See You Soon, Uncle Wayne

My uncle died Saturday night, April 28.  He was 59 years old.  He would've been 60 on June 6.  Didn't even live 60 years.  Bear with me as I tell a little bit of his story.


Wayne lived a wild life for his first 40 (or so) years.  He always had motorcycles, punching bags, weights and weight benches, boxer bulldogs (Ali and Frazier), guns, knives, trucks, alcohol, Playboy, satellite TV, tobacco . . .  I'm not saying that a lover of Jesus can't have/use MOST of those things, especially the dogs, but I'm trying to paint a picture.  The fact is that Wayne died earlier than expected because of cancer that resulted from his long-term use of chewing tobacco and/or snuff.  His cancer started in his esophagus.  From the time he had cancer until the day he died was about three years.  And those three years were very, very painful and difficult, for him as well as for everyone else involved.


My brothers and I liked being with Wayne when we were little, but speaking for myself alone, I was also afraid of him.  He was fun, but he was also scary at times.  I did love to listen to his stories, though.  He got into a lot of stuff, much of it bad.  He was strong and loved to fight when he was younger.  I was bullied as a kid because of my size.  Wayne was only 5'6" but he wasn't SCRAWNY like I was in school.  I went to the same high school he did, the same building, and I walked the halls where he had plenty of fights.  All the fights I've heard about, he won.  As a scrawny high school kid, I prayed that I could be like Wayne - fearless and able to defend myself.


Even in the last third of his life, his CHRISTIAN years, I often asked him about his old life of sin.  He didn't revel in those memories, but he was honest about them. There were bar fights, lots of "encounters" with women, strange but true stories from all over the country - he was a truck driver most of his adult life and is one of those people privileged to visit all 48 continental US states. He had Vegas stories, New Orleans stories, NYC stories . . .


59 is too young to die, but the truth is, Wayne should've died before he was 30.  He was shot in the back one night on one of his sinful escapades.  It involved a woman who wasn't his wife.  He said a gun was aimed straight at him from just across a bedroom and multiple shots were fired.  He saw the fire explode from the gun but managed to avoid the shots - until he was running out the door.  He ran and dove over some kind of cliff, went all the way to the bottom, and there, figured out how bad he was hurt.  I was 6-7 years old at the time, but I remember it.  I wasn't told the circumstances, just that Wayne had been shot.  For the rest of his life, he wore a huge scar on his abdomen from the surgery to remove the bullet and repair all the damage.  He should've died.  And he would've died without Jesus.


But, being shot didn't change him.  He lived with his mother, my Grandma, at various times during those years, between divorces.  Grandma said she used to sit up in the early hours of the night praying for him.  Wayne said he drove home drunk many nights.  Grandma would finally go to sleep when she heard him come in.  One night, he didn't come in.  He did make it home, but didn't make it in.  With no memory of how he got there, he woke up in the wet grass the next morning, under his truck.  Grandma found him there on her way to work and asked him what he was doing.  Trying to hide that the ground was as far as he could get from his truck, he told her that he working on his truck.


Wayne was a bad man.  My dad, a pastor, may have given up hope for him.  I probably did.  Grandma never did.  Wayne was raised in church and he had as much a chance to learn about and love Jesus as anyone ever had.  But he never did - until about 1994.  I remember my dad telling me that Wayne had been going to church, and it was one of the greatest shocks of my life.  I was about 20 at the time and I was majoring in Christian Studies in college.  Wayne asked me to come teach at the men's group he attended at his church a couple times, and I appreciated his faith in me.


Wayne spent his final days at my dad's house, along with Grandma, their mother.  He wanted to be at home, but it was best for him to be at my dad's.  We had his recliner brought in.  He arrived on Monday and died on Saturday.  The last time I saw him conscious was Tuesday morning.  He was lining up his pills at breakfast, not wanting to take them, and in typical fashion, he was resisting Grandma's attempts to make him do something.  Lots of his stuff was brought to my dad's house during those few days, including two of his Bibles.  He had written several life-changing decisions inside the front cover of one Bible.  Sometime in 1994 he wrote, "Surrendered my life to Jesus and committed to follow Him for the rest of my life."  And he did.


Something indescribable happened to this very bad man.  He became a new man.  He was noticeably different.  I was no longer scared or skeptical of him.  Suddenly, he loved Jesus more than I did, and I'd been a Christian since my childhood.  He talked about Jesus more than I did.  He had a zeal that I'd never had.  Wayne had given Jesus his life, and JESUS HAD CHANGED WAYNE'S LIFE.  It didn't matter what Wayne had done, and it didn't matter what Wayne DID from that point - all the sin he would commit from 1994 through last Saturday.  None of those sins could change his eternal status - FORGIVEN.


Wayne was no longer the MAN HE USED TO BE, but he wasn't a GOOD MAN, either.  Most of us talk about others as "a good guy" or "a good lady," and I know what's typically meant by that.  But contrary to some country music songs and popular opinion, NONE OF US ARE TRULY GOOD.  Salvation comes by FAITH, not by WORKS.  The only good thing about any human is Jesus living inside us.  Before we can see our need for Jesus, we have to UNDERSTAND OUR BADNESS!  WE NEED HELP!


