Two Years in Heaven
January 30, 2015 10 Comments
Sweet Friends:
As January comes to a close, and I think about what to write to you, I am flooded with the feelings of widowhood. Kent will have been gone from this earth for two years on the 29th of January. Our 48th wedding anniversary was on December 22nd. Living with him, and then losing him is again fresh on my mind. It is not hard to be happy for him; I am. And I am striving to be calm and happy in the memories of what I loved about him. I was just so fortunate to have been his wife, and to have shared the exciting trip that God created his life to be. Not without tears, I remember him this month.
He will always be my inspiration:
For Commitment and Dedication: From the age of 9 when he gave his heart and life to Jesus, Kent never wavered. At 17, he totally surrendered his life to Jesus’ Lordship and began a daily time with Him that he never abandoned. That daily time with God, and a fierce desire to be and do what God wanted, was the hallmark of his life for the next 50 years, until the day he died.
For Living a Life of Prayer: I have never known a person so committed to prayer. He used his remarkable God-given gift of organization to develop a simple plan for systematically praying for numerous people at the same time, and really praying for their specific needs. He communicated with these people, hundreds of them, regularly.
For Living with Pain and Suffering: Kent knew how to suffer with contentment and absolute faith that not only was God in total control, but that He was totally good in everything. His outlook was positive and vibrant to the very last minute.
For Showing me How to Die: with patience, acceptance, and quiet calmness. He always said that he would not go to Heaven until his work that God gave him to do was done. The amazing thing is that Kent knew exactly what that work was to be. He was to deliver a message, in word (speaking) and in writing. After the last book written, in December 2012, he was finished. He went to Heaven the next month (Jan, 2013).
For Passionate Living: He was the most enthusiastic life lover I ever knew. Nothing he did was half-way or mediocre. He was all systems ‘go’, or he was completely stopped. And he stopped rarely, usually only to sleep. He was so driven as a young man that he had to learn to slow down and to enjoy relaxation. That did not come easily to him. In fact, one of our family’s memories is of a vacation that lasted three weeks by car and covered the exploration (or at least a glance at) the Grand Canyon, Disney Land, Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park and the Redwood Forest, seeing family in Seattle, and Yellowstone Park. We were all exhausted, but he was delighted that we had accomplished all he had set out to do. He could not be a spectator. Even if he was sitting in a chair in his living room watching a sports event, he had his pen and paper, making statistics and predicting the winner. And he was usually correct!
For Mentoring and Encouraging: There is no way to tell how many people he personally touched and kept up with, but I still get emails and notes and phone calls from those he influenced for good and for God. He was an amazing networker of people from around the world. He was considered to be a founder of the worldwide marketplace movement, which swept the globe in the 1990s and into the 21st century. It flourishes today, connecting believers from everywhere to each other. Which brings me to the next inspiration…
For Having a God-Perspective World-View: Kent never thought little. He had a huge God, who did huge things, bigger than one could imagine. Kent could imagine and believe God for those things. As a result, he saw God do things that very few people get to see. I was with him for some of them, and I can’t tell you how privileged I felt to see God do His thing in such spectacular ways. To Kent, these events were commonplace. They were such a part of his life that he did not see how unusual his life was. His life was big, because his God was big, but he did not see it that way. It was just everyday living to him.
It may seem brassy to some, but I have always thought that Kent was somewhat like was Oswald Chambers, his own mentor and hero in the faith. Both men lived big, passionate, God-following lives in a humble way. Both loved travel to faraway places, Chambers to Africa, and Kent to China and India (and many other places). Both wrote in unassuming ways, Chambers in his journal and sermon notes, and Kent in letters and talk notes. Both died young, Chambers in his 40s and Kent in his 60s. Considering the difference in life expectancy for their times, they had about the same length of time for public ministry.
I loved Kent the best. Still do.
Thank you for indulging me by letting me remember my husband to you,
Davidene