Our daughters have been wonderful to me, and have helped me in both physical and spiritual ways. They have called and checked in and made themselves available to help. Karina, who lives 1,000 miles away, has done a lot to organize and simplify our finances—everything from autopay to paperless billing to helping with taxes. Angela has often picked up groceries for me and dropped by meals and helped around the house. I consider our sons in law, “the Dans,” to be good friends, and I am encouraged by their wonderful care for my daughters and grandchildren. My grandsons have helped me mostly by just being who they are and sharing their lives with me when I’m at their homes and games, and by Facetime, videos, and texts. We are soon going to all gather for six days, the middle of which falls on the one-year anniversary of Nanci’s going to be with Jesus. I just can’t wait for all of us to be together!
Regarding our church, as I said at Nanci‘s memorial service, with all the people who hate the church these days and have terrible stories about church people, I can never resent the church but only appreciate it because of what I witnessed in the last years and months of Nanci’s life. People brought meals, prayed, visited her, massaged her hands and feet, and spent the night at our house to help care for her. I can only love the church because of what it has done for my dear wife. I saw the same kind of care for my mother when she was dying in 1981. I have never forgotten the four nurses from our church who were with her nearly day and night.
Our little group of three couples—Steve and Sue Keels, Paul and Michele Norquist, Nanci and I—ate together at the Keels’ house nearly every Thursday for twenty-some years, enjoying Sue’s wonderful meals. In the last three years we’ve shared many tears, after Jason, Steve and Sue’s son, died the day after Thanksgiving in 2019. Then Michele died January 1, 2022, and Nanci on March 28, 2022. Sue still fixes dinner for Paul, Steve, and me on Thursdays, though the six of us have been reduced to four. To show how this small circle connects with suffering, loss, and grief, consider that of the four of us still here, two have lost their son, and the other two have lost our wives.
If you don’t have them, take the initiative to make those kinds of friends. Hold on to them. Live beside them. Walk the valley of the shadow of death with them. We need each other. I thank God for my church, my family, my friends, my small group, for Him, and for His promises which guarantee I’ll never walk that valley alone.
