A friend who was family

A little more than a week ago, I lost a best friend. 

When I spoke at her memorial service, I quoted Proverbs 18:24: “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” But I told the crowd that had gathered in the service what the verse meant to me: “There is a friend who feels as close as a sister.” 

Sheila Cook was that kind of friend to me. 

When she passed away, I lost a sister, but only for a time. 

Genuine friendship is a great gift 

Sheila was married to the long-time, now retired, president of Dallas Baptist University. I am married to a man who is also well-known in many circles. People often saw Sheila and me as the “wives of” more than they saw us as the people we are individually. 

And that was fine! We had and have every reason to be proud of our last names and the men who gave them to us. But Sheila and I knew each other as the people God made us to be. We had a genuine friendship that was born from two people who understood our positions and then gave one another permission to be ourselves too. That made her friendship a great privilege to me. 

I loved Sheila not just for her gracious ability to treat others well and truly care about them. I loved Sheila for her unique laughter, for her unlikely sense of humor, and for her willingness to let me know her as a person, not just a persona. We shared that kind of friendship, and we both felt blessed by God for his kind gift. 

Too soon, Lord 

Sheila went into the hospital to have a surgery that she hoped would give her more energy and more air in her lungs. I didn’t want her to have it and told her that her friends would be glad to adjust our lives to whatever she was able to do. When she was still in surgery, long after she was supposed to be, I began praying. 

There were complications, and a LOT of God’s people began praying for her and her family. But she didn’t get better and passed away. 

I had been praying, knowing what God could do, but I also asked the Spirit to guide my prayers to want whatever God planned to do. When I heard she was gone, I was still unprepared for the feelings that followed. 

Grief is a strange weight that we carry through the day as we walk past people who are just fine. Grief is an ache we keep to ourselves among people who have no reason to understand. Grief can really only be shared with people who are feeling it as well. 

God is enough 

I was driving around town doing my errands. It’s kind of surreal to do the normal things of life when nothing feels normal in our hearts. That day a song came on the radio that I hope you will take time to listen to.  

When I heard the song, I thought of Sheila. In fact, if Sheila could have sent me a message, it would have been this song. Sheila’s great gift from God was her ability to enjoy people and care about their needs. She loved to encourage others. She loved to bring gifts to people she cared about, hoping to help them throughout a happy, important, or tough moment in life. She was a caregiver, and she was a delight to the people who were blessed to call her a friend. 

The song I heard that day was “That’s Enough” by Brandon Heath. As I sat and listened to the words, I knew that I would give it to all of you. The chorus of the song is: “I am here. I am loved. God is good, and that’s enough.”

The song is about living with a sensitivity toward the people who surround us every day. The song is about being the person God can use to be his voice of hope or his arms of goodness and love. People need the Lord and deserve to know they are loved. That’s who Sheila was in my life.  

I am forever blessed by her friendship. Now, I am forever called to honor her memory by treating others with the compassion and love that I have been privileged to receive. 

That’s enough 

I hope you will take the time to watch the video of “That’s Enough” all the way to the end. There is a line printed at the end of the song that would be the words Sheila would tell us: “Be kind. For some you meet are fighting an unseen battle.” 

The apostle Peter wrote to his church, and to us, saying, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Every person you meet today has sinned and will sin again. None of us are perfect until we are perfected in heaven. But we can offer the love of God to others and be good friends to those God brings into our lives for that purpose.  

We don’t love others because they are perfect, we love others because they are not. Genuine love sees the person as they are and loves them anyway. That is a friend who will stick closer than a brother, a friend who will be a sister. 

God is good, and that’s enough 

I may never have the opportunity to know you this side of heaven. But, if you and I are saved by Christ, we are part of an amazing family of brothers and sisters. We are here for now. And we are loved. God is always good. And God is always enough. 

I will miss Sheila more than I know. At the same time, I smile often as I hear her voice in my heart. The day I heard the song, I had to dry my eyes and wipe away the mascara that I had cried off. I wondered how I would get through my tribute at her memorial service. 

I heard Sheila say to my heart, “Waterproof mascara. You don’t want to look like a raccoon up there!” Then I heard her unique laughter and found myself laughing and crying all at the same time. That was exactly what Sheila would have said! Sheila and I could say anything to one another because we knew it was said in love. 

Above all . . . 

Above all, let’s live like Peter taught us and Brandon Heath’s song encourages. Let’s walk through this world aware that some are fighting an unseen battle and give God permission to enlist us to help. 

Let’s live like Sheila did, with a genuine, heartfelt appreciation for others just as they are. 

Whatever else you might need to hear today, hear this: God knows right where you are and you are loved. God is good, and that’s always enough. 

We have the promise of an eternity to be friends, to be family. We can share that gift with as many as we can, right now.

