Standing at his hospice bedside, I realized that he’s teaching me about life through his death in the same way he taught me in life about death. In life, he taught me to “die” to myself and put others first. This was something he practiced, not just preached. I’m still trying to catch up with him on this point, much in the same way I had to push myself to stay in stride on our many walks together. (Upon learning of my foot ailment, the 92 year-old asked this 54 year-old if I’d like it if he’d slowed down!)
Without getting too esoteric, let me give some concrete examples of how Royal learned to die to self.
One of Royal’s favorite stories about this took place on a simple trip to the library. Davey, his wife, wanted to go and Royal emphatically did not. But the Lord was stern with him and said, “I want you not to just go begrudgingly, I want you to enjoy it.”
That’s sort of like going to the supermarket or shopping for women’s shoes.
Royal went and enjoyed it. It had a profound impact on him. Every time he repeated that story to me, I chuckled inside because I knew that he was repeating it to me for reasons more acute than a memory lapse on his part. Due to this fatherly diligence, that anecdote comes vividly to my mind whenever God deems it necessary.
Royal was easily the most tender-blunt man I had ever met. He’d say something that he knew might be hard to hear. But after the words made their way to my ears, I felt like a patient whose doctor had just said, “This won’t hurt a bit,” right before a spinal.” Yet, it was just what my spine needed and it was over before I knew it. Being on the sensitive side, I was given a fatherly-sort who could deliver correction, admonition and even reproof with the “spoonful of sugar that made the medicine go down.”
The most poignant lesson I learned from him was about the timeless subject of true, versus romantic, love. I cannot quote him verbatim, but I will take a stab at its essence. We had just returned from a walk in his neighborhood and the topic of the day was marital love. I’m sure I must have brought it up in frustration.
He said something to the effect that “love is really about discovering how to treat and love your wife and when you learn how to do that, you’ll discover what love really is.”
The romantic in me was stung. All of my life, I had thought about the perfect woman or at least various aspects of such. Furthermore, I believed in some 50/50 equation that just didn’t seem to be working out and how unjust love could be. In one fell swoop, the chemist had just set me up for a “solution” of incalculable worth.
He calmly delivered it with a pause in our walk and look over his shoulder that would have sent Rocky Marciano to the canvas.
It changed my life instead of my wife.
When I was in my twenties, I had become jealous of some people in visible ministries whom I thought were having a greater impact on the kingdom of God than myself. Royal’s paternal advice: “You’re a young father and raising a child is the most important ministry in the world.” At the time, it sounded like he was trying to make me feel better about my station in life. But, as the years went on, and I would witness so many parents make the same mistake, I concluded that sacrificing family on the altar of ministry was not what God meant by being the “priest of your family.”
As I observe his approach to the finish line and see the parade of people that Royal has touched coming in and out of the hospice room, I can’t help but think that he also passed on to them so much life through his death-to-self on earth.
And so Royal literally lived the hardest of gospel lessons: “He that finds his life shall lose it; and he that loses his life for My sake shall find it.” Matthew 10:39
Just past that finish line, all of heaven will hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You were well-named.”
ROYAL WITH THE APPLE OF HIS EYE: DAVEY

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