Pal invited me to her church one seemingly uneventful Wednesday night. Raised in a Buddhist family, my Thai friend was a new Christian of a few years.
The church had a supper before the prayer service, and we sat with others at a table. Pal started to talk with a women she knew well in the church.
"Jane has written a book, " she said, "about how God saves marriages!"
The woman looked at me and asked, "What gives you the right to write about that? What do you know about it?"
Pal took the question for me, immediately blurting in a happy voice: "Because it happened to her!" So quick to defend was Pal!
What my husband and I accepted gratefully from God for our marriage never happened for Pal's marriage. By the time I met her she was accepting that her husband wanted someone else and refused all reconciliation attempts.
Divorce was the great sadness of Pal's life. One life-changing light entered the disastrous journey two days before I met Pal for the first time. Doug, a supervisor in the company where Pal worked, noticed her misery. He was a Christian and one evening he saw Pal waiting for an elevator. He later told her that she had looked so miserable, he thought she might be sick.
When Doug approached her, Pal passed up the elevator when it came and they sat on a sofa in the upper lobby. After she told him about her dying marriage, Doug told her about Jesus Christ.
Pal said later that she had not realized the meaning entirely of the new believer's prayer she agreed to pray with Doug. Before they parted, Doug told Pal that within three days someone else would tell her of Jesus. Later, he said he had no idea why he said that, and it concerned him a bit that he had.
Doug did not know that the next day at the local Mall, Pal would meet someone she barely knew, the sister of a co-worker. The three had planned to lunch together, so Pal could meet Geri, my friend. When the sister was running late, Geri asked the usual general greeting questions. Pal began to pore out her sadness over her dying marriage.
"Have you been to the Buddhist temple?" Geri asked. Discouraged recently, she had decided that when she tried to tell others of Christ, no one responded. So she decided to rely on common sense.
"I went, but it did no good," Pal replied.
"Well," Geri said, "all I know is to tell you what Jesus Christ has done for me."
Immediately Pal grew pale and started to shake and cry. It scared Geri. What was going on? Then Pal told her about Doug, and what he had said the evening before: "Within three days someone will speak to you again of Jesus."
That evening, I met Pal for the first time. Geri, visiting her sister from out of state, called me: "Can I bring a new Christian to your house tonight? My sister's house will be busy."
My husband was out of the country and I wanted to continue a long writing project. "You can come," I said, "but I will need to work."
They came, Pal and I met, I served coffee and cookies and excused myself. I got halfway down a hall toward the room where I worked and turned around. I went back to join them. That began one of the most meaningful friendships of my life. Geri had wanted a Christian to stick with Pal after she returned to her home in New England. She had already given Pal a Bible.
That evening the three of us prayed, and I could see tears replaced with a peaceful expression for Pal. Pal inspired friendship, and it was easy to invite her to come again.
From then onward, Pal began to understand more of what Jesus did on the Cross, and what God promised through raising Him from the grave. She began to tell others about Jesus. One by one, Christian friends came into her life from unexpected ways.
A joyous friendship with a new Christian was my privilege through Pal, an eager learner. She wanted me to teach her about the Bible. I decided to start with the Gospel of John. When Pal arrived at lunch for our first lesson she announced: "I know where I want to start studying."
"Where?" I asked, thinking about my plans with the book of John.
"Ezekiel."
We started there, and I had to rely on God for everything I learned and taught Pal. There was so much in the book of Ezekiel that spoke to Pal. I wondered if it related to the eastern ways, in Thailand, under which she had grown up.
We shared many a sandwich at my kitchen table. Pal's office was about five minutes from my house. She came almost daily, until my husband's work took me with him to live in Switzerland.
In the early years of our friendship, I often studied the Bible in bed. I had left my work in DC to return home for my daughter's last year of high school, and beyond. I would sit in bed with various Bible translations around me, studying. I prayed hours every day, not because I planned to, but because I was drawn to it. It was an unusual and amazing time of learning.
Sometimes when Pal came early for lunch, she would lie down on the bed, putting Bibles aside, and fall asleep immediately. She could not sleep at home, but she marveled that when she got into our house and lay down in the midst of those Bibles, she was asleep immediately.
Pal would defend anyone who needed it. In spite of the marriage loss that could have crushed a person with such deep feelings, she strove to live by faith.
One day she called and said, "Let's go to a Thai restaurant. I know someone that owns one." Pal's friend served us a delicious lunch and sat with us while we ate. I doubt Pal had more than a few bites. Mainly, she spoke to her friend in Thai. She stopped a few times to tell me what she was trying to get across to her friend, about Jesus.
I don't know if Pal's friend ever took to heart what Pal said to her that day. Pal was sowing seed, preparing the ground, and I am sure she planted truth into her friend's mind that day.
When Pal died suddenly, she still had so many good years of life and work left. Her sons were a teenager and a 20-something. She died at home, having left a loving mark on many lives.
On the day of her funeral, the office of a successful former employer was closed all the day, due to her death and the service. The CEO and his closest staff were at the funeral home the evening before the funeral. Their faces were among the most solemn.
Pal was a friend indeed. She learned deeper levels of friendship, I believe, during her years on earth as a Christian. Her mother and sister professed Christ due to her witness, even though at first they reviled her beliefs. She put her mother in touch with loving pastors in Bangkok.
"What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer."
In spite of her sorrows, Pal could be a funny friend. She brought much laughter into our home, and my two daughters loved and enjoyed her. Pal knew Jesus closely. She befriended others in His name. What a friend, indeed, knowing such a Friend. And what a friend was Geri, who knew that same Friend, who shared in her honest and caring way, and confirmed Doug's words, which he had not understood himself.
Jesus is the Friend indeed, and leads many, including my husband and family, to friends like Doug, Geri, and Pal, one unexpected link at a time.
Jean Purcell is a book publisher and writer. Her first book was Not All Roads Lead Home under her pen name, Jane Bullard. Her web site is http://www.opinebooks.com and her Writing and Publishing Nonfiction Books blog is at http://janebullard.blogspot.com/ Sign up for the free Opinari Quarterly for Christian Writers, Publishing Professionals, Book Lovers, and Reviewers on her web site.
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Dear Jane, this is a beautiful tribute, eulogy and message about a friend and the greatest Friend any of us could have. Pal was probably smiling as you wrote. Congratulations on the book, Jane! Blessings to you this day and always. Respond to this comment
» left by Ken McCreless from Event Horizon (111 days 14 hours ago.)
I agree with Avis absolutely. This is indeed a mesmerizing and heartfelt tribute.
» left by Michelle Mackin (111 days 11 hours ago.)
Good morning Jane,
Beautiful and tear jerking. My dream is that when I pass that there will be more people who know Jesus because of something I may have done or said. Oh, to strive for the goal.
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