People Let Me Tell You ‘Bout My Best Friend

Day 178 (Written Thursday June 7) ~ Someday I’m going to tell you all about my “Brain Trust” (four best friends that I turn to in tough times or when I need to make big decisions and get serious advice), but for today I’m just going to focus on one of them. The first time I saw Tony Choate was when he walked into the Knight Arnold Church of Christ auditorium on the Sunday night before we began the fall quarter at the Memphis School of Preaching. He was wearing a bright purple suit. He looked like Where’s Waldo and Barney had a child. I will be the first to admit that I am not a great judge of character on first impressions. Too often I am quick to judge on first impressions and then change my mind in time. This was the case with Tony. At first I didn’t like him. I thought he was goofy, weird and didn’t take things serious enough. Fifteen years later I KNOW he is goofy, weird and doesn’t take things seriously and those are good things. I can’t honestly remember when we started being friends, but I think it was shortly after the school and church moved to the new building. Tony and Emily had an apartment by the new school and we started going there for lunch every day. We would watch Jerry Springer (we thought we were being such rebels) and play video games. Keep in mind, although we were married (and I had kids), we were by age just juniors in college. Somewhere during that time we started going to drive in movies, college football games, pro wrestling and hanging out playing games at each of our houses, and became best friends. He is a great youth minister and he is a huge reason why I am in mission work today because he kept after me until I finally went with him on my first mission trip a few years ago. Needless to say, we had so much fun on that trip too. When I was asked to go into missions full time, he was one of the first people I called to get advice and guidance from. I was reminded of how much fun we’ve had together this week when I went to visit. We spent an hour talking about things we were doing and working on, plans we had and swapping ideas about church stuff. He has always been one of my greatest motivators and idea givers. He went with me to hear me preach and on the way back we spent an hour laughing that kind of laughter that is like therapy. It was such a great visit and such a greatly needed night of laughter. Its great to have a friend who can laugh with you, inspire you and advise you in the toughest moments of your life. The only thing I can think of that I don’t like about him is that he lives too far away and I don’t get to see him nearly enough.