Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:
    a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
    a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
    a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
    a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

• Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

• Luke 6:25

Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

• James 4:9

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—thinkabout such things.

• Philippians 4:8

Jesus wept.

• John 11:35

“To me there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think — spend some time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. If you laugh, think and cry, that’s a heck of a day.”

• Jim Valvano

I have had a number of Jim Valvano heck-of-a-days in the past three months.

Before my wife passed away, my Dad’s teaching reigned supreme.  “Real men do not cry.”

I once asked him, and got severely punished for my words.  I asked, “If real men do not cry, then was Jesus a real man?”

My Dad thought I was speaking blasphemy, but I was just trying to understand.

My Dad thought I was too soft, and he wanted me to get tough.  Even as an Army officer, a captain in the Army, I was soft, but I had learned to not cry. In three months in 2011, my brother, my Dad, and my mother all died, and I shed only one or two tears for my Dad and stopped short of crying. My wife was worried, but I have made up for it since her passing.

I wrote earlier this week, about how AI (artificial intelligence) will someday take over, because we are even now willing to give up thinking.  Many, maybe most, of us are willing to let the computer do that for us.

But as for me, thinking keeps me alive.  If we abdicate thinking, we give up on life itself.  No other creature on earth was created in God’s image, except for us.  We can think.  We can be driven to accomplish goals.  Other animals can learn, but only by their instincts.

Since my wife passed away over three months ago, I have had moments of thought every day.  I have wept more days than not, but then to laugh …

I had a dear friend call me the other day.  Since my wife’s passing, she has called about once each month, and she said, after about thirty minutes, “I have heard you laugh.  My job is done.  I’ll call you again in a few weeks.”  I think she knows it, but I have to say it again, “I love you, m’lady.”

And I wrote recently, in the “Credits” section of a short story, that I had a rotten day, on the third anniversary of my wife’s death.  I was in such grief that I almost could not think that day, but I had written the short story, with a little humor laced into it, but all from memory.  Then, I added the origin of a name and that led to me listening to Ray Stevens singing, Misty.  And in a day dominated by sorrow for nearly the entire day, I had a moment of laughter.

The thinking should be the dominant one of the three, but as long as you do all three, even for a fleeting moment, you have had a heck of a day.

And when circumstances seem to get in the way of one of those days, God has a way of making it happen, if you have faith in Him.  Joy is always there, and laughter is when it reaches the surface.  Trust in Him, and you can have a lot of those days.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.