+- CSNbbs (https://csnbbs.com)
+-- Forum: Active Boards (/forum-769.html)
+--- Forum: Lounge (/forum-564.html)
+---- Forum: The Spin Room (/forum-540.html)
+----- Forum: The Buckley-Vidal No Spin Room (/forum-970.html)
+----- Thread: Personal story I want to share (/thread-1005803.html)
Personal story I want to share - ericsrevenge76 - 02-02-2025 08:50 AM
I have a friend I've been close to for going on 24 years, we spent a lot of time together from 2003-2018. He was a very hard core atheist who generally had hatred for Christians and Christianity, though it wasn't a frequent topic of discussion. But it increasingly became an issue around 2015 as I became very serious about my faith and study of it, and combined with the fact that I felt he and his wife were into a lot of very spiritually destructive lifestyles and things. It became difficult for me to visit and spend time together anymore for various reasons. I still maintained the friendship but it gradually shifted to more about texting and not spending time together in person. But we still communicated multiple times a week until about 2019 when we talked very little and things got more tense. He had started trucking and his wife started nursing school about that time. We didn't talk at all in 2020 and I moved away in 2021. So we didn't talk at all for almost 4 years.
January of 2024 while visiting my family I reached out and we started to talk again. We cleared the air about some things and spent countless hours talking on the phone and texting while he was on the road. He had planned to retie from trucking by the summer/fall and transition to Uber driving. Because he was on the road we spent a lot of late nights really reconnecting in a way that I though was wonderful. He was clear he felt the same way. Like any genuine Christian I felt a strong need to share the gospel and the reason for my faith since I am now in a small joint ministry with another friend where we teach and argue the reasons and evidences for our faith. I told him what I did now but did not push any of it on him over the phone, I wanted to reconnect for a while and then try to in person once I came back down to visit.
Well he did retire from trucking in August, he and his wife bought a really nice home this summer, he bought a new car for the uber stuff, he bought a lot of stuff for a new man cave, music system, game stuff, new big screen TV. He basically cashed in on all his hard work and was now ready to enjoy the well earned fruits of his labor. We talked about it all summer, and I told him how happy I was for him that after years of struggle they were doing so well and now its time to enjoy it. I had a planned visit for mutiple weeks with my family so we are making plans to spend some time hanging out (we had not seen each other in some 5 years).
So did come down as planned in November but did have any free time at first as I was talking care of my mother post surgery. As she got better I got a short flu bug so that further delayed me coming over to his house. I still had a week left so it was no big deal, hey we have all the time in the world. Its a new day, we're friends again and I'm going to be coming down a lot, plus he is going to come and spend some time at my place in WV.
That last week I get a text from his wife telling me he was in the hospital and in ICU. He had taken some new medication that gave him a bad pancreatitis attack. While there he also had a bad attack of ketoacidosis which is deadly. Now he was on a ventilator and they were keeping him out to give his system and kidneys time to heal. They were also doing dialysis because the ketoacedosis damaged his kidneys. I went up to see him immediately and this is the first time I have seen him in 5 years and he is in ICU on a ventilator fighting for his life out of nowhere. Based on everything his wife had told me I am not expecting him to live, and all I want to do is have the chance to tell him the gospel one more time and tell him how easy it is to change his mind and be saved. I just wanted to tell him I loved him and if he changed his mind all he had to do is repent and believe in Christ. Even now after a lifetime of rejecting it he can change his mind if he wanted to.
But he was unconscious from the drugs they were giving him. I visited twice more and he was out for some 10 straight days by design from his doctor. I had a disability hearing with a judge back in WV that I could not miss so I had to go home even though he was still in ICU and not yet awake. Shortly after I got home he began to improve and wake up. He was half awake one day and fully awake the next and the doctors were now expecting a near full recovery. He was on the lowest level of the vent and they were going to begin to take him off it completely the next day. That night though he developed a fever, went septic and died within 36 hours.
I had nearly a whole year to talk about the gospel and the faith with him but I waited for us to get together in person before I ever brought it up. And then right when the time comes for us to get together, he has a massive medical breakdown out of nowhere and dies. He was just 48 years old and perfectly fine 3 weeks before. I thought we had all the time in the world and now I'll never see or talk to him again.
