I Love You, Pookie

I'd say, "Life is funny," but that would be pointing to some abstract, fatalistic idea that life's twists and turns are somehow random or determined by chance. God determines our steps. God holds all of life in His hands. It's just that sometimes He has a very strange -- to us -- way of doing it.

I have spent the last day and a half weeping. On Saturday night, I lost a coworker. He and I had worked together for more than seventeen years; we'd known one another much longer. And though time was responsible for seasoning our relationship, time or chance was not responsible for the depth of friendship we experienced.

When I transferred into John's department years ago, I considered myself to be pretty good at my job. I'd already been with the company many years, and I was reliable and conscientious. After my transfer, I realized just how little I knew. This department was an entirely different world, and John was king of it. He'd been there longer than many of the folks who worked beside him and above him. He knew his job backwards and forwards. He could to get to the root of an issue with a few specific, direct questions, and that same skill enabled him to problem solve just as succinctly. He knew how to give an order and make people follow it. He was one of the quietest people in the room but his presence loomed larger than anyone else's.

I admired those qualities. And I resented them. John could make me feel small with little more than a look. Everything I said or did he retained in some dark corner of his mind for use at the most inconvenient (for me)/ opportune (for him) moments, moments he used to call me out -- publicly. He was gruff, sinister, inappropriate, and downright rude. Banging the phone on people was his trademark, and I used to wish he would one day do it to someone with the power to threaten his job and put him in his place. He could go for days without speaking to anyone, and I went day after day wishing he'd never speak to me again. Every confrontation with him left me feeling completely stupid or insignificant. This was John's world, and he reluctantly tolerated the rest of us in it.

Some time ago, as I was driving home and tears of frustration were, once again, pouring down my face, a strange thought occurred to me: Every time you call out of work, John spends days "punishing" you by only speaking harshly to you, only pointing out your flaws; but every time he's bragging on himself, he says he could do all without you -- he can't have it both ways! I was either valuable to him, or worthless. So which was it? Well, I'd learned a long time ago to put more stock in what people do than in what they say. So, that was it; I chose to believe I was valuable! And I began praying. Lord, if I am to stay here and do this job, You're going to have to handle John, or You're going to have to handle me.

God did both, I'm sure of it. Suddenly, I didn't dread going into work anymore. Suddenly, John was smiling more. Suddenly, I began praying for John because I cared about him. Suddenly, John began speaking a little more softly and entrusting me with more. Suddenly, I saw it as a challenge to get something done before he noticed or before he got the chance to do it himself. Suddenly, John spent the wee hours of the morning joking with me and poking fun. Suddenly, it was fun.

I'll refrain from playing armchair psychologist, except to say, John and I were more alike than we were different. I truly wished for him the joy and peace that I found because of Jesus Christ. I don't know if that ever happened for him. I do know, the man who once was my thorn, my nemesis, was the man I'd grown to love and care for as a friend. The man who made my job unbearable, had mellowed and matured to become one of the primary reasons I went to work each day. The man I'd grown to respect and rely on as my boss, to cherish like a brother, the man who protected me and challenged me, the man who had respect for me but kept me striving to earn it by never letting me know it was there -- is gone. I will never again play "movie quotes" with him (I was terrible, but he always gave me mulligans). I will never again allow -- though I secretly cringed at -- his irreverent, offensive sense of humor. I will never again find my desk drawer filled with thousands of sugar packets or paperclips. I will never again complain about the earworms he loved to play, while smirking behind my computer monitor at the way it made him giggle. I will never again say those words, the words I once spoke sarcastically but came to deeply mean, the words that he would never admit made him smile (but I know they did):

"I love you, Pookie."