that my classmates had, but I learned later that their frugality was just wisdom about what to buy, when to buy and how much to pay.

I watched my parents write a check to our church every Sunday, and they always made sure that I had money to place in my church envelope and give to my Sunday School teacher. I also observed Mimi and Pete give to other people when they were in need. They taught me to be generous and I am most happy about that today. And to this day I would rather give than receive.

Mimi and Pete did not argue over money. We had all our needs and many of our wants, and God took care of our family. The second most important thing I learned from Mimi and Pete was that one’s values are much more important than one’s valuables.

I love Proverbs 13:22: “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.” I believe that the writer of Proverbs was not talking about financial wealth, but the wealth of values. A true legacy is not about how much you leave for your family, but more about what you leave in your family.

Mimi III

Yesterday morning our family’s Mimi took her last labored breath as I stood by her bed. When that breath was finished, she entered the Kingdom of God. I believe that singing angels announced my mother’s appearance at the feet of Jesus because another saint had arrived.

My mother came from the poorest area of the poorest state in the nation, and she left this world with only her small house and its furnishings, but she was rich in investments in serving people.

She passed away on her 16th day of no drink or food. We do not know why she lingered so long, but we are sure that there was some unfinished business with the Lord. The Lord was not ready for her to go to her eternal home. When I left her bedside the night before she passed, I got close to her ear and told her I loved her and that my brothers and I have released her to go be with Jesus. The last thing that I said to her was “I will see you later.” No goodbyes, just see you later.

My mother taught me and gave me so many, many things, but one of the greatest was how to be a servant of others. She was a true life-long servant. Whether it was calling elderly shut-ins, cooking for those experiencing health challenges or those bereaving the passing of a loved one, baking caramel cakes for family and friends, sharing her homemade pickles and jelly, or picking up people to carry them to church, she was constantly looking for opportunities to help others. She always put the needs of others before her own. Her joy in life was in serving others.

During the last few days of Mimi’s life, her breathing rate had slowed to six to seven times per minute, and her last few breaths were taken as I was going up and down the hallway to make sure that every nurse and aide and other staff had a donut that I had brought for them. Mimi would have enjoyed knowing that in her last moments on earth that I was serving others in the name of Jesus.

This is part three, but this is not the final chapter about Mimi. I will write more stories about her. Most importantly, I will meet her again when the Lord calls me home to heaven. I have the assurance, not the hope but the assurance, that I will see my mother and dad once again when we are reunited at the feet of Jesus. Oh, that will be glory for me.

Mimi Part II - Goodbyes

As the eldest son, I have the Power of Attorney for my mother, so I have to make the ultimate decisions. But I do not make them alone. I seek the wisdom of my two younger brothers. Mimi is our mother and I decided long ago that we will all have input in every decision along this journey.

My brothers and I have a good relationship, so we have worked well together in making decisions about my mother’s car, house, and belongings as we prepare for her imminent passing.

As I write this epistle, my brothers and I are gathered once again around her bed in the nursing home. Today, February 16, 2024, is the twelfth day without any drink or food for our mother. She is an amazing woman with a strong will to live. For all of that time she has been under the care of hospice staff and nursing home staff. They started giving her medication over a week ago to help her relax and sleep. Morphine treatments were added two days ago to help her with labored breathing.

A number of things happening now give us three boys a sense of satisfaction. She is not agitated or aggressive. She is at peace waiting to enter the perfect peace at the feet of Jesus. She has no pain. Our families have either gathered around her or called over the last few weeks to assure her of our love and our expectation of spending eternity with her.

I remember when Cheryl and I and our two preschool sons left the USA to go serve as missionaries in West Africa. My parents could not pronounce the place where we were going to live, much less how to spell it. As we were gathered at the airport in Jackson, Mississippi, to say our goodbyes, my mother and dad started crying as they clutched the two boys. I tried to comfort them by saying: “We don’t have to say ‘goodbye’ because y’all are coming to see us, right?” My mom said, “No, I am not going to get on an airplane.” Then I tried to console them by telling them that we will be coming back. We were not going to stay forever. We would be back on a stateside assignment in a few years. That made things worse because telling their only grandchildren goodbye for 3-4 years was like an eternity to them. Then finally, I convinced them to say “See you later” and we responded with the same words. But the crying continued as we boarded our plane.

