The Blessing Today...

[Mike Vande]

...an email I got from a a friend. Ron Conkin and I became friends back about 1977. I had seen him around in high school several years before, but we were never friends back then. When I came back to my home town from the Air Force, I tried out for a band some guys were putting together. Ron was at the audition too, and beat me out of the gig. Beat me out of it is kind of an understatement; he smoked me like a Virginia ham. Frankly, I would have chosen him over me, too. Nowadays, I call him one of the two best guitarists I know personally, and I know him a lot better than the other one.

Bands being the temporary sort of phenomenon they always are, we wound up trying to get a band going a year or so later. I got to spend a lot of time with Ron then. We made some fairly lengthy road trips together, and spent a lot of time hanging out and talking philosophically about stuff. I learned that Ron was not only an excellent guitarist, he was a genuinely nice guy.

Our band was in rehearsal for a very long time, mainly because we kept having to replace people. After months of rehearsal and five personnel changes, we finally played three gigs, none which made any money. Then he got a better offer, which he had to take. I decided to join the Navy because the music thing just wasn't happening for me, it seemed. So, we went our separate ways, him to the band and me to boot camp.

I saw him a few times in the next couple of years. When I came home on leave the first time, he and his wife had just had a son. When I came home the next time, he and she had separated and were getting a divorce. He was living in the 'band house", and I spent a couple of weeks there, sort of being a roadie/moocher, and occasionally jamming with the band at gigs. I went back to my ship very unhappily after my leave was over . After the way I had been living with the band, it was depressing to be going back to Navy life.

The next time I saw Ron, I was a much different person than I had been the last time we'd seen each other. I had sobered up, given my life to Jesus and gotten baptized in the Holy Spirit. When I saw him, I think I might have seemed just a bit on the rabid side. When I told him about what had happened, he was mildly amused but tolerant. We talked for a little bit, then went our separate ways.

I didn't see him again for a couple of years. In the interim, he had hooked up with a lady fiddle player and gone off the to the southeast to play in some bands out there. Then I found out from a friend that he'd moved back to the midwest, and was living about thirty miles north of me. So I called him up, and ended up going over to see him. He was playing better than ever, and was still a really nice guy.

We talked about God a little bit then. He said he believed in Jesus, but he couldn't see why God would wet his pants over a little friendly fornication. He thought that was all a trick of the enemy, meant to deceive people out of the pleasure God had intended them to have, whenever they wanted and with as many different partners as they wanted to. Needless to say, we didn't have a meeting of the minds on that. But we parted friends, and another few years passed before we saw each other again.

The next time I saw him, I was pretty much on the ropes spiritually. My marriage had ended, and I was awash in guilt over that. After a long siege with cancer, my father had died. I was miserably adrift, out of fellowship with both God and the church, and drinking again. He was passing through town with a band, and playing at a bar. So, I went to see him, and we got to talk a bit.

I think he must have noticed how out of it I was. I was pretty drunk by the end of the evening, and that was a far cry from the way I had been the previous two times we'd met. He said he and "Louie"(how he referred to God then) had a thing going, and he'd talk to Him for me. I gave him my address, and he said he'd write. He did write a few times, and we talked on the phone once or twice.

After that, I ran into him occasionally in our home town. He'd moved back to the southeast with the lady fiddle player. But they ended up playing in different bands and were separated a lot. Eventually, she broke his heart by being unfaithful to him, and he moved back to our home town.

When we got together again, he told me that had finally taught him why God put restrictions on sex. He saw how people could get hurt by it. In his pain, he had spent a long time talking deeply with God. I started to see that Ron was very sincere about seeking God, and that God was working in Ron, bringing him along at His own pace.

Eventually we both wound up in Kansas City, and we got to see each other more often. Every time we got to talk, I could see that God was bringing him a little further along. God was teaching him what he needed to know, and I was getting a little bit excited about it..

I got him a study bible so he could look a little deeper in to the scriptures, and being the disciplined sort of guy he is, he started following the study chains. He really started to learn what the Word of God was about..

Ron had been married again by then, and his wife wasn't very receptive to his beliefs. But Ron's not really a pushy guy, and he wasn't giving her any reason to complain. he read his scriptures and prayed, and didn't throw stuff in her face. They eventually came to agree that he could believe what he wanted to, and she'd believe what she wanted to.

Eventually, they moved to Iowa, and Ron and I started having long talks on the phone every few months. He called me when his father passed away, They had been close, and Ron was hurting. We talked for a while, and I tried to offer what comfort I could. He told me his dad had been affiliated with a church there in our home town for years, and he hadn't known. He was really glad to find that out, and hopes to see him again in heaven.

In the next couple of years, Ron and I talked about a lot of things. One thing was about him getting settled in a church, which he eventually did. He found a church that he and his wife, and her kids that visited every so often, were able to feel comfortable in. He has come to play on his church worship team most Sundays, and seems to enjoy it a lot.

I can tell he is becoming more and more solid in Christ. I can also say very happily that God is working out His expression of Himself through Ron in a way that is uniquely Ron-like; he is still that nice guy I knew back in the day, maybe just a little more-so.

He is very consistent in prayer and bible study, and I believe that has been a big help to his spiritual growth. He has had need of strength recently; he has taken a personal hurt from someone he loves that a lot of men would have become bitter about, but he seems to have avoided most of the bitterness he could have fallen into. I see a lot of Jesus in him.

Ron emailed me an encouraging message last week, and it really blessed me. He says I'm in his prayers daily, and I am glad to hear it. He tells me that I have been an inspiration to him, but I hope he knows that seeing God bring him along has been one of the greatest inspirations of my life, and I thank God, and Ron, for it.

[Paully_44]

Mike,

I will have to say that your recent revelation to start posting your Daily Blessings has truly been a postive for me. I look forward to see what and how God is doing things in your life.

thanks for sharing.