My Takeaway from Losing Two Friends
My Takeaway from Losing Two Friends
We’ve all been handed a death sentence. Do the thing you have been putting off.
It happened again.
A friend’s wife contacted me this week to tell me her husband had passed away the night before.
Ken and I weren’t the kind of friends who spoke every day or even every week. In fact, the last time I saw him was 2017. But we had the type of friendship that picked up where we left off, no matter how long it had been.
I met Ken in church more than twenty years ago. He offered to lead a small group of entrepreneurs and encouraged me to attend. We read through two or three books and discussed the contents. The contents were great, but I was more impressed by Ken. He’d been in business for himself for quite some time but still had a heart for people who were at the beginning of the journey.
That was me. I’d left a job at a bank and had jumped into freelance writing. Early on, he helped me to think about my writing in a comprehensive way – as both a business and a ministry. Over the years, whenever I got stuck, I’d reach out and he’d invite me over. We’d spend several hours hashing out my options in his conference room.
We easily blended the line between work and friendship though. We once talked through an issue that was important to him based on a scripture passage he had been chewing on. The more personal we got, the more he became my informal mentor as well as friend. He was knowledgeable, wise and humble. Even though he was farther down the path than me, his default setting was gentleness.
As a fellow tennis nut, we would text each other during the Majors to get each other’s take on what we saw. During the historic Isner-Mahut Wimbledon match in 2010, we texted back and forth in euphoric tennis bliss, unable to believe what we were seeing. When his son took up the game, I started going to watch him play in tournaments. Then his youngest daughter started playing, and I showed up for that too.
One Christmas Eve, he asked me if I had any plans. After my grandparents died, I no longer had anything going on for Christmas Eve. He invited me to spend it with his family who was so accepting of me. They asked me questions about my life and really took an interest. I probably way overstayed my welcome, leaving around 11:00 or 12:00 o’clock that night, but their kindness kept me glued to my seat.
Ken once suggested we meet in a cigar bar. When I walked in, I felt like C. S. Lewis and his Inklings in the Eagle and Child, meeting to discuss weighty matters. I’d never been in a cigar bar, so weighty matters had to be put on hold while Ken taught me how to trim and light a cigar. I probably let it burn more than I actually smoked it, but we did finally get down to the business of conversation.
Ken taught me a lot of important lessons over the years. A couple of them will always stick with me.
First, he wasn’t big on looking for people to mentor. If he approached a guy first, he figured the guy’s passion would often fizzle rather quickly (or maybe never even ignite in the first place). He probably learned that from experience. Instead, he waited for guys to express a need. He knew they were ready at that point.
Second, he taught me to think independently. True to his nature, he had a gentle demeanor as he thought through a topic. He gave people who were on the other side of the argument credit and/or the benefit of the doubt, while also explaining why he disagreed. This was so helpful for me as a young Christian. Since then, I’ve found myself in the minority view fairly often, and I can hear Ken’s gentle approach in my ear every time.
We’ve all been handed a death sentence. Time is short. Do the thing you have been putting off. Mentor the person who has asked for help. Disciple the new Christian. Make amends. Take the road trip you’ve been talking about for years. Write the book. Start the business. Answer the call.
Here are some tidbits you might find interesting this week:
In the spirit of honoring Ken, I give you this article from Sarah E. Westfall about gentleness not being a liability.
If you are of a certain age, like me, you remember the days when your landline had a phone cord that stretched from the kitchen, through the house, out the backdoor, and into the alleyway. I’m only slightly exaggerating. This story will bring back warm memories from that era with a modern twist at the end.
Passionate about literature, adventurous, outgoing, creative and happy to stay shoeless? Kunfunadhoo has the perfect job: running a bookshop on a luxury desert island in the Maldives.
I’m not sure why, but I feel compelled to share a link to last week’s newsletter: Take a Sunday Drive.
Need the antidote to falsely believing God has forgotten you? Check this out.
When Lee isn’t writing essays, devotional books, or Christmas novellas, he is a freelance editor, as well as a freelance journalist who has written hundreds of articles for various newspapers and magazines. He’s also a fan of NASCAR, baseball, tennis, books, movies and coffee shops.
Beautifully shared! I’m a tennis nut too (my husband played college tennis at UGA long before Isner but we got to meet him once at an alumni event- nice guy!), and your stories made me think how I miss talking about matches w my dad, who taught me to play, and with whom I played until two years before he died at 83.