On Losing a Dear Friend

My dear friend, Lupe, died ten days ago, on the night of the big snow storm. She had cancer, a relentless cancer. She wasn’t ready to die, even though she’d suffered so much. She was a woman who had life in her. I didn’t get to see her again and as hard as I wanted to, there was no way I was going to be able to get to the hospital in time. I wanted to tell her one last time how much she meant to me, how much she meant to so many people.

After I came home from Chile and she got so sick, I didn’t spend enough time with her. I lived almost an hour away, which seemed far, but now it seems a lot closer than the grave.

Lupe and I had a friendship that was long and layered. We knew each other for over twenty years.

She drank a lot of Diet Coke. Pretty much every time I’d go into her office she’d be drinking Diet Coke, usually with a splash of lemon in it. She also loved the movie theatre. She liked going to the matinee by herself to unwind and decompress. She loved her son Dan with a maternal affection that astounded me, and taught me how to love my own children. She and her husband, Tim, had a relationship that I admired. Tim gave Lupe great freedom to be herself. She did the same for him. I appreciated watching them do life together through the years. She loved her grandchildren with such affection.

Lupe and Tim helped me when I was trying to decide whether or not to marry John. I sat in her living room one afternoon. She didn’t have any hair, and was wearing a pretty red scarf on her head. They listened as I listed all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea, why I wasn’t ready. Then I told them how much I loved John and that he was a good man, all the way to his core. They were patient with me, made room for me to come to my own decision, but also gently encouraged me to make my decision for me and not for all the onlookers who might be quick to judge.

Before Lupe was diagnosed with cancer, and before I moved to Chile, we worked together in a ministry capacity. We prayed for people together, and eventually settled in as ministry partners. We told each other things, things I suppose will go to the grave. Lupe Maple was one of the best secret-keepers of anyone I have ever known.

Sex didn’t freak her out, which meant she could handle difficult and shocking stories. This also meant she was privy to many people’s pain. I’d tell her things about situations, about people, and she’d nod her head, mostly because she’d already know about it. Nothing phased her. But even though she was well acquainted with the dark side of humanity, she could hold out hope like nobody’s business. Lupe Maple could see God’s good and eternal ways straight through the thickest forest, particularly the way God creatively redeems and lifts us up. I’d talk to her about a situation, feeling hopeless about it, and she’d pause. “I wonder what God is up to,” she’d say. She taught me to look for the hidden ways of God, the underside of a situation, how if you look for the strand of grace and redemption, you’ll almost always find it.

She was not the most organized person. There was almost always a pile of paper strewn about on her desk that needed filing. Don’t tell her that. She’ll wonder what you’re talking about. She also had low blood sugar issues and could get very cranky, which meant I had to learn gentle ways to ask if she needed something to eat.

We both loved to read, and we’d swap book titles. She really liked Dick Francis novels. But she’d read whatever I recommended. Once I suggested she read this dense, six book historical novel series, and she dove in. We talked of nothing else for weeks. She also read every draft of every book I ever wrote, multiple times. The last novel I gave her to read, she called me on the phone. “Your book was amazing,” she said. I cried.

Lupe loved God in a way that I could relate to, but also in a way that seemed more mature than me, particularly in my twenties. I was this Charismatic mystic in a Baptist church, and while I loved it there, I wasn’t always sure where I belonged. Lupe assured me that I belonged with God and that was all that mattered.

We didn’t agree on everything. Sometimes she’d make me mad. Her truth radar was focused. There were times she’d say something so direct to me, so paralyzingly pointed, it would sting too much and I wouldn’t able to hold myself together. So, I’d bolt. But over time, I’d take her words and think them through, ponder them, and glean the gold from them. There was always gold in her words. Always.

Once, years ago, we were sitting in her office, along with a ministry team of people. I was talking to someone else. She as across the way. I mentioned to the person I was talking to that I thought God wanted me to learn how to garden. Faster than a whip, she turned to me from across the office, “Yes, that’s true. God wants you to get your hands in the soil. God wants to teach you how to nurture the ground.”

Another time, in my early years of ministry, I was feeling the awful pain around the issue of women in ministry. I felt like the pastors, which were all men, had this club, a very powerful club, and I saw no way in. It felt exclusive and it hurt something fierce. I went to her and poured out my heart. I cried my tears, shook my fists, so young and idealistic. She listened and agreed with me, which felt good. But then in her wise way she paused and spoke with a spiritual authority that doesn’t come from position, but from time spent with God. “Tina, you may never get invited into the Good Ol Boys’ Club. But God will never exclude you from what God has called you to do. God will make a way. Leave the clubs to the men. God’s ways are higher.”

Those words, spoken nineteen years ago became a beacon of truth, a helpful Northstar. Belonging has always been a big deal to me, and truth is, human made systems exclude, but the deeper truth is that God will not be mocked. The gifts and call of God are irrevocable and if God has called you to preach, no system will be able to stop you. Somehow, you will rise above the system.

There are stories I cannot tell anyone. Private conversations, confessions of pain and longing that very few know anything about. There are things that hurt so much I thought I might die, and Lupe bore them all with great forbearance, and a gentle tenderness. She had this uncanny ability to sit with me in silence and it wasn’t silent at all. Her silence had warmth and deep presence. She also had the ability to feel great sadness for me, but never doubted my strength to overcome.

There is more, so much more. I could tell you that she’s one of the only ones who made room for me in ministry, who continuously believed in my vocational calling. That when no one would ask me to preach or teach, she did. That when all hell broke loose in my life, she stood her ground and claimed heaven for me. That she loved my kids. I could tell you that she suffered, particularly over the loss of her grandchildren. They moved far away and it broke her. I could tell you that toward the end it all seemed overwhelmingly unfair. I could tell you that she was frightened and tired.

A couple months ago, we talked on the phone about her tumors, and then we talked about how God is leading her to pray for people and things. Always prayer. Always redemption. Always truth and grace intermingled, interwoven.

I miss her in a visceral way. It isn’t just that Lupe Maple changed my life, it’s that she was an integral part of it, of my formation as a person, a woman a mother, and as a child of God.

I am deeply grateful for her friendship.

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