Any goodbyes can be difficult, but saying goodbye to a loved one who is about to pass away is extremely difficult as most people either don’t make good choices with their words, they don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, or they just clam up and say whatever is on their mind to get finished with an uncomfortable task.

The internet is full of suggestions for saying goodbye to a friend or a loved one who is dying. Perhaps I am enamored with my own cogitating on this, but I don’t think we should say goodbye to a fellow believer. What we need to be saying are these simple words:  “See you later.” And that is just what I have been saying to my mother as her breathing has become more difficult: “Mimi, you are going to meet Jesus face-to-face soon, and I will be following you to heaven, so see you later.”

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…

Mimi

As I sit by my mother’s bedside in the nursing home, my mind is filled with so many good memories. I admit that all my memories of my mother are not good memories, but I am not concerned about those. This is the woman that God chose to bring me into this world. She comforted me and cared for me until I left my home to go to college. I never lived at my parents’ home after leaving for college at 17 years of age, but all my life I have made some great memories of my mother.

Yesterday, her three sons were gathered around her bed, and Bubba, Danny, and I had fun recalling stories about our mother. We laughed and we had some pensive moments as we glanced over at Mama sleeping in the last bed that she would ever sleep in.

My mother is known as Mimi to her eight grandchildren and twenty-four great grandchildren. Even many of her care givers are calling her Mimi as they have grown to love her like our family does.

Mimi was 94 three weeks ago. Her life on earth will be over any day now. I am no prophet in predicting her passing, but she has been in hospice care for the past 10 days. Her health has rapidly deteriorated over the past two weeks. She is not eating or drinking, so her body cannot continue to function long now. The wonderful hospice and nursing home staff are caring for her, and she is peacefully sleeping without pain.

This woman was nicknamed “Doc” as a preschooler by her ten brothers and sisters because she was so bossy and always enjoyed taking control of things. “Doc” turned into “Dot” when my dad, Pete, met her, and he thought the person who introduced them said “Dot.” From that point on, Wilma Frances Downs Cox was known as Dot Cox.

Dot was a lifelong servant, not a servant leader. As she grew older, she did not boss other people around—just Pete and us three boys. One morning a few days ago she was very agitated, and Bubba, my brother, and I were trying to settle her. She barked in a weak but gruff voice to leave her alone and get out of her bed. She talked to us like we were still little boys. I can’t imagine the things that must be going through her mind as her time on the earth comes to a close.

When Beth, the hospice nurse, came in a few minutes later, she was arranging her gown and her covers just as we had been attempting to do. Mimi used a gentle quiet voice to thank Beth. I tried to get the oxygen indicator on her finger, but she pulled her hand away. An aide came in and said some sweet soothing words to her and in a few seconds the instrument registered Mimi’s oxygen level. My brothers and I just do not have the right touch or soothing voice like her caregivers.

One aide who was not even taking care of Mimi today came by this morning just to whisper some sweet words to Mimi. Her door has been a revolving door all day as hospice and nursing home staff have constantly been checking on her, giving her comfort meds, taking her oxygen levels, helping her calm down, arranging her bedding and changing the dressings on her bed sores.  Every one of them has spoken soothing words into my mother’s ears, and their words comforted Mimi.

For all those times that Mimi helped others—cooking a meal for a sick family, baking a caramel cake for neighbors, making jelly or pickles and sharing  with many others, cleaning the house of a shut-in living alone, calling lonely people and giving encouragement, cooking for church dinners, picking up people to carry them to church, giving rides to those who did not have transportation,  and on and on—now Mimi is being cared for by other servants.

I am grateful for unsung heroes who work with the aging and dying. They are true servants just like our Mimi. Take time to thank those who serve this sometimes-neglected generation.

If you want to count your blessings during this past week, count how many times you have been a blessing to others through serving them.

We are blessed to be a blessing.

Coach

Coaches can have an extremely positive impact on us. Personal and executive coaching has become a massive industry in many countries around the world. I could name a dozen friends who support their families by coaching leaders.

During my youth, athletic coaches have had a huge influence on my life. I played a lot of baseball growing up, and I also ran track and played some tennis. I have fond memories of most of my coaches.

