Note: Two years ago I wrote this blog about my lifelong friends, Peggy and Bill Shipley. On Saturday, August 2nd of this year, Peggy passed away.  As a tribute to her, I wanted to share what I wrote again with you today.
I’ve been watching the rise of mentoring programs for underprivileged young men. Donald Miller began The Mentoring Project because he grew up without a father. Duncan Campbell started Friends of The Children for very different reasons. Both Donald and. Duncan have come to the same conclusion: being a mentor takes a long time.
Sometimes it is not just the underprivileged or low-income boys needing a caring adult and it takes even longer than 12 years. There are times in the life of the overprivileged that make friends and mentors a gift from God. In fact, it is now 50 years since I met the most important influences in my life – Bill and Peggy.
I was an angry 17-year-old trying hard to be an atheist. Hearing about a Bible study led by a young and enthusiastic couple who were new Christians themselves, I went to Bill and Peggy’s house intending to disrupt the group with questions and cynical comments. Instead I found myself drawn into their “spell ” and they began what I’ve called the Emmaus Road journey – walking with me even while I was going in the wrong direction until, many years later, I found Christ and turned around.
Over time, my life flowed into – and filled the – crevices of theirs. They were always available and interested. Even anniversaries, holidays and late nights were not off bounds. They took me in and opened themselves and their home to an unlovable and rebellious young man. Wherever I went in the world over the next several decades, I wrote long letters describing every stage of my life, and Peggy has them all filed away in order. There were seasons when I was angry and embarrassed about their unrelenting love for me and I would cut them off – sometimes for years.
But somewhere we crossed the line into friendship. It was probably as I became older, married and had children. Not surprisingly, my wife, Carol, and Peggy are similar in almost every way.
I’ve heard that friendships are formed around having something in common. For us, it was probably Bill and Peggy teaching us to love the South Carolina beaches, North Carolina mountains and the people and traditions of their roots. Filling in crevices turned into an inseparable bond between us that has lasted half a century now. In Wendell Berry’s words, “We are obligated to each other. We have a call on each other’s lives.”
As you are reading this I am with Bill and Peggy in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because Peggy has a form of aphasia and can no longer read or say what she is thinking, Bill will read this to her and be surprised. Peggy will know and understand as she has always known. She’ll break out that glorious smile of the deepest kind of knowledge, acceptance and love. Bill cares for her now as he always has. She is the love of his life and he taught me by example everything I know about loving my wife.
Our family will drive to the beach they found for us and to which we have returned for 35 years. When we sit down to eat at Lee’s Kitchen in Murrell’s Inlet we’ll be grateful for them and 50 years of affection, self-sacrifice, patience, friendship and love.
And for me, I will be thinking about these words from Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow and how blessed and fortunate I was as a foolish young man to be given such friends:
“Now I have had most of the life I am going to have and I can see what it has been. I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift and times when looking back at earlier time it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error. But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me unbroken and maybe even as straight as possible from one end to the other and I have this feeling which never leaves me anymore that I have been led.”