i made a long drive to southern indiana this past week. the dad of the guy who introduced me to Jesus had passed away and i thought it would be a great opportunity to see their whole family... and tell them i love them all.
ian and i had a great drive down... talking... watching movies (he watched, i listened)... listening to music. it was nice to be together... and especially nice of him to come since he didn't know these people at all.
we arrived a little later than we had hoped... and since darryl was a teacher and principal for many years... i knew there'd be a long line. there was. but as we entered the large room where family and friends gathered... it gave me a chance to see the stults family and figure out who was who. it had been a long long time. certainly i've changed over the 20 or so years... but surprisingly... they were much the same.
to be honest... the whole thing caught me off guard a little bit. more memories... more emotion flooded my soul than i anticipated. the memory of the impact each member of this family had made in my life had faded a bit... but seeing the slideshow of old family pics took me back to earlier days. i guess that's exactly what it's supposed to do.
their son, gary, was their youngest. a fellow architecture major with me at ball state in muncie. i don't know how to describe him but to say that... he was different. there was just something about gary that locked me to him... he was unlike any person i'd met in my life. and over the weeks and months i began to realize that much of the difference was because he was in love with Jesus.
and late one night in the architecture building... while we worked on one of the many projects that first year... we took a break and headed down to the fourth floor for a snack. and there among the vending machines... he told me about Jesus.
nothing was ever the same for me after that.
gary and i were supposed to become roommates our second year... but i took a side road and decided to take a year off to head to bible college before i would return... which i never did. and in a tragic turn of events... gary died that year in a diabetic coma. i try not to let my mind drift to the possibility that if i hadn't have left... and he hadn't been living alone... if maybe somehow i could have made a difference in his life... like he had made in mine. but...
at his dad's funeral home... i revisited the trips to his house... remembering his parents giggling in the backseat of the car while gary and i drove them to a local restaurant for dinner. theirs was the first healthy family i remember knowing... or observing from less than a distance. their faith... their love. they all were... are... gifts to me.
after the visitation... i drove ian to the house where they used to live. i can still remember the first visit there... and also returning for gary's funeral. his was the first funeral for a Christ-follower that i had experienced. his was the first time i truly experienced the reality of peace that only comes with knowing that a friend you love is gone... and yet, not so far away. i look forward to seeing him again more than i can express... even after all these years.
we only had a few minutes with the family. but those minutes helped me remember the goodness of G*D... heaped on me through some wonderful people. and i'm glad i got to share it with my son. in reality he's a product of them too.
who knows what my life would be like today without their subtle, but powerful touch on my life.