The Brother I Never Had to Ask For
There’s a kind of friend the Bible calls a brother, not by blood, but by the miles he’s willing to walk beside you. I had one like that. Still do.
Where It Began
I met Les Hall back in the late 1990s, two middle-aged men fixing other people’s computer trouble on the same IT support desk, the kind of job that teaches you patience whether you want it or not. We started eating lunch together most every day, nothing fancy, just two men trading stories over a plate lunch. That’s usually how the real friendships start. Not with some grand gesture. Just showing up, day after day, until one day you look up and realize this fellow has become family.
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Proverbs 17:17 KJV
Proverbs wrote that a long time before Les and I ever sat down at a lunch counter, but it might as well have been written about him.
When It Mattered Most
When my father passed, Les was there. When my wife got sick with the cancer that would eventually take her, through the surgeries, through the long slow grief of caregiving, he stood beside me. He was at both funerals. He didn’t send a card and disappear. He stayed.
He was there through my own share of hospital hallways too. A stroke landed me in coronary care back in 2000, and a bad heart brought me right back in 2003 and 2004. When I went in for a heart catheterization, Les stayed with my wife while she waited on word. He was there when they took out my gall bladder, there for both hernia repairs, there again for the rotator cuff surgery. A man doesn’t sign up for that kind of loyalty. He just gives it, quietly, because that’s who he is.
When my daughter and her family needed to move into my house for what turned into five years, Les didn’t just wish me luck getting the place ready. He showed up in his work clothes and got to work.
When his own wife passed, I got to return the favor, just being there, the way he’d been there for me. That’s what real friendship is. It isn’t a one-way debt. It’s two men taking turns carrying what’s too heavy to carry alone.
What Endures
These days Les still helps me around the house, almost every Wednesday. Every fall when I head out on a month long or longer vacation, he watches the place like it’s his own, house sitting for me.
We’ve traveled together, laughed together, and sat with each other through more hospital waiting rooms and funeral homes than either of us would have chosen.
Started on an IT help desk. Turned into one of the finest gifts God ever handed me.
If you’ve got a friend like that, a Les Hall in your life, don’t wait for a funeral to tell him what he means to you. Tell him today, over lunch, the way it started.
Three Take Aways
- Show up, don’t just say sorry. Words of comfort matter, but presence is what people remember. Sit in the waiting room. Stand at the graveside. Let your body say what your words can’t.
- Keep no ledger. A friendship built on keeping score won’t last through the hard seasons. Give what you can when you can, and trust that the giving and the receiving will even out over a lifetime.
- Say the thank you now. Don’t wait for a eulogy to tell a faithful friend what he means to you. Tell him over a plate lunch, while he can still hear it and you can still say it.
A Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for the gift of a faithful friend. Thank You for the ones who show up in the hospital hallway, who sit with a grieving spouse, who show up in work clothes ready to carry a load without being asked.
Thank You for Les, for every surgery and every funeral and every ordinary Wednesday lunch that built a friendship strong enough to hold both our sorrows. Teach me to be that kind of friend to someone else. Remind me to say thank you while there’s still time to say it.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
The photo is of Les and his later wife Julia, me when my hair was still workplace short and my late wife Miss Benita. The wives are seated across from us to help you recognize who’s whose.
