Dearest Rachel –
He may not have quite been the favorite musician for either of us, but we did happen to see my namesake, Randy Stonehill (hey, not many people share my name, let alone ‘famous’ people like artists, musicians and whatnot), live in concert three times throughout our lives together. Maybe it’s because he was never particularly pretentious in his choice of venues, being willing to play at small churches just as much as concert festivals; so a ticket to see him wasn’t a particularly costly thing in and of itself.
The second time that we saw him in person was at the Methodist campgrounds down by the Des Plaines River. At the time, it was barely a year after the accident that had claimed Rich Mullins’ life. One of the songs on Randy’s latest album at the time paid tribute to Rich (although without actually name checking him in the lyrics), describing a sort of ascension from this life on earth to the next. As he introduced the song during his performance, he talked about his friend and fellow musician, and expressed his thoughts about Rich’s demise thusly; “I suppose that, if you’ve accomplished everything that the Lord asks of you, He’ll give you permission to knock off early.”
To this day, I take that sort of attitude toward your own departure; I don’t know exactly what it was that He assigned you to do down here, but you must have completed it to the point where you, too, were permitted to retire that much earlier than the rest of us.
Now, that’s not quite what happened to me yesterday, except in the most literal sense, which is what brought this to mind. I had reported to church at the usual time for VBS – actually, an hour or so early, in fact, as I’d taken the opportunity to grab an early dinner while on my way, and budgeted rather too much time for my meal – and went to check in with the gal (I can say “gal,” given the Western theme of this year’s program, I think) in charge of volunteers. However, when she went to check off my name, she realized that it wasn’t even on the day’s list to cross off. Which kind of made sense since I was part of the team handling registrations and wristbands; this being the final day of the session, there wouldn’t be any new kids coming that would need to be registered. My services were no longer required; I’d already done my job, and I could go home.
This proved to be particularly opportune, as Daniel was to be home that evening on his own. Logan was going to be with his family, watching his sister on stage. Granted, Daniel has proven to be quite capable of keeping himself occupied and entertained on his own, sure, but after being away during the evenings like this for this past week, it would be nice to be able to spend some ‘quality time’ of sorts with him, even if, as it has been so often, it was to be mostly spent in front of a screen watching YouTube together.
It didn’t hurt that he’d asked me to pick up dinner for him on my way home – although, as I’d mentioned earlier, I’d eaten before arriving at church, so I wouldn’t be eating with him in any event. In my defense, I did that because I had assumed that I would be doing… something… at VBS last night until nearly nine o’clock, like I had been every night this past week until then, and had no desire to be eating that late and then going off to bed shortly thereafter, thereby allowing my system to just give up and turn the food into fat before shutting down itself. I may not be doing everything I should be to get back to losing weight (partly because I’m less and less hopeful that ‘Megumi’ exists, let alone that she’ll ever show up), but I know enough to at least not do that. Still, this way Daniel would be eating at a reasonable hour, too – not that he needs to prevent himself from gaining weight or anything.
To be honest, there isn’t that much else to relate about the situation, honey; everything else about the evening followed from there. I took his order, stopped at the place he specified, go what he requested, and headed home. Once I did, I set him up in his recliner on your side of the bedroom, and we watched videos until neither of us could keep our eyes open – at which point Logan returned home, giving Daniel a second wind, and myself the opportunity to send him off so that I could just curl up and go to sleep. Nothing particularly memorable about it, other than the fact that it was a different scenario than any other evening this past week, so I thought about it that way.
Granted, I suppose that, when we get to heaven, we won’t be likely to just be sitting around passively like he and I were (or maybe we will, at certain points; it’s described at times as a place where we can rest from our earthly labors, after all, even if at others we’re to expect to spend much of our time there praising our Lord who let us in there in the first place). Or maybe we will, since I’m also told that nearly everything good that we enjoy here on earth will still exist up there, by virtue of it being ‘good’ – and therefore, of God – in the first place. Then again, you know better than either of us do, so I should know better than to speculate like this in front of you.
But all this is what crossed my mind as I drove home and hung out with him last night, so I thought I would share it with you. I do so wish you could fill me in on the details I’m just guessing about down here, but for now, I’d be satisfied if you could just keep an eye on me and wish me well.
Letters to Rachel 