May 12, 2016 (Thursday)
After Wanda and I retired, we let a couple of years go by and then bought a motor home. We also bought a minivan to tow behind it, so that we might have a car to drive when we reached our destinations. We had the motor home less than 4 years before Wanda died, and I finally gave it away to a charity after keeping it in storage for several years. But I held on to the minivan, a 1991 Plymouth Voyager that was 7 years old when we bought it, and 25 years old when I sold it this week.
I had the van for 18 years. Didn’t drive it much, but liked it a lot. The last few years we used it mainly to haul stuff to the dump ground. Somebody noticed the grass growing up around the tires and offered to buy it. I guess I was in the right mood, because I sold it.
Eighteen years. A lot can happen in 18 years. Wanda and I were each born in 1931, and 18 years later graduated from high school and started to college. The same with each of our five children who went through the same cycle of life. Looking at it like that, 18 years seemed like a long time when we were living it.
The 18 years I had the van, 1998-2016, however, just flew by. Wanda and I were interim pastor and music director at Bethel Baptist Church until January 1, 2000. I was interim pastor twice at First Baptist Refugio, and during that time Wanda passed away (January 27, 2002). Afterwards, I became pastor at Timbergrove Baptist Church in Houston (2004-2006), returning to Rockport to be interim pastor at First Baptist (2006-2007), then again pastor at Timbergrove until 2010, when I settled down at our Rockport home to become interim at Bethel once more for 22 months, a year later for 8 months, and after only another 8 months to return again and serve 17 months as interim right up to the present day. (Eighteen years in a nutshell).
I drove the van to Refugio and back many times, and back and forth to the Houston 
pastorate several times, after towing it behind the motor home on the first trip to Houston in 2004 and living in the RV for a few months (After that the RV broke down and was stored in Houston over a year). Finally I gave the van to one of our children for a while until it was returned and sat by our house most of the time for the next 3 years until bidding me farewell this week.
Eighteen years. Now you see it. Now you don’t. Eighteen years from now I’ll be 102. I know those years will fly by. My doctor says I will still be feeling good then. He has a great sense of humor. But wait a minute, doesn’t the song say, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun?” I tell you the truth, I’ll be alive 18 years from now, either in Texas or in Heaven. Jesus makes it so.