Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Honor (05/30/24)
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TITLE: A Man of His Word | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ellen Janson
06/06/24 -
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Carol was left with five young children to raise on her own. Her youngest was only two. She was so exhausted, so defeated, so anxious that she felt like just letting go - surely it would be easier to drown.
The children were what kept her treading water. Carol hardly even had time to mourn her husband; there was simply too much to do. Her oldest daughter was starting a new middle school; her boys, ages eight and ten, seemed completely lost without their father; and the two youngest didn’t understand what was going on - only that their mommy didn’t smile very much anymore.
But Carol’s biggest concern - what kept her up at night - was money. How was she going to keep food on the table, much less continue to pay the mortgage? Tom had a life insurance policy, but the proceeds from that surely wouldn’t last long with her large brood.
Larry had been Tom’s very best friend. The children called him “Uncle Lou”. No one knew exactly where the nickname had come from, but Larry embraced it and it stuck. Uncle Lou was at Tom’s bedside when he died, and Tom begged him to “take care of his family”. Larry didn’t know what this would look like, but nonetheless, he assured Tom that he would. And Larry was a man of his word.
Carol had no idea how to handle the bills that were coming in; her husband had handled the money. Larry hired his own financial officer to meet with Carol, strategically invest the proceeds of the life insurance policy, and go over how much money she had to live on each year. He then supplemented the shortfall in the form of a “Christmas gift”. Every year. For twenty years.
Larry owned a car dealership and he was able to give Carol a car.
“It was just sitting on the lot anyway,” he assured her.
When her children grew old enough to drive themselves, he “found” another car.
“It just isn’t selling,” he told her.
But it wasn’t just financial needs that Larry helped meet. As her children grew older, their need for a father only increased. Larry always seemed to be available when Carol requested help with a father-son or father-daughter function. She didn’t hesitate to threaten a phone call to Uncle Lou when her teenage boys misbehaved. And when Carol was beside herself over her 19 year old daughter’s pregnancy, it was Larry who arranged for a meeting with the boyfriend and his family.
Maybe some might assume Larry had romantic interests, but he was a happily married man with a family of his own. He just so firmly believed in James 1:27 (“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” King James version). And he so desperately wanted to do right by his friend.
Despite Larry’s attempts to keep everything he did quiet, many people in this little town saw his extreme generosity over the years. He not only left a deep impression on his own family and Tom’s now adult children, but on friends of the children, spouses of the children and even children of the children.
Forty years ago Larry had made a promise to a friend. He had honored his word, and this beautiful friendship lived on for generations.
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