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A Rancher's Rumblings | |
| June 3, 2008 |
| LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD: MOTHER'S HEALTH; BGCT LEADERSHIP; AND THE TBC CONVOCATION |
I want to do something a little different with my column this week. Instead of addressing one particular issue, I’d like to use this week’s column to bring you up-to-date on a few matters of concern to me and, I believe, to you.
MOTHER’S HEALTH
You have all been a family to me for many years, and I want to apologize for not keeping you better informed on events relating to my Mother's health. I will try to make a long story short, but I want to put it – as well as my comments on the BGCT and TBC that follow it – in the context of one of my Mother’s favorite sayings to me through the years: “You have to live in the real world.”
Two Thursday nights ago, Loretta and I were on our way to see Mother. Charlie McLaughlin’s daughter and her husband were also driving from Brownwood to show Mother their 1-year-old son, whom she had never seen.
While Loretta and I were en route to Ballinger, my sister Carolyn called to tell us that Mother had just fallen again. I had the number of her pastor, Bobby Broyles, in my cell phone. He was there with them within 3 minutes after I called him. Church is a wonderful family!!!
After some time at the hospital in Ballinger that evening, a CAT scan revealed bleeding in Mother’s brain (it was old blood from her surgery a week earlier that hadn’t gone away). We moved her to a hospital in San Angelo and got her into the ICU at 2:30 a.m.
Believing all was fine, and after visiting her at 5:30 Friday morning, I left on a planned trip with everyone’s blessing. When I arrived and called Loretta, I was told that Mother had been in surgery again but was doing fine.
(continued)
This time, they made a much larger hole in her skull than the earlier one (requiring a total of 16 staples) and left drainage tubes for 72 hours rather than 24. She has not bounced back nearly as strongly as before, but I did take her back to the Ballinger nursing home this past Wednesday.
It is a difficult situation. Saturday, she told me, "I’m not going to make it." In my mind, I could hear her saying once again, “Son, we have to live in the real world.” I encouraged her, reminding her that Chad is not yet married and Lance is planning children soon, whom she would want to get to know. But I nearly felt guilty. As I looked around that nursing home, I knew she would rather go on home to be with the Lord than endure the low quality of life being experienced by most of those people.
So how much do you actually encourage someone who has had a wonderful life but is tired now and has been through a horrible month? As Christians, we believe not in death but in transformation, and I can’t imagine someone as vibrant as Mother has been having so little quality of life. I guess we just leave it in God’s hands now.
I do want to share with you what she told the doctor before her second surgery. She said clearly, “Don’t keep me alive if I’m going to just lie in bed. I’m 91 years old, and I have had a wonderful life.” The doctor replied, “You know that means we won’t try a lot of traumatic things to save you should something happen.” She smiled and said, “Thank you.”
As I drove to Ballinger, we discussed her funeral, which I am supposed to preach. There are to be no special songs, other than “I Know Who Holds Tomorrow,” which she loves to hear me play on the organ (that’s right, I was church organist in Paint Rock while in high school) – just love of God, church, and family.
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Living in the “real” world, she reminded me and all of us – and continues to do so in everything she does – that she is clearly aware of “who holds tomorrow.” She is now in rehab, and we will all rejoice if we can have her for several more years – with some reasonable quality of life. On the other hand, if we do not have her for much longer, we will rejoice as well. We all know “who holds tomorrow” and that, as the great John Claypool preached so often, “every exit is an entrance,” so we will all be together again.
I deeply appreciate your prayers, your friendship, and your love.
BGCT THOUGHTS
My last column – urging BGCT officer candidates to promise to support the BGCT and oppose Fundamentalism – prompted the most emails I have received regarding something I wrote. I usually try to answer every email, but I was unable to do so these past 2 weeks, as events with Mother took most of my time and energy. Please understand.
The column was well-received, and I am grateful. There was one paragraph, however, that I want to clarify. I did not intend to encourage anyone to leave the BGCT. That was not my intent at all.
There is no reason for anyone to leave the BGCT, because we allow total freedom in giving to national Baptist causes. The fact is that there was no reason for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention to be formed. That convention simply serves as a channel for giving to the SBC, but it supports no Texas institutions. Again, the SBTC was unnecessary, because people and churches can already give freely to the SBC through the BGCT.
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My point was that all of us need to live in the real world. Texas Baptists did not embrace Fundamentalism. Keep in mind that Fundamentalism goes way beyond simply believing in the fundamentals of the faith. All of us Texas Baptists strongly embrace the fundamentals of the faith. But Fundamentalism wants to tell the rest of us how to interpret and express those fundamentals.
So I’m not asking anyone to leave the BGCT. I’m just asking that we not start the old Fundamentalist takeover battle again in Texas. Let’s agree that we all love Jesus. Let all of us respect each other’s differences and focus on the things that we have in common, realizing that they are much greater than the things that divide us.
Cooperation – unity in diversity – was the genius of the SBC in the good old days. In my opinion, the only thing the Fundamentalist takeover accomplished was to cause the SBC to abandon Bold Mission Thrust and to halt its growth as an excited, missions-focused convention. Being Southern Baptist does not mean a greater commitment to the Bible; a greater commitment to missions; or a greater commitment to cooperation and love.
In Texas, however, we can still practice those commitments by working together and moving forward with our focus on the vision given us by our new executive director, Randel Everett. Let us move forward together in the real world. The world needs a focused, committed Baptist witness, and the BGCT can lead in that effort.
TEXAS BAPTISTS COMMITTED CONVOCATION
As I write this, our Board's committee chairs are finalizing the program for our Convocation, to be held from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m., Tuesday, August 19, at Gaston Oaks Baptist Church in Dallas. We plan to send out a newsletter, detailing the program, within the next 2 weeks. Please mark your calendars now for this exciting event.