A True Hope Giver

by Alecia Klauk
(Chapin, SC)

Saturday didn't feel any different. I woke up happy to be able to just lay around and talk to my husband, with at least a few kids jumping on us at all times. We had a leisurely morning around the house and looked forward to going to the orphanage for our regular time with the precious girls there. Later in the evening, we had a date to look forward to. It was going to be a great day.

My mom had been trying to call me during the morning, but I never had the right quiet moment to call her back until we were in the car. She sounded off. Fortunately, she knows me well enough to know that I'd just want to hear the truth, so she said, "Pete has gone home to be with the Lord."

The shock felt like being dunked into a vat of icy cold water. All I could squeak out was, "WHAT?!" He had surgery a few days before that, and by all accounts it had gone very well, but then had an apparent heart attack.

Grasping for material answers soon gave way to the truth that my heart did not care at all about the physical mechanics of what happened. My brain did, but my feeble spirit relinquished in futility the things I could not change and instead just wanted to know the answer to a much deeper why.

You've likely had a moment like that, trying to wrap your mind around what it desperately wants to reject. Painful. Brutal. Grabs your stomach in a vice grip until you can feel actual physical pain. All that, and I was just his friend. I could not fathom what his wife and children were feeling.

I know death happens every day, and even now, there is someone who is dealing with the unnatural separation it brings, but it never gets any easier. I had the thought about 12 years ago when my beloved granddaddy died, also a sweet Pete, that we were not made for death.

In Eden, it was never the intention that we would taste it or feel it. Fully known, forever; that was the plan. There is something old in our design that rejects the forcefulness of this intense separation.

The why is not without validity, and I must admit out of the gate that I assert no answer. I have no idea why God would take a man like this, a man so given to the interests of others, so committed to the furtherance of the Kingdom, flowing in love and kindness and concern. Why this timing? It seemed to make no sense.

As my mind raced in trying to come up an answer, some explanation to soothe, my heart just kept remembering.

The last time I saw him just a few months ago, he had taken my face in his hands and said, "Beautiful." That was common. Pete had loved me my entire life. He loved to introduce me to people by saying that he'd changed my diapers, and indeed he had. He was one of the many men who loved me like a father and taught me that the world was a safe place, that Jesus really did love me, that everything would be ok. I felt so exposed with him gone, like a piece of safety in the world had been lifted. To call it vulnerable is a gross understatement.

I remembered him playing with my children the last time I saw him, teasing them so much that they never wanted to leave, digging some hidden ice cream out of the back of the freezer, making them laugh into full on exuberance. What an honor it was to watch this man who loved me so long to then love my children.

The personal impact to me is nothing compared to the loss the world in my community will feel without this man. International students have been blessed by his vision for 20 years. He founded and has run a ministry to them that combines those in need of Jesus with those with a heart for the nations. It's beautiful. Literally the world comes to us at home. Unknown numbers of those who would have never heard the gospel receive it. Incredible impact. And this was one of many ministries Pete touched and effected over the years.

I sat most of the day Saturday in a daze. We made it through the orphanage visit ok, though I kept having to turn away to cry. But I could not be a source of pain to those already so pained, one more place of disappointment, another broken promise. Pete would have told me to go, and so I did.

But when I got home, I sat staring out the window, frozen. My mind tried frantically to come to some grip of ... something. A handle. A reason. A ... anything. It was hard to put two thoughts together.

I can't say that I figured anything out. I didn't. My heart is still raw, and I know that with the services coming this week, the processing has just begun. But I did have one very firm assurance. A handle, something I could hold on to with a white knuckle grip and know it would not fail.

Not only was Pete with Jesus, but he lived well. He poured out his heart on behalf of those who the Lord places in such high esteem. He loved the wanderer, the outsider, the one in need. Literally my entire life, I watched him want for nothing more than to serve His King. And in that beauty, my heart reached out and grabbed for it. My handle was his example; I want that, too.

I have had the divine privilege of watching what it looks like to live the truth of Isaiah 58, to spend oneself on behalf of those in need. It is a breathtaking thing to watch someone truly pour themselves out as a drink offering. And I want to live that way, too. I have no other answers from this, save that. I want to take the miracle I watched and replicate it. God let it be.

There are times that the ministry we do feels like anything but ministry. And please do not be limited by a clergical definition. Ministry is loving your husband, teaching your children, reaching out to a friend. It's many, many things, and we are all involved. If you claim Christ, then you are in ministry. It's the default. The world is watching, and the Lord is faithful to give opportunity to His kids to show the world who He is.

Ministry can feel exhausting. It can feel depleting. It can be frustrating and very difficult. It can even feel pointless and aimless. Like pushing a rope. Lonely. Trying. Ever feel that way with anyone or anything in your life? It's not that we don't want to do it, but it is that it's not always rainbows and butterflies. There are times when we offer a sacrifice of praise. A sacrifice. I want my life to be marked by the kind of sacrifice I watched in my dear friend.

And so in death, as in life, Pete strengthened me. It was an incredible honor to know him. So many will deeply grieve his passing, but not without hope. There is much comfort in having such a firm assurance of not only certainty in death but also in a life so well lived. I look at how he spent himself on behalf of other people, and I see what I want my life to look like. I am renewed in my desire to make every moment count, to be mindful of what other people need, to be generous of heart and hand. That's just who Pete was and I pray that just some small piece of his influence will have rubbed off on me.

But watching Pete and knowing the incredible impact he had on me and countless others, I am also renewed. I didn't even know I really needed to be, but I feel such a shot in the arm of my service that I must have needed a new push. I feel certain of the truth that God's gifts and His calling are sure. That when He guides, He does provide. That faith is reasonable and reliable with such a loving and kind God. That He has a work for us each to do, and we can trust that He will see it through for as long as we have breath. In a word: faith. Renewed, revived, resolved, resolute FAITH.

And so once again, in a way only he could have, Pete found one more way to tell me he loved me in that bolstering of my heart and desire to serve. As he took that final walk home, he blew me a kiss over his shoulder.

In honor of such a man, I present this tiny offering as a homage to his life so well lived. And I reach my face toward Heaven and blow the kiss right back.