Posts
It was a funeral like none other I have ever attended. Today we buried my friend and staff writer David Noblett.
He died unexpectedly 2 weeks ago from a heart attack while in the middle of "the story of his life!"
David's life labor in the last 2 years has been for his lifelong friend and personal physician Dr. William Littlejohn, M.D. (Doc LJ for short.) Doc has been in a battle with the Texas Medical Board for his license that was "temporarily" suspended 2 years ago. The suspension was given due to false tesimony that was given during a heated custody battle. It was later proven that the mom signed a sworn affidavit under duress and threat that she would never see her children if she did not make the complaint against Doc LJ. It was proven-- yet the board still has yet to re-instate his license...2 years later. It has been a bureacratical nightmare that is culminating in a federal court case.
Fighting for Doc LJ's license for the last 2 years is what has given David's life new meaning and passion...something worth fighting for!
David is not stranger to battles or war-- he is a decorated Vietname verteran with numerous Purple Heart medals and Bronze Star medal and many other high commendations and military honors for his service in the Army. Yet, this is something that David was VERY private about. This was not his favorite topic of discussion, nor did he share it freely for most of his life.
David and I only recently became friends this year. But we became FAST friends! According to Doc and his office assistant Ann, that is something VERY uncommon for David-- He is very private and distant to most people. I thought it sort of strange as well, because although I am FAR from a "private person"-- in fact I consider myself an OPEN BOOK, I also tend to keep people at arms length on a personal level. So the fact that we struck up such a deep and meaningful friendship so quickly was a mystery to all who knew both of us!
As I sat as his funeral today and listened to Doc and Ann discuss many issues about David, things he had said and done, etc... I began to see a golden thread, the finger prints of God-- the Providential Hand of God at work in our short but very significant friendship!
Doc and Ann recounted how PRIVATE a man that David was... in fact a closed book! That is NOT the David I knew! Doc has known David for 30+ years, I have known David for 3 or 4 months. The first time I ever met David was when he invited me to attend a town hall meeting in Fort Worth where the Texas Medical Board was addressing the public in an open forum.
I had hear "rumors" that David was a bit of a rebel rouser :-) and that this meeting would not be boring! As editor of the PHA, I knew well the situation with Doc LJ-- so I thought I would go see BOTH sides of the story...what would the TMB have to say to the public? I asked my friend Randi to go to the meeting with me for 2 reasons. One, I hate driving to places I have never been! Second, if this meeting got a bit rowdy and we ended up in jail, I wanted to have a friend with me! LOL! (I was only HALF joking about the jail thing! But I did tell that her up front!)
They opened up for Q&A and there a few rows in front of me stood a silver haired man in an Army fatigue jacket covered top to bottom in Military Medals and honors. He had a booming voice and began to address the TMB about the false charges that were brought against Doc LJ and why his license had not been reinstated after the facts had been proven and settled...
...and this was the stage upon which our friendship was built. I leaned over to my friend Randi and said if they drag than man out of here and call the police, just take my car home because I am just going to have to go to jail with him!
We became INSTANT friends. There is just something about a friendship that is built on the strength of conviction on matters of RIGHT & WRONG-- and the courage to confront it. That is where we both were in our lives, though we had different circumstances, we had the same foundations of conviction!
David began to write for my newspaper about his dealings with the TMB and his work on behalf of Doc LJ. David was our Texas Watch Dog! He had a bone to chew and a dog in this fight! We had many emails and phone calls over the months about his various news sources, meetings, deadlines, and his faith in God. The ONLY thing that lit a fire under David more passionately than Doc LJ and the Texas Medical Board situation was his faith in Jesus Christ!
David was a retired minister. He was a 1976 graduate of Christ For the Nations Bible Institute in Dallas, Texas and was later ordained by his local church for ministry. David wrote much on the issues of prayer, holiness, and the authority & power of God's word.
So when I first heard the news David had passed away my heart was simply broken! What a loss to the world around him! He was an absolute DYNAMO!
As I arrived at the graveside today, I was early and one of the first people there besides Doc LJ. The military honor guard was there and Bugle Boy was there, standing guard, alert, at attention and ready to play TAPS on command. The absolute RESPECT these soldiers showed for their fallen veteran serviceman was inspiring. I wanted to hug them! I wanted to thank them! But they were standing at attention and saluting the casket almost the whole time and it just seemed almost irreverent to interrupt their honor and respect of David. But my heart was standing and APPLAUDING to the highest heavens at such a visual of HONOR & RESPECT-- to CHERISH a fallen comrad whom they had never met...there was such honor... I felt a tear escape and that lump in my throat start to swell.
As more and more people arrived, I saw the funeral director place a casette player on the ground by the casket. I leaned over to my friend Rhonda, and half joking said, why do I get the feeling that David is about to preach his own funeral?
And wouldn't you know.... that is exactly what happened! As Doc had been going through David's personal effects he found several sermons that David had preached when he pastored a small church in Ft Worth. There was one in particular that summed up the essence of David's life in a nutshell...all that he believed, all that he hoped for, and all that he would ever want to share with his friends... and so Doc arranged to have that message played at the funeral.
Yes...David preached his own funeral!
The message left me speechless! Tears filled my eyes-- not just for the loss of my friend-- but remembering one of our last conversations we had where we had been discussing a tough family situation I was going through and his counsel was to pick myself up by the boot straps and get myself back in the battle and FIGHT! This was not a time of RETREAT! Forward! Fight! Advance! Defeat is not an option!
