Hey, Siestas! Well, I’m sitting right here in Terminal B at George Bush International in Houston, Texas about to head to Nashville, Tennessee to Rich’s wedding! Those of you who are not familiar with Rich may not realize he’s one of our all-time best Miestas. He’s the one who prepares all our slide shows from the events. Glance down a couple of posts and you’ll see a picture of him and his bride-to-be. My sweet, sweet relationship with that young man is one of those kinds of things only God could contruct. YEARS ago the event team at LifeWay realized they needed all hands on deck and could use somebody whose entire job at events was to get me where I needed to go. At that time, one of the event team members had a little brother (he seemed about 15 at the time but that’s a slight exaggeration) that was available for a little part time job. That was my dear Rich. I cannot even express what a fun friendship developed between a middle-aged Bible-beating woman and a young man still trying to figure a few things out.

I have watched Rich grow up. Laughed my head off with him. Prayed for him. Worried over him. Celebrated with him. Mothered him. Mothered him. And mothered him. (He’s got a fabulous mom. I’m just a maternal hormone waiting to happen so I’ll happily even mother the well-mothered.) Was around when he got serious about his first real Bible study. Was around when he first got his heart broken. Was around when his beloved grandmother went home to be with the Lord. Was around when God began to start making a photographer out of him. Was around when he first used the “L” word about a young woman named Gretchen. I nearly died. I knew he was serious when he DIDN’T tell me not to get overly excited about it.

I love this boy.

This man.

And his gorgeous, smart, godly bride. I so approve. Not that I had to – he was dead set on marrying her – but I’m blessed to say Rich would have wanted me to.

And I will have the privilege, along with my good buddy, Travis Cottrell, to be part of their wonderful, blessed wedding ceremony tomorrow. The Cottrells (all of them I hope) will pick me up at the airport and I’ll stay in their blast-of-a-home just like Trav stays in ours when he can.

I got a text from Rich early this morning. I just pulled my phone out and propped it on my lap so I can dictate it straight to you since it involves you. It says, “Thank you for your prayers from your family and siestas. This week God has put a calm on everything. He is so good.” Yes, Rich, He is. And He has so often been good to many of us through you.

If you heard my phone ding, that was Travis sending me a text. We’re getting pretty excited. They’re just about to call passengers on Flight 2474 to Nashville to board. I loved spending these few minutes in the airport with you. I hope the onions weren’t too strong on my Schlotzsky’s Medium Original.If this post seems a bit disjointed, I have stopped and started a lot while having the privilege to say hi to several people. And then I realized I had the continent’s biggest fleck of pepper between my front teeth. I hate myself.

Y’all know good and well I love you. No time to proof. Deal with it.

Tags: Rich Kalonick

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Beth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.