A light that never goes out

After one of our infamous mud fights at camp!  We ended with shaving cream before hitting the creek!

​One of my best friends just turned 80 during December.  She is 9 months older than I.  I have known her most of my life.

Think mud fights, and staying up until 3 just to get ready for the next day, and silencing giggling girls after 3 so we could maybe get up the next morning.  Think trips to the hospital every day for a week (we had quite dangerous activities!)  Think  meeting from January until July planning activities, and loading stuff to use in those activities into a borrowed school bus.  (And yes, we filled the bus.)  The bus held only a part of the "stuff".  Everyone on the staff loaded their vehicles.

Think laughter, tears, hikes, hugs....oh my goodness.  Have I only written a short paragraph?  I could go on and on about the days my friend Jackie and her husband Bob, and their boys, plus Tommy and me and our boys, spent doing church camp together in Unicoi, Tennessee.  For 35 years we spent a week every summer in July, at senior high camp.  I have never seen a week of camp like ours.  During those years, Jackie, Bob, Tommy and I became so close that we usually knew what each other thought before we even talked.  A friendship like that is rare.  I don't take it lightly.

Today, my friend Jackie is lying in bed, in her home, perhaps breathing her last breath.  I don't have one single worry about where Jackie is going, but I am sad for those of us left behind.  I know that as long as Jesus and His people are in the world that light won't go out.  But, it will be a little dimmer with Jackie gone.

From left to right, Pat, Tommy, Bob, Jackie (getting an award for doing camp for 35 years!)