Lessons from a Friend

[Author’s note: On the 31^st of December, 2023, my friend Pastor K retired from his job at my church. I had the honor of speaking at his retirement ceremony. This is the script I wrote for that speech. I anonymized the names because that’s what you do on a blog and because the name “Junior K” made me smile for reasons that I do not understand. I hope you enjoy]

Hurricane 2019
(We made the full 120 miles that year)

I have known Pastor K for twenty years. In those years, he’s been a pastor, friend, and mentor to me. When Pastor S asked me to tell some stories about my time with Pastor K, I immediately said yes. How hard could it be to tell people about this man who has meant so much to me for so long? Several hours of staring at a blank screen later, I decided that it was, indeed, hard.

The problem isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. The problem is that I have so much to say that I couldn’t find where to start. How do I condense for you a mountain of experiences and lessons into a pithy talk celebrating my friend? The answer, of course, is that I can’t. So I won’t. Instead, I present to you four lessons I learned from my friend, and the rest of it will have to be left as a mystery.

Lesson 1: Talk to the lonely kid.

Cast your mind back to 2003. I was a young man, freshly graduated from college and feeling very alone in a new town hundreds of miles away from my friends and family. I was trying to find a church where I fit in, but I was finding that difficult because my habit of sitting in the back of church, not talking to anyone, and dashing out after service made meeting people surprisingly hard.

One day, I was sitting in the café before service. I was reading my Bible with a body posture that I hoped said “please come talk to me” but that in hindsight said, “leave me alone I’m busy.” Pastor K ignored my standoffish signals, sat down across from me, and introduced himself. And then he introduced me to Tom F. I’m going to call him Other Tom today because I’m the one talking and he isn’t.

I know that seems like a small thing. But it wasn’t. I stayed in this church because of the friendships I made here. Other Tom is one of my best friends. I met my wife here. I have grown here. I learned to love God and the people he’s given me more deeply and more fully than 23-year-old me would ever have guessed was possible. And I would not have stayed here if not for that small act of kindness.

Talk to the lonely kid.

Lesson 2: Never underestimate old people.

Old is one of those terms that’s relative. To a two-year-old, anyone who is big is old. As a teenager, adults – real adults- are old. As a twenty-something-year old, forty- and fifty-year-old people are ancient. Barely indistinguishable from octogenarians. Now that I’m forty, that’s silly. I’m clearly not old. But this part of the story is told from the perspective of a twenty-something-year-old. If you have any complaints with his categorizations, you’ll have to take it up with me twenty years ago.

Back in the early 2000s, I was at Pastor K’s house for a BBQ. Other Tom and K Junior (I’m going to call Pastor K’s son K Junior, for clarity), were wrestling in the grass like teenagers. They weren’t teenagers, but that wasn’t about to stop them. Paston K went down to the grass, and I thought I was about to witness a “time to grow up” speech. Maybe a “put away childish things” speech. But, instead, Pastor K joined in. Would his old, frail body be able to handle the rigors of combat, I thought?

It did.

Now, I don’t remember the match perfectly. I can’t tell you if Pastor K lifted Other Tom on his shoulders and spun him over his head before slamming him to the ground. I can’t tell you if Pastor K leaped off his deck to land a flying elbow on K Junior. I won’t tell you those things didn’t happen either. Like I said, I don’t remember. But what I can tell you is that, when the dust settled, the two young men were soundly defeated, and the elder K was standing in quiet victory.

Never underestimate old people.

Lesson 3: You don’t have to quit

I had the privilege of introducing Pastor K to the joys and challenges of endurance cycling. I want to tell you about a specific ride. Pastor K, K Junior, Other Tom, and I did a ride together called Ride Around the Sound. The ride started in downtown Seattle and finished by the ferry in Bremerton. The whole ride is roughly 100 miles. Cyclists call 100 mile rides centuries.

Centuries are a weird thing to do for fun. It starts fun. The morning is crisp. The ferry ride is relaxing. Riding with your friends is great. But there comes a point where your legs get tired, and your bottom hurts, and maybe your neck hurts, or your knees ache. Your hands hurt sometimes too. I’m making this sound great, right?