I did not play any college sports, but two semesters of physical education were required. One particular PE instructor was a lineman coach for the college football team. He was a gruff son of a gun, and I disliked him because it seemed that he did not like anyone unless they played a college sport, and if you played a college sport, physical education courses were not mandatory. Therefore, this coach seemed to not like any of us!

Later in life when I returned to my alma mater, Mississippi College, to work as an administrator and teacher, our family were members of the same church as this gruffy coach. This coach was a greeter at church, and he covered the door where our family entered each week. As I watched the way he greeted our daughters, I was amazed at this tenderhearted man and how he could make Amanda and Allison feel like princesses arriving at their castle. The girls always wanted to go in the coach’s door so they could see him. It was amazing to me how sweet and gentle this gruffy old coach could be. During that time, he became my favorite coach.

But I now have a new favorite coach named Bill Thornton. For months Coach Bill talked to me about playing pickleball. I had never heard of it at that time, so I politely listened because this man is a legend in our community. Everyone in our church calls him “Coach” as he coached many of our members at our local high school. The recreational center in our area is named after him. Before he helped introduce pickleball in our area, he was already a legendary tennis player and promoter. Largely due to a small group of people including Bill Thornton, today Rome, Georgia has the largest hard-court facility in the nation with 57 courts including 3 stadium-style courts and 6 indoor courts.

Coach Bill is a persistent man, but I did not accept his invitation to play pickleball until April 2023. The first day I showed up I was a bit nervous, but Coach Bill came alongside me and gave me valuable tips and encouragement. Over the past 10 months he has become my all-time favorite coach. In a gentle, yet direct and assuring way, he has made me a passionate pickleball player. Our group plays at our church gym every Tuesday and Thursday morning on a schedule that is conducive to the Coach taking care of his ailing wife.

Coach Bill has recently been diagnosed with a serious life-threatening health challenge. Instead of sitting in his recliner and bemoaning the end of his earthly life, he continues to play pickleball every week, and he has been talking to our pickleball group about giving pickleball lessons to some church members.

In a phone call this week, he said to me:

“Churches do a good job of teaching spiritual and mental aspects to its members, but they do a poor job of teaching the importance of developing physically and taking care of our bodies. Each life is a miracle of God. We need to help with this situation, and teaching pickleball is how we can do that. If children learn to play pickleball, they can play it for the rest of their lives.”

To the best of my ability, I am going to work with my pickleball colleagues to help Coach make this dream come true.

We will celebrate Coach Bill’s 90th birthday tomorrow! When I grow up, I want to be like Coach Bill Thornton.

Truism: Friendship

Friendship is stopping to listen when you have a lot to say.

Brakes

Our first home after getting married was a 47 feet long by 7 feet wide mobile home owned by a retired missionary couple. Yes, that is smaller than many recreational vehicles today. In an era long before “tiny homes,” we had a tiny trailer.

The retired missionaries from Nigeria called it their “doll house,” and it was parked in their back yard. Income from the rent for this trailer and another one in their backyard provided supplemental income to their meager retirement funds.

Our rented mobile home was located next to a very busy freight train track. Every time a train passed by the whole trailer would vibrate so much that we had to remove the only lamp we owned from the small table where it was perched or the vibrations from the train would cause the lamp to fall to the floor. Before going to sleep or when we left the trailer to go to school or work, we would remove the lamp from the table to keep it from crashing on the floor.

The 329 square feet included a tiny bedroom and bathroom and a kitchen open to the small living area. The bed was built into a corner of the bedroom and it was five feet long. Passage into the bedroom was between the foot of the bed and the wall, so that left less than two feet to walk into the bedroom. We were smaller then, but I was still six feet tall, so Cheryl would have to make up the bed leaving an extra foot of bed coverings folded in such a way that when I stretched out, I would not pull the covers down to our waists.

But this was our first home, and we began to use Cheryl’s gift of hospitality to host friends in our home. Our college friends loved to drop by to visit or to get a free meal.

 The trailer had a large towing tongue on the front of it. My best friend from college, Denny, owned an old 50s bright orange Nash Rambler sedan. We had some good times cruising through the small town in that old car, but it was not dependable in many respects. For example, it did not have a working emergency brake.