I don't know what was in his heart that final day he was lucid and awake, he was still on the vent and mostly unable to talk. The day before when he was becoming lucid his wife said he had cried a lot. I know I prayed for years for God to open his heart and ears to the truth, and while he was sick I had many people pray for him to have one last chance to hear the Gospel and consider his cosmic views.
I know his heart was hard set against it most of his life as bad as anyone I ever knew. And its seemed to me after not talking for so long and then reconnecting and talking so much this past year that it was meant to be and was leading somehwhere. I had so looked forward to the time when we could talk about it face to face again and share all the things I learned the last several years. But its never going to happen now. I'm never going to get a text from him again, I'll never get a call from him again, all the things we talked about doing in the coming months and years is gone now.
I've had to deal with a lot of close family deaths the last 3 years, most were from much older people who I knew were close to the end. This sudden loss is very hard to cope with though. It just doesn't seem real somehow, though I know it is. Its really hard to accept as reality. He was perfectly fine and now out of nowhere he is gone. And at just 48 years old.
There is so much left I wanted to say and talk about with him. But now I'll never get the chance. I had just told him a few weeks prior that I loved him and was thankful we had reconnected and he said the same. As broken hearted as I am I'm thankful for the last year we had. I'm also broken hearted for his poor wife who has very little family and now has to pick up the pieces and try to carry on.
It just doesn't seem real, but it is.
RE: Personal story I want to share - TigerBlue4Ever - 02-03-2025 10:20 AM
As you well know, tomorrow is not promised to any of us. I pray that he had a change of heart in his last lucid hours. He was lucky to have such a good friend in you Eric. You will be in my prayers as you struggle to come to grips with this tragic event. However, I know you will, your faith will see you through. Were it me in such a situation I think I'd much prefer to believe that when he was faced with the prospect of his own death that he reached out to God and proclaimed Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Perhaps that was the reason for his awakening.
RE: Personal story I want to share - Bronco'14 - 02-07-2025 05:37 PM
I'm glad you had a pretty good relationship w/ him. I know for me atheists can be hard, I feel like they're always trying to take you down w/ them. You must be very patient.
The Apostles preached w/ urgency. There was no 'maybe tomorrow I will.' If he was a devout atheist & specifically hatred to Christianity, I'm sure the Gospel wasn't foreign to him, but you wonder w/ so many "Christian" false teachers out there, maybe he just hadn't heard it correctly.
I know I'm very bad at sharing it, I've dropped so many, many opportunities to share it. I in error tend to think 'you don't talk about religion b/c you s/ try to be on good terms w/ people'.....well, that's not actually the Christian calling
His wife was spared tho. The Lord calls the widows. Would there be an opportunity w/ her?
RE: Personal story I want to share - ericsrevenge76 - 02-08-2025 11:08 AM
(02-07-2025 05:37 PM)Bronco14 Wrote: I'm glad you had a pretty good relationship w/ him. I know for me atheists can be hard, I feel like they're always trying to take you down w/ them. You must be very patient.
The Apostles preached w/ urgency. There was no 'maybe tomorrow I will.' If he was a devout atheist & specifically hatred to Christianity, I'm sure the Gospel wasn't foreign to him, but you wonder w/ so many "Christian" false teachers out there, maybe he just hadn't heard it correctly.
I know I'm very bad at sharing it, I've dropped so many, many opportunities to share it. I in error tend to think 'you don't talk about religion b/c you s/ try to be on good terms w/ people'.....well, that's not actually the Christian calling
His wife was spared tho. The Lord calls the widows. Would there be an opportunity w/ her?
I don't know yet, I'm hoping so. They were pretty weird and kept to themselves and just a few people and most of their family is already passed. She's a little unusual and hard for me read but I think right now she wants us to still be friends and stay in touch. If that hold then absolutely I will be talking about it with her at some future point.
She actually was in church when she was a teen but he basically converted her to hard core atheism and a more spiritually destructive world view on multiple levels. So I don;t know what to expect from here.
I'm still half in denial that he is even gone. It was just so unexpected.