So as I sat there listening to him preach his own funeral with a message titled Divine Destiny, the rugged determination to cling to the truth of God's Word. He said that God spoke to his heart and told him he was a hypocrite. He believed that "the steps of a righteous man are ordered of God," yet he refused to speak about or share a very significant journey in his life-- as if the Lord had NOT ordered his steps there-- The jungles of Vietnam.
So he shared the story of his experience in Vietnam and how his best friend, Michael Blanchard, threw his body on a satchel bomb that was intended to blow near David and sacrificed his own life to save David's life. David had been very private about his experiences in Vietnam, but was coming to a realization that God was with him and had ordered those steps, and that ALL things work together for the GOOD of them that love God and are called according to His purposes.
The very day I met David was the FIRST day since he left the jungles of Nam that he donned his military fatigue jacket and pinned on his military honors...and it was to confront a state government medical board, a state/country that he fought for and was honored for his wounds in battle, only to have this state turn their back on him in his quest for basic medical care and the reinstatement of an unduly revoked license of his medical provider.
It was as if I met David the day he burst out of his cocoon and matured from the caterpillar into a majestic butterfly and began to live the Divine Destiny he was born to do!
His message at the funeral went on to say that his struggle with the private nature of what happened in Nam is what gave him the courage to battle openly for Doc LJ. From the get-go David and I had an "open book" relationship. This is the only David I knew-- an open book! So To hear his life-long friends describe this private person, was a mystery to me-- we really became fast friends. I almost felt like I have been given a special privilege and gift...and I cherished that!
His assistant Ann had called me last week and said she just really needed to call and tell me something David and told her. She felt I needed to know. She reminded me of the private person that David was, but said he told her that in the time that he had known me, just since the 4th of July, and our friendship clicking like it did, and his immediate start to writing for the PHA newspaper, that for the first time in YEARS David felt like his life had meaning, destiny and purpose again. I was able to help him get the medical board story told...and in doing so, it helped him get the attention of the mainstream media...which led him to "the story of his life!"
That is what he called it.... "the story of his life!" He had finally gotten a mainstream news media outlet to pick up his struggle for Doc LJ and bring it to the public eye! The story was written, the photographer/reporter was on his way over to shoot the final photos for the story that was to be released to the public the next day. The reporter arrived only to find David dead at his computer desk.
Something else David had said in his funeral message, "You have to know that God's divine destiny has been chosen for you from the foundations of the world, even before you were knit together in your mothers womb. Your steps were ordered. It seemed my entire company in Nam could see my Purple Heart's ...but I couldn't. I had to let God show me he ORDERED those steps for a purpose. Those wounds had a reason."
I do think there was a divine destiny in God bringing a very closed book and private man together with an open book, but distant girl to make an instant friendship!
David struggled over the years feeling he was not making a difference. He was working hard, but not seeing the fruit of the labor. We become instant friends and the only tool I have in my hands, a newspaper I publish from home, just so happens to have a focus on health-related issues, and an interest ESPECIALLY in Texas medical board issues... it was just a PROVIDENTIAL friendship waiting to happen!
I was soooo thankful that Ann called to tell me what David had said. So often we never get to hear those kinds of comments from people. They go unsaid or forgotten. Yet, those words are more valuable than GOLD to the heart and soul of a person. David felt that I had helped him find PURPOSE and VALUE to his life...He said I helped him feel he was MAKING A DIFFERENCE. And in turn, I felt what it meant to have the answer of a prayer I had prayed for many years...one that I had memorized as a new Christian in college, by St Francis of Asissi:
Lord,
It is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Make me an instrument of your peace.
I want to know what it's like to follow you.
When men look at me, I want them to see
the Light of the World inside. Amen.
Our friendship may have only been for 3 months but it will have been three months that has forever changed the landscape of my life for the better.
Not everyone gets to know a true American hero. Not only was David a war hero-- he was a hero of our Christian faith.... and when I was growing weary in the weary in the battle, he knew as a soldier, that to sympathize with me on the battlefield may have gotten me KILLED-- He had one friend die in battle in Nam, he was not about to have another friend in a spiritual warfare battle! He ordered me to attention and back to the battle!
You just don't argue with a veteran war hero!
You respect their experience and out of honor--obey quickly!
So as I sat there at my friends funeral, and his sermon was coming to a close-- he said there is one thing our country sorely lacks-- and that is a spirit of COMMITMENT.
He said to be a soldier, you must commit to the training. But so often as Christians, we get them saved and baptized-- but fail to send them to boot camp for basic training. And WE KNOW we are at war! You cannot send untrained, uncommited soldiers to war-- you guarantee their death!
HE said as the Body of Christ, we MUST return to the boot camp training for all soldiers of the cross. Not only boot camp for new recruits, but advanced training, and then specialist training! He said it is imperative that we learn to use our weapons of warfare and commit to be good soldiers of the cross! WE LACK COMMITMENT!
If there is anything I have been re-evaluating in my personal life lately is has been COMMITMENT-- so I felt like my friend had returned from the grave to finish the conversation we were having right before he passed away.
Now don't you just appreciate the providential hand of God that cares enough about the details of our life to have your friend finish a conversation you were having before he died--AT HIS FUNERAL??
I was sort of amused at the irony of this so I asked Doc when David had preached that sermon because he well could have preached it the week we had our conversation-- it was just that timely to what we had been speaking about!
The date on the tape was from 1980. Now...tell me there is no such thing as PROVIDENCE!!
I will miss my friend David! But he has entered into his rest and is now WHOLE and PAIN-FREE!!
I am sure Jesus has received him with open arms and with a resounding WELL DONE MY GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT!!