We knew Denny had arrived to visit us when we heard a loud noise and felt a rocking of the trailer. Our mobile home was on a slope, so Denny would have to bump his Nash up against the tow tongue of the trailer, and he usually misjudged the distance from the tongue to his bumper, so the Nash would give a big bump to the tongue.

Brakes are an important part of a vehicle. Likewise, God provided us with different kinds of brakes in our lives. Our intelligence brakes keep us from saying stupid things—sometimes! Those brakes help us to use correct and polite grammar. Although, I think today that some people have zero intelligence brakes as I hear such filthy language being spoken loudly by people who don’t care what other people think of their stupidity.

Our emotional brakes keep us from doing things that we know we should not be doing—like when someone cuts you off in traffic and makes you slow down and even run off the road. Our emotional brakes keep us from doing what we are thinking and wanting to do. These brakes also control our reactions. For example, I can cry over a sad story or movie or in thinking about how I miss family and friends who have passed away, but Cheryl rarely cries. She has deep emotions, but she and I just express them differently. She has power brakes, but I have to pump my manual emotional brakes to get them to work.

We have physical brakes, and some of us do not use them as wisely as others. Fact: as we age our bodies have declining capabilities. Supposition for me: I still feel like I have the physical stamina of a 50-year-old. So, when I am playing pickleball, I go for every shot like I was fifty instead of 75. That’s why I am doing physical therapy on my shoulder now, and that’s why I take an extra strength Tylenol before going to bed each night for my hip pain. I am working really hard on exercising my physical brakes to match my age so that I can keep my body in one piece for a few more years. Darn that competitiveness!

 God has provided us with spiritual brakes. In order to optimally exercise these brakes, we must know who is in control of our lives. Many people have forgotten that nothing happens by chance. God is in control, and He has a plan for every person on the face of the earth.

Failing to apply our spiritual brakes can result in a downward spiritual spiral bound for a collision. Sometimes God allows us to come to a collision in life to teach us how to apply our spiritual brakes in life choices and decisions.

I love what I Corinthians 1:25 says about how we rationalize that we are smart enough without God: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Top Ten

My friend, Ken, is my Bible study leader at church. He is always well prepared, and he really enjoys the prep work. Ken is a retired physician who plays a lot of golf, so he can tell some good medical and golf stories that illustrate the Bible study.  

Our Bible study lessons are from Genesis this quarter, and last week’s subject was Noah and the ark. Ken focused on how impatient the people on the boat were because they had to wait another two months after the water had receded and they landed on the Ararat Mountain range in eastern Turkey. Noah told them that God would reveal to them when the time to disembark from the ark would be, and in the meantime, they just had to be patient.

I can’t imagine the disappointment these people experienced after all they had been through with the persecution for years before the flood, being confined to a rudderless boat for many months and feeding all those animals! I don’t know about you, but if I had been on that boat, I could not have waited for the answers to a lot of questions that had come to my mind during the last 10 months of floating around and seeing only water. Questions like: “Where did we land?” “Is there anything alive out there?” “Is the whole world just a bunch of mud?”

Now this is what is called a quick transition in a short story: David Letterman was famous for his nightly Top Ten Lists. So, here’s my top ten list of times when I was the most impatient and prayed the most for patience.

10. I was 10 years old, and this particular day the list of boys who would move from minor league to Little League was going to be read out after practice. I was lousy in practice that day because I was praying hard to God to just make it happen. He was probably listening to me, but I did not move up until the next year. I think this is when I learned what stress was about.

9. I prayed for patience dozens of times as our family was in the customs lane entering a West African country. We had footlockers full of important stuff to us, and we knew that the customs officials could confiscate anything that they wanted to. The whole family was praying for patience for Dad because he was always stressed out having to deal with these officials.

8. Waiting to drive. When I was 13, I learned to drive in a 1953 International pickup with a guy named Frank who worked for my dad. Frank was not allowed to take me on the road, so I had to drive in the pasture. We did not have leaner’s permits back then, but we could get our driver’s license at age 15. Waiting for two years to get my license and drive on the road was like decades long. I can’t imagine the number of times that I complained about that to my parents, and I every time their reply was the same: “You are so impatient. You need to learn how to be patient.”

