A few days ago I lost someone I greatly loved. Our community lost a giant.
Gary was a lot of things to a lot of people. He was a pastor in our church conference before being elected as Superintendent. He was the turn-the-tables-upside-down kind of leader and I was drawn to the shaking he was doing in our old churches. I had graduated college and was working for Yard House Restaurants, traveling around opening new locations for them and developing training material. One night I had a very jarring dream where I was pressed to do something for the Kingdom. I didn't want to get to the gates of heaven and hear that I made a lot of money for a restaurant - so I reached out to Gary. I wanted to do something, could we meet. For no good reason, Gary hired me. I enrolled in grad school. I was passionate and fiery, opinionated, stubborn, judgmental, on fire for God, excited, prideful, and willing to work. Sparks flew between us. Our meetings were routinely mixed with yelling, crying, laughing, and praying. He was just as stubborn as I was and much smarter. Our working chemistry was fire and slightly inappropriate probably. No topic of conversation was off limits. Nothing hidden.
He went to bat for me. My job in developing leaders within our conference was a new position and many weren't into it. He found an outside person to fund my job. We ran young leader conferences every year, met with pastors, traveled to churches, even had a few interns before that was a thing. Did we do it right? No, not all of it. Did we do it with heart and passion and a love for people and God? Yes.
Those were formative years for me. I was a strong person and in retrospect, I was oftentimes too much for people in my Japanese American community. Lots of "calm down, J" in response to a passionate idea or the like. Gary wasn't intimidated by who God had created me to be. He reveled in it. He directed it. He honed it. The measure of this man, wow. Ever since that time I have affectionately called him Boss. I've had many of those but he's the one who forever changed me. And therefore changed my husband. My marriage. My children.
I sobbed like a baby when he passed from death to life. I was driving to praise practice for Christmas Sunday. I'll never forget it. And then I led worship.
For a long season, O Lord, I considered as an impossibility what I now know as unshakable truth:
That after loss, pain, tragedy, tears, sorrow, doubt, defeat, and disarray, I will hold a more costly and precious joy than any I have held before; and this not in denial of my loss, but manifest in the very wreckage of it.
And so I know this unexpected joy is no glib and passing fancy. It is rather the diamond-hard treasure unearthed and recognized only when lesser hopes have collapsed.
It is the knowledge of your unwavering faithfulness, O Christ, now experienced and owned. It is the bright beacon of your promises blooming in the night like signal fires upon mountain peaks.
I came to the end of my own hope, O God, and found that your hope held me still. I saw through the ruin of my own happiness that your better joy stood firm - an unassailable fortress that even death could not throw down.
From "Thanksgiving at the Return of Joy" liturgy
Lore Wilbert said that we view all our pain, suffering, and sadness, as plates upon which we serve the gospel to ourselves and to others. Nothing is wasted with God.
May this be true of me.