Ephesians 2:8-9  God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 


There were members in my family present at the funeral that I wanted to SCREAM at, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU'VE DONE!  IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW BAD YOU ARE!  WE'RE ALL BAD!  WE ALL DESERVE DEATH!  WE ALL DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED FOR OUR SINS!  THAT'S WHY JESUS CAME AND DIED FOR YOU!  YOU CAN'T BE GOOD ENOUGH!  IT'S NOT POSSIBLE!  BUT JESUS IS GOOD ENOUGH, AND HE MADE YOUR SACRIFICE FOR YOU!  STOP CONVINCING YOURSELF THAT YOU'RE NOT FORGIVABLE!  GOD FORGAVE WAYNE AND CHANGED HIS LIFE, AND YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF MAN WAYNE USED TO BE!  HUMBLE YOURSELF LIKE WAYNE DID IN 1994, SURRENDER YOUR SELFISHNESS TO JESUS, ASK FOR FORGIVENESS, AND LET JESUS BE YOUR MASTER AND SAVIOR!"


If Wayne could tell you anything today, I know he'd start with this:
John 3:16   For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 14:6 (Jesus speaking) "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one can come to the Father except through me."

2 Corinthians 5:21  For God made Christ,who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. 

And close to the top of things he'd tell you would be this: "Don't use tobacco.  Tobacco kills.  Trust me.  Spare yourself, your family, and everyone who loves you the trouble."

I'll finish with Wayne's final few minutes here on earth, and then a little biographical info.  Saturday night, I witnessed someone die for the very first time.  It was one of the most unpleasant things of my entire life.  For his final few hours, we heard his breaths that sounded like they were coming from below a bucket of water.  I was told that's called the "death rasp."  About 9:50, the loud rasp went silent.  His chest still rose and fell until 9:55.  Our family circled him, held him, told him it was ok to go (he had been unconscious for a couple days), and watched him breath his last.  And we ached.  We're still aching.  But Wayne's aching stopped.  His three-year, painful battle with a ravenous disease ended.  We watched, on this side of heaven, as Wayne left a diseased, useless body.  We didn't get to witness his next breath, but by faith, we know there was one.  We know that he was INSTANTLY healed, and instantly in the presence of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  

Romans 6:4-8  For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. ⁵ Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. ⁶ We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. ⁷ For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. ⁸ And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. 

We have no idea what heaven will really be like, but we know Jesus is there.  That's all that matters.  Wayne had been wanting to go to Jesus for months.  Literally.  He said one Sunday morning, SURE OF HIMSELF, "I'm going to meet my Jesus today."  He didn't get to see Jesus that day, but Saturday night, he did.  

And now for the biographical info.  If I were Wayne, the second person I would've wanted to see would've been my dad.  See, Wayne had no recollection of his Daddy - my Daddy's Daddy - my Grandpa.  In December 1953, Wayne was 1.5 years old.  My Daddy was 3.5 years old.  Their sister Carolyn was 5.5 years old.  And their unborn brother Kenny was still three months from entering the world.  Their Daddy, my Grandma's husband, was shot and killed by their drunken, 80-year old neighbor, whom my Grandpa had allowed to live on the property.  My Daddy sat with his Daddy on the ground where he fell and watched him die, with little understanding of what was happening.  

My Grandma's "mother," Nanny, who was really my Grandma's grandmother (another sad part of the story for another day), helped her raise those four kids in a time when it wasn't good to be a single mother.  My Grandma didn't have a license, let alone a job.  With hard work and strong faith in Jesus, they made it.  That little unborn baby, Kenny, grew up having never MET his Daddy. But in the summer of 1971, Kenny did meet his Daddy.  Kenny died in a car wreck at age 17.  This was the second heart-break for my Daddy's immediate family.  

My Grandma has now outlived and buried three of her four children.  Her oldest child, my Aunt Carolyn, died at age 56 in 2004 after her own battle with cancer.  After Wayne died on Saturday, Grandma brought the room to tears when she hugged my Daddy and cried, "We started out as a big 'ole family and now it's just you and me."

So on Saturday night around 10pm EST on earth, after meeting Jesus face to face, Wayne got to see his Daddy, for all he remembers, for the first time (and my Grandpa got to see the son he last saw as a 1.5 year old baby).  Wayne got to see his brother Kenny for the first time in 41 years.  He got to see his beloved great-grandmother Nanny for the first time in 37 years.  He got to see his sister Carolyn for the first time in 7 years.  And now, 5 members of the family that never quite made it to a full family of 6 (plus Nanny), wait in heaven for the arrival of their wife/mother/granddaughter (my Grandma), and their son, brother, great grandson (my Daddy).  Such sadness for one family.  But one day, hopefully a long time from now by earth's standards, there will be great joy.

How can I say for sure that this family of 7 will be reunited in heaven?  It's not because I assume that all "good" people go to heaven.  There's only one reason there's going to be a family reunion for the Leonard and Betty Elders family - each of them asked Jesus to forgive their sins and be their Savior.  


There's another heavenly reunion coming one day, too, a part of the story I've saved until now.  Wayne had one child, a son.  We know him as JW, but his high school friends know him as Joel.  JW was born Sept. 11, 1984, and he had complications from the start.  Those complications affected every day of his life, although he lived a mostly normal life until the summer of 2003.  While on a mission trip with his church in Pittsburgh, PA, JW got a bad headache - a result of those complications.  A mistake at the hospital left him an invalid.  He has required constant care ever since.  Wayne loved his son, and hurt so much for everything he (JW) suffered.  But as a young teen, JW also trusted Jesus to forgive his sins and give him eternal life.  Someday in the future, father and son will be together again, but this time, with perfect bodies.  

One day, hopefully around 2084, I look forward to joining them.  I'm 11 years older than my wife.  We both plan to live to be 100.  I want to leave here with her, so I've got to make it to 111.  That's one reason why I work out so much/so hard.  I hope to see you there, too.  If you're not sure about your eternal status - IF YOU'VE NEVER ASKED JESUS CHRIST TO FORGIVE YOUR SINS AND GIVE YOU ETERNAL LIFE - you can find out how to make sure here - http://www.livingwaycommunitychurch.com/227631 .