7. Airline agents at check-in. We were a family of six and a dog standing in front of the airline agent. On more than one occasion we had a dozen or more footlockers to check and the agents would always either roll their eyes or give a silent expression of disgust. I guess it was because they had to lift them on the conveyor belts. I hated hearing things like “this one is four pounds over the maximum weight allowed. You will have to remove something.” There in the airport, we had to repack some baggage because we were a measly four pounds overweight. Counting to 10 backwards did not help my stress level and my impatience with the agent’s lack of professionalism and patience was exacerbated by four kids tired of waiting in line.

6. Patience as a teenaged soldier had his finger on his automatic weapon as he pointed it towards my family. Gendarmerie in West Africa loved to put a couple barrels or some pieces of wood across the road so that you had to stop and let them examine your car registration and personal ID. This was so annoying as these soldiers would be lounging around in the shade of a mango tree with nothing else to do but hassle drivers. They were always heavily armed, and they treated their weapons like an extension of their index finger while trying to find something wrong with your papers or vehicle so they might get a bribe out of you. Lots of patience exhibited hundreds of times when we were stopped because I wanted to tell them not to point their guns at my family, but I knew better.

5. Building a house. We have built three houses, and if you have built a house then you know how much patience you need with your contractor. The last two houses that we have built have been in the last 16 years, and both times the contractor was a friend of mine from our church before we ever started the construction. I am proud to say that both men are still my good friends. But that does not mean that I did not get impatient—not so much with them but with the sub-contractors. I am not friends with any of them!

4. When our two-year-old and three-year-old boys had to have all kinds of vaccinations for us to go live in France and West Africa. We were worried about what our boys had to go through for Cheryl and me to be obedient to God to go and serve Him in faraway places. They were absolute troopers about getting those injections, but I was impatient with the process that demanded that our infants have to suffer for our calling.

3. Dealing with a kerosene refrigerator. Most people will not understand this because they did not know such a thing exists. To maintain a temperature of about 65-68 degrees inside our kerosene refrigerator, the wick had to be trimmed perfectly to produce the blue flame needed for maximum service. No, that was not a typo. The average inside the house temperature was in the low nineties, so a refrigerator temperature 30 degrees lower is about the same as your electric stainless French doored refrigerator maintains in your home today.

2. Waiting to hear if you have cancer. As we waited for the lab and scan results for confirmation of cancer, both times we were told that we would get a call to tell us the results of the lab and scan work. Both times a nurse called us and said that I would have to come to the office to talk with the doctor about the results. In your heart you know that you have cancer, or they would not have asked you to return to the doctor’s office. But the wait for two more weeks to pass was a very stressful time, and my diligent prayers for patience were passed to the Heavenly Father several times a day.

1. When our children have experienced traumatic illnesses. Our daughter, Amanda, was only a couple weeks old. She was born with a midwife at a clinic in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. Soon after her birth she became very ill. We were concerned that we were going to lose her, and I became so impatient with God because He was not healing her. He did, regardless of my unbelief because of my impatience. We learned a lot during this illness. We have had other major medical challenges with our children including two of them fighting cancer, but God made us realize that our children are not our own. They belong to God, and He has given them to us to parent and steward. This released us from being impatient to see God work in our children when they have health struggles.

Even with all the dangerous circumstances in the world today, including health challenges, violence, and evil, we should continue to confidently trust in God’s powerful protection over us and those we care for.

Snakes

I am not afraid of snakes, but I have much respect for them. Through the years I have learned to tell the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes. My wife does not enjoy a walk in the woods during any season as she is afraid of snakes. If she finds herself in an area that even looks snaky, then she will stomp her feet as she walks. She says that snakes feel the vibrations and flee. That sounds like an “old husband’s tale” to me!

She has been known to say, “The only good snake is a dead snake.” One of those occasions was when a rat snake swallowed a baby duck just a few feet from Cheryl and two-year-old Caleb. I was not at home, so she called across the way to our neighbor who was tending to his chickens. He came with his snake stick that would allow him to capture the snake alive. Cheryl told him that she did not want him to catch it, but she wanted him to kill it. But he was not agreeable as he and his wife were vegans who did not believe in killing any animal.

Our family has encountered snakes many times over the years in different countries from spitting cobras in eastern Burkina Faso to snake charmers in Marrakech.

