I went to the hospital room to visit.

A relaxed visit on a calmer day than I usually have. Less frantic, less catastrophic. And in this room, the mood was less catastrophic.

The patient was ready to leave. He knew that the diagnosis was the drug itself. Change the medication and things will be fine. And so we were talking about life and death with a little less urgency than I often hear.

“It’s not my time,” he said. “But when I know my time is getting near, I’ll have some long conversations with God.”

He was sitting on the room’s built-in sofa next to his wife.

I smiled.

“You know,” I said, “If you said that about her, she’d be pretty upset.”

He looked up.

“She’d love to have a relationship with you all along, not just at the end.”

She smiled and looked at him.

They weren’t newlyweds. Forty years or so of knowing each other. Nearly thirty years married.

We’d talked enough for me to know that they had been through some difficult times and that they loved each other. The kind of love that expressed in an affectionate picking on each other, debating small points with each other, ignoring the smart-aleck and encouraging in the middle of worry.

The kind of interaction that has grown from daily interaction about deep and irrelevant stuff. The kind of interaction that doesn’t happen in lives lived at a respectful distance from each other.

But how does that couples’ relationship have anything to do with our interaction with God?

Everything.

The other day, a friend posted, “Perfect prayer is not your goal; growth in prayer is.” I wanted to reply and say, “growth in relationship is. And talking and listening (which we know as prayer) is one means.”

But that’s too long for a wall plaque.

“You don’t have to wait til you’re almost dead to converse with God” would work.

+++

The picture is from Germany, looking into France. And that’s Nancy and Andrew (wife and son) talking.