The Painted Churches of Texas

Jim and I spent last week driving through small towns in Texas that I had never heard of. The wildflowers were beautiful, the cows were numerous, and the temperature was more like July than May. I had always wanted to visit the Painted Churches of Texas. 

German and Czech immigrants began arriving in Texas in the 1840s. They settled in the lands outside of Austin and began farming, ranching, and working in other related industries. The immigrants were mostly Catholic believers and wanted to attend a church that felt familiar, which meant they needed to build their own churches on Texas soil. 

The Painted Churches still stand

These Texas churches were built to look like small but grand European churches. The pillars are often painted to look like marble, the windows are made of stained glass, and the altars are ornate and beautiful. The walls and ceilings are filled with murals depicting their homeland and scenes from the Bible. Their statues, confessionals, and lighting were surprisingly decorative and not typical of the average rural Texas church. 

Jim and I had a wonderful road trip to towns we had never visited to see these churches. My takeaway from the time we spent was this: our heavenly family will be vastly different than the typical church families on earth. 

The communities of the Painted Churches have dwindled in size, but the churches still stand. The congregations still worship at the same altars where many of their ancestors worshiped. A timeless thread of family is woven into each of those churches, evident in the historic graveyards located just outside of the walls. It was surprising how many of the people we spoke with had always lived in that one small town and attended the same rural church for their entire lives. 

The church is their family history, and they want it to be their children’s history too.  

Generational faith

God created the whole idea of a family as the ideal way to live our lives on earth. Adam and Eve created a family. Abraham was told he would be the “father” of many nations. The Holy Land was divided into sections for each family. Jesus called God Abba and called us his brothers and sisters. 

It seems like God intended the family to be the strongest of our earthly relationships. That said, we don’t have to look past Adam’s family to see that families can also have their struggles. Every family member has a unique personality and a free will to make their choices.  

That is true for our earthly family and our church family. The “Painted Churches of Texas” were a reminder of how uniquely diverse our eternal family is going to be in heaven. 

I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to live in one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone and many are related to the people they know. The trains still run through the center of town and there is one small grocery store. It’s obvious that there is not a lot of wealth, but it’s equally obvious that people enjoy a comfortable life. 

We were often asked where we were from. When we said Dallas, people shook their heads and spoke of the big crowds and rush-hour traffic. They can’t imagine living in a big city—and I feel much the same way about their way of life in their small towns. 

Different ways of worshiping the same God

There are a lot of people who worship God on Sundays that I will probably never sit next to in a pew. We live in different places, worship in different ways, and don’t have very much in common to discuss. But we share a great love for our Lord. We are a diverse family, but we are family. One day we will worship together eternally, as a family of faith.  

The Ephesian church family was both Jewish and Gentile. Some were wealthy merchants while others served as slaves. Some of the women had come to the church out of temple prostitution while others came from wealthy Roman families. Some would have been dressed in fine linen and others in beggars’ rags. Ephesus was likely the most diverse Christian church in Scripture. 

Paul wrote to this church saying, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14–19).  

Paul understood that for the church in Ephesus to thrive amid diversity, the Christians would need to be strengthened by the Spirit and live grounded in their love of Christ. Their unity in diversity was a loud witness to the Roman culture. Our world needs that same witness today.  

A God appointment

The first of the Painted Churches we visited had a beautiful cemetery nearby. It was still the cool of the morning, so we walked through it reading the historical markers and the family names. We passed by a grave that still held the flowers and wreath from a recent funeral. 

I looked at the tombstone and noticed the two names. The husband had passed away and his wife was now a widow. I found myself praying for her by name and for her family, knowing they would be grieving. 

The fourth church we visited had a small gift shop nearby, so we went in. I struck up a conversation with a woman there who asked if we had been by her home church. It was that first church we had visited. When I told her I had, she said she had just been there last week for her brother’s funeral. 

I looked at her and asked, “Is Ronnie your sister-in-law?” 

She looked startled and quietly said yes. 

I explained that I had seen a fresh grave in the cemetery, then told her that I had prayed for her earlier that morning and was glad to meet her. We spoke a little longer and I left. 

I will probably never see her again this side of heaven, but I enjoyed meeting my new “sister” in that small Texas town. She is family and it was a blessing to meet her and talk to her. I was glad God had set up our appointment with one another.  

The best witness we can share with the world is the unity that our faith provides. People usually want to be part of a family, and we can invite them to be part of God’s family of faith. It is a powerful answer to the diversity and adversity our world is feeling right now. 

Whom will the Spirit lead you toward this week? We all have God appointments to keep and those moments are our great blessings. 

Will you pray Paul’s prayer today and then live led by God’s answers? God’s blessings are often tied to the appointments his Spirit leads us to keep each day. 

Family was always God’s plan, now and eternally. So, to all my brothers and sisters in Christ, enjoy this week as you serve God’s purpose in your life. 

I will see you all . . . someday.