You never know

This is an extra post for today.  I had to.  I am saddened because of the circumstances surrounding a good friend and his family.  One of the good guys went down yesterday morning.  Joe got up, took a shower, sat on the bed to put his socks on and just like that couldn't lift his legs.  He called his wife over and in that short space of time his voice started going.  He was having a stroke, which, with her background she recognized.  She called 911 and they got there real quick.  Joe was one of theirs too.  They got him to the hospital and he is now in ICU, the victim of the worst kind of stroke imaginable.  They cannot operate because the damage is too deep in the brain.  He is 61.

Joe is really one of the all time good guys.  Always there to help someone.  Always a smile.  A very caring and compassionate person, to a fault almost.  Just a wonderful man.  It has always been an honor to have him for a friend.  As far as I know he drank very little, and he didn't smoke.  His achilles heel was he did like to eat, and he was overweight.  While I don't know if the was the cause for the stroke or not, I do know obesity is a pretty strong indicator for strokes.

Joe was a good family man.  A good husband, a good father, and a good man.  Always has been.  Never hasn't been.  It is one of those situations where I feel I want to yell out with a sense of indignation..."why him, he was one of the good guys?"

Whenever anything even close to this happens, I always find myself wondering how their spiritual condition is/was.  In this case, I think Joe was pretty well grounded.  I'm pretty sure he was a believer, though we never got into that kind of conversation.  Which kind of bugs me...maybe we should have somewhere along the line. 

There are a couple of points to this story:

1. we never know when something like this will happen to us, a family member, or a friend
2. it could happen at any moment
3. maybe it behooves us as followers to be sure to have "that conversation" with the folks around us

Twice along the years here a very, very dear friend has passed on.  Both of them happened to live in Tennessee.  One battled terminal cancer for quite some time and the other went pretty quick via a surgical error.  I always felt good about my buddy with the cancer because I made a trip down to see him specifically to have "that conversation" with him.  His house was already in order, so we shared some deeply christian moments together that trip.  The other one I never took the chance or time to have "that conversation" with, so I have always been just a little bit sad not knowing exactly where he stood with his maker.

As a man, a father, and a husband, I really think it behooves us to think of these things regularly and proact...actively try to have "that conversation" with our family and friends.  Their life may just depend on it.

What say you?