Dying To Live

Consider these lyrics:

Well, "I do" are the two most famous last words ...

After 50 years ... still dancing in the minefields

The beginning of the end ...

But to lose your life for another, I've heard ...

Is a good place to begin ...

'Cause the only way to find your life ...

Is to lay your own life down ...

And I believe it's an easy price ...

For the life that we have found ...

From the song Dancing in the Minefields by Andrew Peterson.

It's difficult to believe she was just 17 years old when we met.  Even more difficult to realize she was only 18 when I asked her to marry me and we said those two most famous words on June 15, 1968.

Neither of us had any idea what those words implied.  We were really just kids.  But that first decade was an amazing crash course in how valuable marriage would be in equipping us to live a life of love for others.

My wife is an unsung hero.  So, let me sing a bit about her.

You have never read about her in a newspaper or magazine.  She is not a public celebrity or someone know in evangelical cultures.  A book has never been written about her.  She doesn't write a blog.  She doesn't direct a ministry.  She never has to field phone calls or emails requesting her to come and speak at some conference or seminar.  She doesn't do anything that would draw attention to her.

What she does may be more valuable than any of those things.  She loves people.  Usually one at a time.  And, when she loves, she does it the Jesus way who said greater love has no man than this but when a man lays down his life for a friend.

Recently (September 2018), Pam invited a woman in her late 80's to come and live with us after giving nearly forty years of her life for the benefit of Jesus in the nation of Uganda. Age overtook this woman.  She had to sell her business, move out of her house, liquidate her assets, stop driving, depend on others, and confirm plans to return to her motherland of Australia.

Pam's last meal at Jude's restaurant .. the day it closed

Jude is a bit of an icon in Jinja, Uganda.  Such a character.  But, it was not pleasant to watch her age begin to chip away at who she really is.  It wasn't an easy choice for her, but circumstances pushed her over the line and on October 18, 2018, she move into a single bedroom and anxiously began to live life with Pam, her husband, our two grandsons, our daughter, and around 10 students who were in the One Step Course conducted within our compound.

Jude soon became the darling of the students and the rest of us.  She was honored and respected.  All under the watchful eye of my wife, Pam.  Pam literally laid down her life for Jude.

Though very independent, Jude wanted to always know where Pam was and to make sure they had time to just be together.  In the last several weeks of her stay here, before she left for Australia on January 16th, Jude publicly declared to Pam, "I love you.  You are my best friend."

Pam & One Step students pray for Jude - December 5, 2018

I secretly thought to myself, "I'll get my wife back when we take Jude to the airport."  I was wrong.  Though I know I have always been and always will be Pam's best friend, I also ... without regret ... share her with all the people that she wants to love on behalf of Jesus. During these fifty years of I DO with each other, we have never had much privacy.  Pam has always been ready to invite people to "come and live with us."  We had over 50 live with us before we moved to Uganda.  Life here affords us very little time to be alone.

A week ago we left our daughter, Rebecca, in Western Uganda to begin a four to five year course in medical school. She wrote an email to us and said she told George (the current 20 year old living with us), "You are in the safest place and in the hands of the right people."  Pam makes sure of that.  She is strong, principled, but with a deep love for the people the Lord puts with us.

The day before Jude left Uganda

The question every person is always asking is, "Will you love me?"

"It's God who gives us our first heart transplant, who gives us a heart of flesh, and then we keep giving our hearts away, bits of us transplanted out of our aloneness and into the hollow spaces of others."  (Ann Voskamp in The Way of Abundance.)

The fact is ... we were made to love others.  It has never been about us.  It has always been about others.  The trouble with so much contemporary "ministry" is that it is always about the one doing the ministry.  But, the beauty of being a mother is that it makes the mundane sacred.

Leaving a bit of her heart in Jude

My wife had the best training ever for genuine ministry.  She was a mother and a wife ... giving her life away again and again and again.  I've been watching this reality for decades. Pam must realize that we are always lost until our heart makes its home inside of someone else.

Love is a verb.  Love is active and not limited to an emotion.  Love gives.  And gives.  And gives.

Jude is gone now.  But, she takes a bit of Pam with her.  Love gives its life for another life.  This is what my unsung hero has done recently ... one more time ... and I couldn't be more proud.

Over and over and over I see that my best friend is dying to live.

Thanks for letting me sing a bit about her.  Eternity will reveal many melodies about this life given away in unnoticed ways.  And, that is enough.  It will always be enough.