A Grief Observed

They were both dear friends.  I'd known Bud for a little over two years.  Mark, for only two months.  Bud was 80, and his death was not unexpected given the extent of his cancer.  Mark was only 56, and none of us were ready for him to die.

I met Bud and his wife Bev after Bev's single car accident on hwy 285.  She had apparently blacked out on the road and ended up in a drainage ditch - disoriented and unaware of how close she'd come to death herself that day.  I drove her home, met Bud (who I immediately liked) and decided that this "chance" encounter was arranged from above.  For the past two years I've visited them on their 40 acre spread every other week or so to fill up their firewood shed, fix a tractor tire, unclog the fish pond drain - whatever needed doing.  Or we would just sit and chat over a bottle of Coors (Bud had been a career Coors employee).  Bud was in poor health when I met him - multiple cancers, knees that had long since given out after 30+ years of climbing on and off of Coors trains... a shadow of the larger-than-life man he'd once been.  After several weeks of emergency room visits and hospital stays, Bud seemed to just give up.  I was with him on the Friday that the hospice staff arrived.  On Monday morning the hospice nurse went in to check on him and her eyes were drawn to the window by a pre-dawn shooting star streaking across the sky.  When she turned back to Bud, he was gone.  Bev wants the service to be held at the Kingdom Hall, since she is a devout Jehovah's witness.  The only date the elder could give her was this coming Saturday-  three weeks after Bud's death, and while I am out of the country for a crisis management training.  No family members allowed to speak, no music, no slideshow.  I offered the daughters the use of the country store to hold their own service for family and close friends, and to plan it the way they wanted.  They agreed, and we arranged it for yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. 
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Mark and Jaime started coming to our weekly meetings down in Bailey two months ago.  Their daughter Missy invited them, and even though they live here in Conifer they came to our Wednesday evening service with her... and just kept coming back.  Mark has been my right-hand man in planning the new floor in the store.  He drew the floor plans up himself,  and on his own contacted Home Depot to challenge them to help us with donated lumber and materials.  We worked, and painted, and fixed stuff together - and all this while they're in the middle of building an addition on their own home!   In a very short time I grew to love both Mark and Jaime; it doesn't take long to build a friendship when you share a common heart and the same vision.
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Yesterday I was on my way to church the phone call came:  Mark, my new friend, had died during the night.  What??  That's not possible!  He wasn't even sick!  There must be some mistake!  I turned around and raced to their house.  Jamie and the kids were all in a state of shock.  Oh my God - this can't be happening!  We had so much to do together, and Mark was such an integral part of everything.  What in the world will I do without him?  What will Jaime and Missy and her brothers do without him?  In one night their entire lives are turned upside down - and with no time to prepare for life without Husband, and Dad, and Grandpa.  We wept, and wept, and wept.  What words can a pastor possibly give at such a time as this?  My own grief after losing a second, dear friend left me emotionally numb.

Sometime in the blur of yesterday morning I remembered that I had a memorial service to do for Bud at 2 pm.  I left Jaime and the family and drove back to Bailey, and with the help of two wonderful friends got the room cleaned up and ready just about the time Bud's family started arriving.  Only then did it hit me that I hadn't prepared ANYTHING to say, and I'm supposed to lead the service.  I prayed a quick SOS prayer, got up in front and totally winged it.  God must have somehow made sense of the nonsense that came out of my mouth, because they all said it was wonderful. 

Now, this morning, the reality of yesterday's events is beginning to hit me.  Daph and I are heading back over to visit with Jaime and Missy and the family, then she'll drive me to the airport for my flight to Frankfurt.  This is going to be an interesting week.

Makeup on a Redneck Woman

Before

During 

We're moving ahead with our plans for the Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost Coffee House.  We have almost all our paperwork ready to submit for our remodel permit, and then (by faith) we'll be off.  I managed to convince the building inspector to allow us to paint the exterior of the building (he wasn't going to allow us to do anything on the building at all until we have our remodel permit) because we wanted to give the high school kids a community service project to do for Kindness Day.  20 kids showed up, and we painted the whole lower part of the outside of the building... and what a difference a coat of paint makes!  A couple of other men and I finished up the upstairs paint job a few days later, but the old lady kinda looks good!  I told the guys when we were painting the upper part that it felt like putting makeup on a Redneck woman.. but hey, when you need it, use it!  The final effect
is pretty impressive.  We've already had people come by to shop, thinking that we're open.

This whole adventure of starting a country store and coffee house has proven to be one of the biggest faith challenges I've ever faced.  I thought we were living by faith the whole time we were serving overseas, but now that I look back on those years I realize we weren't really living by faith at all.  We had a team of very faithful supporters, and for 20 years we honestly never lacked a thing.  Fund raising was always a challenge, but God was

Painting the letters for the new store sign

faithful and our staff account was never in deficit even once during all those years.  Those days of relative financial security are long gone however, and we find ourselves trusting God on a daily basis to provide not only for our own financial needs, but for the funding to complete the renovation of the store, stock it with groceries, pay the bills etc.  There's a principle here that I am only now beginning to understand: as long as we had a healthy bank balance and plenty of financial support,  I never really gave much thought to trusting God.  Now we're forced to trust Him on a daily basis, and this reality has pushed us far beyond the edge of our comfort zone.  But out here in the "trust zone" we're learning that God is always faithful and always has our back.  As Christians we will always pray things like, "Lord, help me to trust you more" - not realizing, of course, that He will do just that!  So my prayer has changed to, "Lord, help me to REST in your promises today no matter what may happen because you are always trustworthy." 

The final effect.  We only need to add the sign for the Sasquatch Outpost coffee house