Loving Joan was not optional. She was eminently lovable. I preached in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, for a decade and could count on Joan and Joel (or, “Joe,” as she called him) to be sitting up front cheering me on every time the doors opened. Joan cheered everybody on.
It was sad to hear that Joan died last week at eighty years young after a heck of a fight with cancer. But it would be a discredit to her memory to linger in sadness.
Joan was no stranger to challenges. Before my time in Mississippi, she lost her son in a tragic car accident. During my time in Mississippi, she encountered the American law of eminent domain when the government decided to put a highway through the house she and Joel intended to inhabit for the rest of their retirement years. After my time in Mississippi, her “Joe” contracted Parkinson’s Disease. And then there was the cancer.
But Joan never let a challenge dampen her positive attitude. She often quoted a line from an old sermon that she accepted as a life approach: Don’t let anyone steal your joy. Joan spent her life giving to others, but she jealously guarded her joy like she was Ebenezer Scrooge.
It has been years since I saw her in person, but Facebook worked its magic to keep us in distant contact. Joan “liked” lots of things on Facebook. That fit her well. Joan was a really good liker of things. She would have made it just fine without the frowny-face option.
One of my favorite memories came as a result of one of Joan’s worst days. Joan had two children, the son whose life was tragically cut short, and a daughter who was her pride and joy. Joan’s daughter pursued a successful career and chose to marry later in life. Joan was ecstatic about the wedding and could not wait to travel to the ceremony. But one afternoon, while shooing blackbirds away from the back porch, Joan fell and broke both ankles, landing her in a rehabilitation hospital and threatening her ability to make it to the wedding.
True to form, Joan kept her joy and started to work. She soon knew everyone in the hospital and worked hard at physical therapy with that beautiful wedding ceremony as her inspiration. The fateful day came when the doctors would decide whether she was fit to travel, and despite her very best efforts, Joan was not cleared for takeoff. I’m not exactly sure how devastated she was, but the rest of us were heartbroken.
In those days before Skype and FaceTime, we tried to invent things like Skype and FaceTime just for Joan, but alas, we were in over our heads. Joel traveled to the wedding alone, and the family had the clever idea to use a cell phone during the ceremony so that Joan could listen in. A group of us from church went to her hospital room that day to share the occasion with a corsage, wedding cake, and being good Southern church folk, sparkling cider. It was a party, but it was no pity party. I will never forget Joan trying to hand the cell phone to the rest of us during the ceremony so that we could listen and our laughing and frustrated refusals — This is for you, Joan!
It remains one of my best days. A terrible day somehow turned into joy.
That was Joan. And today, in her honor, and while mourning her loss, I will hold on even tighter to my joy.
My wife and I went camping last weekend. Well, that’s unfair. You should at a minimum struggle to set up a tent and consider cursing to be able to say that you went camping. Better stated, around sixty of our good (church) friends went camping last weekend and we spent Saturday with them. We ate delicious food and enjoyed relaxing conversations and then went home to sleep in our own bed. For us it was like an all-day backyard barbecue if your backyard was an entire river valley in the middle of nowhere. It was a most fantastic day.
The picture above was taken in New Orleans ten years ago when we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. Today, to save you the math, we celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary. I share this picture (knowing that my wife will yell at me) as proof of several things.
My wife and I attended the U2 concert at the Rose Bowl last Saturday evening. We arrived early to beat the crowd and got a little turned around which, appropriately, sent us down a street that had no name. Thankfully, with an assist from the Waze app, we did eventually find the parking lot that we were looking for (which was good because my wife was going to get there with or without me). Thank you. I’m here all week.
Pepperdine Law’s graduation ceremony occurred last Friday at Alumni Park, and the venue is simply unbeatable — a spacious green lawn on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean under the warm California sun. Spectacular.
A recent morning run triggered memories of high school track meets in the 1980s. I ran the distance races for the mighty Falcons, and we barely had time to get off the bus in those days before the 3200 meters race began. Nothing like racing eight laps around the track to get your afternoon going.
My sweet wife visited the Field of Dreams Movie Site in Dyersville, Iowa, last week and brought home several souvenirs since she knows Field of Dreams is my favorite movie of all time. And, it seems, because she loved it there.
“Language . . . has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Tillich
I want to see everything there is to see.
We travelers, walking to the sun, can’t see
Starting to Look Up 