Regi’s Last Word.

“Can’t I have just a little more time?” my friend Regi asked God a week before he died. 

Regi and I were sitting on the couch in his office. We were both turned toward each other with one leg bent and resting on the couch cushion. The way you would sit to be comfortable being completely turned toward the other person. 

My view was different from his. He was looking into the house while focused on me. I was looking out the bay window just beyond his desk. The view was stunning. Beautiful trees, shrubs, and flowers everywhere.  

Thanks to Miriam, his wife of over fifty years, Regi lived in one of the most beautiful homes I ever visited. And thanks to Regi, Miriam enjoyed one of the most magnificent properties in Atlanta. Together they created a dream home that few couples achieve. Heaven on earth. Yes. That’s how it felt whenever I visited my friend.

And now Regi was dying. 

After years of fighting it day after day for five years following his lung transplant and multiple bouts of serious skin cancers, he finally accepted it. There was nothing else that could be done. No treatment, no Hail Mary pass, no way.

It was with this deeply felt acceptance of his impending death that he told me this story.

“I looked out my office window at the beautiful property Miriam and I created. Then looked at my perfectly appointed office and the home we created just outside my office door. The living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the breakfast area, the family room with the walk-in fireplace off the kitchen, the screened-in porch overlooking the gardens with the lake in the background. The memories of all that happened in all those rooms.

“And the special gift of my life. My life-long partner, Miriam. My two great kids and daughter and son-in-law. My perfect and fun grandchildren who I wanted to see grow into adults. My friends, my ministry which is growing in size and impact for Christ.

“This is my life. Crazy.

“Look where I came from. Nowhere, South Carolina. Crazy.

“And I asked God, ‘Can’t you give me just a little more time to enjoy all this?’

“God reminded me of the last time I asked this question,” he said.

Miriam had just walked out of the house, gotten in her car, and left. There was Regi, his two little kids in their beds, standing at the front window to his house watching his wife drive away. He didn’t know if she would ever come back. He was thirty-two years old.

I heard Regi tell this story a number of times. 

In his telling, I always felt the emptiness, the abandonment, and the guilt.

He knew he caused her to leave. It was his decisions, his actions, and his selfishness. In telling this story to a crowd of one thousand people at the High Tech Prayer Breakfast, he said, “I remember what I was thinking, wind blowing through my hair while driving down 285 with the top down on my Mercedes. It doesn’t get any better than this.” He had the big job, an incredible career ahead of him, money, house, wife, kids, and, of course, the Mercedes. He had it all.

What he didn’t know was Miriam leaving was the first shoe to drop. The job and career were next to vanish.

When Miriam’s car went out of view, Regi walked into the backyard. He looked up at the star-filled sky and said, “God, I love my life. I just want to hold on to it a little longer. But I realize now I screwed up. Forgive me. Give me a second chance. Have Miriam forgive me. I’m yours. It is now you and me. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

He was changed in an instant. He felt it. He knew it. He was scared.

Miriam did come back a few days later. But she wasn’t sure she was going to stay in their marriage. He pleaded with her, “I’ve changed. I’ve come to Jesus. Really submitted to him this time.”

Miriam said, “Let’s take it one day at a time. We’ll see.”

Fast forward to the end of Regi’s life.

Now he was once again asking God for an “extension to this great life.” He said to me, “When I asked God for a little more time, he reminded me of my conversation forty years earlier.

“Look what God did with me. He made me new. He made my marriage new. Look. It’s crazy what happened.

“But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to let go of my family and all of this.

“Then God told me as clear as I am sitting here with you, ‘If you thought the life I created for you the first time you didn’t want to let go was great, wait to see what I have planned for you this time.’”

Regi told me a great peace swept through him and didn’t leave him. He stopped looking at what he was leaving and started focusing on where he was going. 

I was told by his son, Regi’s last word was, “Crazy.”

I miss you, my friend. Your faith in Jesus then continues to have an impact on me now.