Let me tell you a story about old man Joe

Old man Joe.  I really liked that man.  You know those people that are just very intriguing? Joe was like that.  He didn't say much until he got to like you. I remember my first day at the law firm I saw Joe.  I couldn't figure out how to work my time card.  He said hi to me and I said hi back.  He asked if I worked there now, I told him I am the new HR assistant.  He looks at me and goes, well sweetheart, a pretty girl like yourself can't work the timecard?  Better learn, fore you drive them boys crazy.  And that was Joe.  I was the new HR Assistant, and Joe said probably the least likely thing a new HR Assistant would hear.  My first impression of Joe: a hardened smart alec man, wreaking of cigarettes and with crooked teeth... yet very intriguing.

Over the next few weeks I got to know Joe better and better.  He took to me pretty easily, and he didn't do that to most people there.  Joe and I had a great relationship, he asked me a lot about college and God, and dating and friendships and dreams, and listened very much.  Joe told me the stories of his wife.  He would get me really going with these stories about his wife.  One day the two of us are sitting in the lunchroom, and I asked him about what he and his wife were planning to do for the weekend.  That is when I found out that Joe's wife was dead.  She had died two years back from lung cancer.  Then Joe just went on and on, talking about how the sweet girl (he always called her his "sweet girl") never so much as puffed on a cigarette, and he smoked for 35 years, and she died.  It was really sad, but what really got me was when he explained to me that with every puff of a cigarette he took he felt close to her again, yet somehow felt he was killing her all over again.  What a sad life!  Joe has lived as a constant slave to his own guilt.  He is a slave to his addiction as well as his guilt and loneliness missing his "sweet girl."  

That story makes me really sad for Joe every time I think about it.  I really like that man, but also think about what a terrible life it would be to constantly live in guilt and loneliness.  But how often is that us?  How often do we choose not to live in the freedom of life, love, and faith and cut our guilt and loneliness and seek the things that are wonderful?  My prayer is that I find the strength to cut my chains, and that we all do.  How much better will it be when we can trade our regrets for dreams and faith... in everything we do? 

The reason I liked Joe so much was because he was genuine.  He really wanted to be my friend, and have a friend of his own, but I know that I could never really be friends with Joe, because he was always trapped.  Let's not let that become ourselves...