There is an adage that snakes travel in pairs, and those who study snakes say that it is not true. However, we killed a sand viper on our back screened-in porch in the bush of Burkina Faso and the next day another one appeared at the back door. One of our colleagues was bitten by a sand viper on the wrist. We often slept outside on cots because the heat was so stifling. Our colleague was reaching for his flashlight on the ground when the viper bit him. If we had not stored an anti-venom in our kerosene refrigerator, he would have been seriously ill. His entire arm was swollen and discolored for two months after the bite.

John Hill was the “river rat” who taught me so much about plumbing, electricity, welding, and other skills. Once when the Mississippi River was flooded and water backed up in its tributaries so that islands were formed where the land was more elevated, we were hunting rabbits. Mr. Hill and I would approach one end of the island in his hand-made flat-bottomed wooden boat and walk through the brush to flush the rabbits. One day as I was stepping over a log, Mr. Hill fired his shotgun and it hit just under my foot. On the other side of the log was a rattlesnake. That shotgun blast scared the “you know what” out of me, but it probably saved my life.

While living on our farm here in north Georgia, I had a running battle with snakes. The poisonous ones by and large left us and our animals alone. There were occasions when we were threatened by rattlesnakes or copperheads, but most of them were when we were the aggressors in trying to get them off our porch or removing them from the road—in a permanent sort of way. The biggest problems were with the king snakes and rat snakes. Both are predators and they love chicken and duck eggs, and adults can swallow baby ducks and chicks. However, I liked having them around as they thrive on mice and rats that love to inhabit barns and eat animal feed.

Therein was our problem on the farm. I could not bring myself to kill them as they were beneficial to keeping rodents away from my barns. I tried catching them and transporting them a mile of so down the road, but I learned that they are very territorial, so they would return to our farm.

One day Collin and one of his friends were helping me with chores at the barns. His friend went with me to check out a duck nest in a small goat barn. As we rounded the corner there was a huge rat snake with a large lump in its body just behind the head. It had begun to swallow one of my duck eggs. With one foot I held the snake still while with the other foot I massaged the snake in front of the passage of the egg until I backed the egg out of the snake’s mouth. Then I continued to gently massage the egg until it was expelled from the snake’s mouth unbroken. I placed the egg back in the nest. The mother duck sat quietly on her nest during this altercation. This snake made me mad, so I hauled it off three miles hoping never to see it again.

Snakes played an important role in the religious traditions of Canaanites, Egyptians, Greeks, and Mesopotamians, and they are mentioned over 80 times in the Bible. They are almost always associated with poison or craftiness beginning with the Garden of Eden and culminating in Revelation as “the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan.” (Revelation 12:9)

Today, we use a lot of metaphors and examples of snakes including “a snake in the grass;” “cold-blooded as a snake;” “snake eyes;” and “if it was a snake, it would have bitten you.”

During our service in other countries over the last four decades, Matthew 10:16 has been particularly important to me as we served in some countries that do not welcome foreigners coming to tell their people about Jesus. “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”  

The House Is Dying

As a child I barely remember my great grandmother, but I do remember how old she looked to me as a boy. With wrinkled skin, bruised arms and hands, thin white hair, she was confined to a wheelchair. That was my first time to be around a wheelchair, and I wanted to push “Grandma” around more than she wanted to be pushed around.

A flash of time and thousands of memories later, my mother looks like my memories of my great grandmother. Like Grandma, she is in her nineties—she will be 94 in two weeks. She is only able to sit up less than an hour per day. Her health has rapidly declined after several falls due to atrial fibrillation attacks six weeks ago. Before these attacks, she was mobile with a walker, but now she will never walk again. She is in a skilled nursing rehab unit at a nursing home, but in the last few days she has been unable to do rehab.

She loves the Lord and is prepared to meet Him in heaven. As I think about losing her from this earth, my mind and heart are full of memories. My mother’s house has been empty for two years. We all know that after a period of time when no one lives in a house, it starts to “die.”

The time has come to make dreaded decisions, and my two brothers and I just made a big one this week.

We will sell my mother’s house. We have agreed that we will not tell our mother what we are doing, and we will ask others who might talk with her not to mention the sale of the house. We are fearful that if she learns about the sale of the house that she will just give up—and that is not what we want.

