Shoes Optional [guest]

I have been thinking a lot this week about Nebuchadnezzar. I am not sure why exactly, but his story intrigues me. I believe many of us have someone, or perhaps a list of people, that we know only from the pages of the bible and want very much to meet in heaven. For me, after I find my baby brother who I never met, and my great grandpa who is one of my heroes… I want to find Nebuchadnezzar.

But that is not what this story is about.

The human brain is the most efficient model of multitasking that I can think of. At the same time that I am digesting, circulating, breathing, and sensing I can also be working, playing, or resting, and in addition to any or all of those activities there is always a current of thought winding its way through my mind.

So, I have also been thinking a lot this week about my friend Jay. I spent two years working in camping ministry in California. During that time I worked for the Outdoor Education program at the camp, and that program is where I met Jay. The first day of work was horribly uneasy, we (the staff) were mostly strangers to each other and we spent the day doing initiatives designed to make us rely on each other. In the middle of a silent activity, my new pager went off… loud. I had no idea how to turn it off, or who was paging me at THAT moment. After a few minutes of laughing and blushing, and new co-workers trying to help me silence the fiendish new piece of equipment, we turned to see Jay holding his cell phone and grinning.

Special needs kids were a frequent part of our outdoor ed. program, but their needs require a certain amount of adjustment to our normal way of doing things. Julian needed a walker and a caretaker to get around. He drooled, and his little legs dragged behind him as if reluctant to join in the fun. So, when the time came to help Julian with the rock wall… Jay recruited my help. Jay strapped Julian into the harness, we ran an extra brake line on the belay, and while I belayed and Julian gripped the wall with his little hands Jay lifted his feet into each toehold until he couldn’t reach any higher. Julian could only climb as high as Jay could reach that day, but that little boy had never been lifted higher than my friend lifted him. I will never forget that moment.

Jay died two-and-a-half years ago. Sometimes it hits me that he isn’t here anymore and I have to remember all over again that he and I will never finish building that tee-pee that we started for the kids in our program. Jay was like a brother to me. He was one of the first to make me feel comfortable after I moved to California. Perhaps because he was so familiar with pain he recognized that I was struggling. I had just been through one of the hardest points of my life and I needed a friend. Jay was a tease and his antics breached the wall that I had set up against the world that seemed so hard at the time.

Sitting at his funeral, I thought I would be fine. I thought that all of my tears had been cried out on the shoulders of friends who sobbed along with me at the loss of our dear friend and brother. I think what brought the tears that day was the last line of the funeral program that had been handed out. On the back page under the photo of him standing on the pinnacle of a rock high in the mountains were two words in tiny print: Shoes optional. Doesn’t sound like much does it? But those two words somehow summarized my friend. That is how he approached life, especially the people around him who needed to know that sometimes it is ok to kick your shoes off and relax.

Jay died because he lost his battle with his mind. The ironic part of that being that he helped me fight mine. I didn’t say goodbye to him the last time I saw him because I thought there would be another day. But this isn’t meant to be a depressing story. Jay loved much, and he taught me some amazing lessons about practical ways to love others. Jay brought measured patience, good humor, strong decisions, and practical advice to his relationships with his friends. Those who knew him loved him. And he never laughed at me for being a nature lover who is afraid of ants. Okay, so he laughed at me… but not that hard.

Life with people is difficult and precious, and sometimes surprisingly short. I could say something trite here about how we need to treasure each moment we have with each other… but that amputates the thought process far premature of what I am trying to communicate with this story. Jay died at 27 and I am 27… in his short lifetime he taught me so much and I pray with all of my heart that somehow I can be faithful with those lessons. Lessons like knowing that sometimes laughter is an appropriate way of breaking tension, that patience with a person’s limitations is an extremely godly trait, and that sometimes a good hike can work out a lot of trouble.

Speaking of heaven… one day maybe we will finish that tee-pee, and I will get to thank him for being my teacher and my friend.

-- Elizabeth Olwin lives in Bellingham, WA. She is an Environmental Studies major; she wonders why grass is green and enjoys going boldly into forests where no man has gone before. --