Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV)
I received a phone call last night from one of my father's oldest friends and one he had lost touch with. He had read my father's obituary in the newspaper in our home state. He searched out my phone number and called to give his condolences. We had met only one time before in a chance encounter when I had been working just out of college and he came to make a repair call on a piece of equipment at my place of employment. As we talked, he recognized my last name and I recognized his name and he asked if I was the daughter of his old friend. I assured him I was and we talked briefly then making connection with a face to the name of my father's boyhood friend. They had grown up across the street from one another from the time they were about 4 years old until they both joined the military during Viet Nam. They were true friends. They played together and got in trouble together.
My father had told me stories of their growing up together but it was so nice to hear the stories from the other point of view and how similarly they synced up. My father's friend told me how they were in cub scouts together and would ride their bicycles everywhere. He even told me how they joined the military together.
He remembered having backyard barbecues with his family and inviting my father and grandmother over, as she was a single parent by then, and she would make "Orange Chicken" a recipe he could never get quite right all these years. I gave him the "secret" ingredient and it felt like my grandmother would approve. I told him that my father had lung cancer with metastatic brain cancer and that near the end of his life he tried to reach out to his old friends he had lost touch with. Friendship and leaving a legacy were all that seemed to matter to my father in the end. He would have really enjoyed the conversation with his friend, but I know God Orchestrates everything for a reason and perhaps that conversation was for me or for his friend. Only The Lord knows for sure.
While my father and his friend went to different churches growing up, it was evident in our conversation we both had a deep faith and he was so very happy to know our family had the blessed assurance that my father was with the Lord. We ended our conversation with him saying a prayer for me, my family and the knowledge that my father was now in heaven with Jesus where he suffered no more.
One thing I have learned through loving my father through his dying process is to not wait, Love Each Day Without Regrets. Life is too short and you never know when you go to make that phone call if the person will be there to take it. Make the call today. Tell the person you love today. Take the time to go to lunch with the friend today. Do the thing you have been putting off today.
"but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said: 'Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.'" Hebrews 3:13-16
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