This weekend the three brothers will meet at our parents’ old house to begin cleaning out. We will start with the most dreaded places to clean out—my dad’s shop and storage building. It is full of memories, but most of the things in there are of no value to anyone else, so we will be hauling much of the stuff to dumpsters.

It will be a sad time, but it will also be a good time for my brothers and me as we clean out so much of Pete’s “stuff” and tell Pete stories.

Of course, there will be a bunch of stuff that we cannot throw away, so we will probably be hauling home some items that our kids will ask: “Why did you bring these things home? Where are you going to put them?” Then, there will be a few things that Mimi and Pete’s grandchildren will lay claim to and might even argue about who is going to get this or that.

Even with beginning the cleanout in the shop and shed, my brothers are going to be fussing at me as I am a sentimentalist about old things—especially those that belonged to my parents or other family members. My dad prepared a handwritten list of things in their house and who he and my mom wanted to inherit those items. An old Singer sewing machine that belonged to my great aunt is one of the things that they wanted me to have. It has so much sentimental value, but what are we going to do with it? Our house is full of stuff already. And then there is the chifforobe that belonged to my grandmother. And the old clock that belonged to my granddad. Well, I love old clocks, so I can definitely make room for that one. I am hoping that some of our kids or my brothers’ kids are going to help us by taking some of the stuff.

As I think about the things that my parents are leaving behind, I am reminded of what I am going to leave behind. The financial resources, our house, our “things” and all that stuff is not what I am most interested in leaving to my children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, so many families fight battles over the valuables that a loved one leaves behind.

We put too much importance on the valuables that we will leave behind and less worth on the values that we will leave to our loved ones.

An inheritance is what you leave for someone. A legacy is what you leave in someone.

From 2 to 1

A kidney packed in a cardboard box! The box contained a plain old Styrofoam cooler containing our granddaughter Shelby’s left kidney. Medical staff transported the boxed kidney to the Atlanta airport where it was placed on a Delta flight to Seattle.

Our family has learned a lot about transplants during this experience, and one of those things is that when a commercial aircraft has a transplant organ on board, that plane has priority to depart. That’s a big thing at Atlanta’s airport—the busiest airport in the world.

Shelby’s surgery was faster than we expected. After an hour and a half of waiting, Jeremy, Cheryl, and I went for coffee and tea at Panera’s near the surgery waiting room. Just as we were served, Kimberly called to tell us that the surgery was finished, and Shelby was being moved to recovery. We had expected the surgery to take longer, but we were relieved that it was over.

Our prayer attention turned to the safe delivery of the kidney to the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, and to Maggi as she was preparing for her surgery.

After a short stay in the recovery room, Shelby was moved to a regular room. When Shelby was being prepped for surgery, she posed for a photo holding up 2 fingers. After she was moved from recovery to a regular room, she posed for another photo holding up one finger. Shelby posted the two photos on social media with the caption “From 2 kidneys to 1.” Shelby had a huge smile on her face in each of the photos.

Shelby’s parents were in regular contact with Maggi’s family, so we were notified later that afternoon when they began to get Maggi ready for surgery. Thus, we knew that the kidney had safely arrived.

Finally, ten hours after Shelby’s surgery, Maggi’s surgery began. Her time in surgery was much longer, but the great news that was relayed to us was that Shelby’s kidney began to fully function even before the surgical team began to sew Maggi up. We were elated to hear this report and we all praised the Lord for this whole experience.

Shelby was able to go home on Thursday. Maggi will be in the hospital for 2 more days. As predicted, the first 24 hours for Maggi would be fairly easy, but the next 48 hours would be rough with a lot of pain to manage. The prayers of many people are sustaining Maggi with her new kidney and helping Shelby heal, and these prayers will continue to cover Maggi as her body fully accepts the new organ.

This whole experience has been one to remind us of how God ordains people to be in the right place and at the right time. He brought Shelby and Maggi together in London 17 years ago knowing that Maggi would need a kidney and knowing that Shelby would be obedient to Him in her willingness to give a kidney and new life to Maggi.

Isn’t it great how God designed our bodies with two kidneys? It is like God knew that a few people would at some point in time want to be generous enough to donate a kidney to someone in need.