That’s all pretty normal stuff, and you can learn to ignore it. But there is an ailment that you cannot ignore. It turns bright days dark. It turns the friendly banter of your friends into shrill mockery. Your legs become heavy and weak. It sucks joy from life and leaves you hating your bike, the road, the sky, the birds, the entirety of creation. It is called… the bonk.

Admittedly, it is a silly name. I’m assuming the naming committee thought that calling it a descent into the depths of hatred and sadness was a bit melodramatic. The bonk is, at its core, a blood sugar problem. You can only eat so much while riding, and you will bonk if you get the balance of sugar in to sugar out wrong. The only cure is to stop for the day. Eat something. Rest.

Just a little over halfway into the ride, Pastor K bonked. Our group’s pace slowed. Pastor K struggled to keep up. We slowed some more. You could see the exhaustion on his face, in the way he pedaled, and the way he slumped over the handlebars. But he kept going. We passed the oceans of railroad tracks south of Tacoma. He did not quit. We crossed the bridge, buffeted by cross winds. He did not quit. We rolled up and down and up and down the hills around Gig Harbor. He did not quit.

For hours and hours we rolled together, our little group. And Pastor K, head down, kept pedaling when everything inside of him told him to stop. And then, we were done. He was done. He did not quit.

You don’t have to quit.

Lesson 4: It’s okay to quit sometimes

You may be confused. You may be thinking that lessons 3 and 4 are contradictory. It’ll make sense. Trust me. I want to tell you another story about Pastor K and a big ride. This time, it involves a mountain. 

The summit of Hurricane Ridge is twenty miles south of Port Angeles. It is roughly a mile above sea level, and, coincidentally, it is nearly a perfect century from the top of Hurricane Ridge to Pastor K’s house in Bremerton. The previous year, Pastor K, K Junior, and Other Tom rode from Bremerton to the summit of Hurricane Ridge, finishing in the cold and dark. This is a tremendous feat of athleticism. But it left Pastor K with a question. Could he do it in reverse?

Of course he couldn’t start on the top of the mountain. That would be cheating. Which is how Pastor K and I found ourselves on the waterfront of Port Angeles, mentally bracing for a 120-mile ride that happened to start up a mountain. Easy.

It started well enough. The weather was good. The road was steep but well maintained. The Olympic wilderness was beautiful. Perfect, except for Pastor K’s cramps. Nothing to worry about. So we kept pedaling. The road snaked up the mountain. The sea got farther and farther away every time we got a view of it through the trees. The cramps got worse, but that was okay. The mountain was the hard part. It would get easier after this. After a few hours of climbing, we reached the summit. The Olympic Mountains spread out around us, their peaks rugged and dangerous and inviting. We took a break. Ate some food. And then, we flew.

It takes hours to get to the top of Hurricane Ridge, but you can get back down in roughly a half an hour without pedaling at all. It is a glorious descent. It twists and turns down and down and down. The wind rustles and howls and whips around you as you fly down the mountain. It is a weightless, effortless feeling.

We reached the shoreline again. Forty miles down. Only eighty to go. As we rode along the trail connecting Port Angeles to Sequim, the cramps got worse. He stretched. He drank water. His wife and granddaughter met us every so often to give us food and fresh water and Tylenol. Pastor K rode through it until he couldn’t anymore.

We pulled to a stop in Sequim. His wife and granddaugher were waiting for us. Pastor K said that he probably shouldn’t finish. That maybe pushing through this time would end in injury. We hopped in the van, our 120 mile ride cut in half. Sixty miles and a mountain was enough of a ride for that day.

I learned that day that, even though you don’t have to quit, sometimes quitting is the best option on the table. And that’s okay. If you’ve never really pushed yourself, you are doing yourself a disservice. It is good to know that you are capable of pushing through far more discomfort than you think you can. Humans are excellent at suffering. We honor people who are good at it. But sometimes, sometimes the right answer is to let your wife drive you home while you eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tell stories of the adventure that you just had.

Conclusion

If it’s not obvious by now, I love and respect Pastor K. He is a friend and a mentor. I am proud of the work he’s done for this church and for his family and for his friends. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing what he does in this new chapter.

And I hope these lessons he taught me help you. Talk to the lonely kid. Never underestimate old people. You don’t have to quit. And it’s okay to quit sometimes.