Depression

17 Aug, 2000

To my two most favorite retired missionaries:

Dear Ted & Phyllis,

This morning I sent you a copy of the July trip to SEA. If it hasn’t already arrived it certainly should be there soon and I will try to refrain from being too redundant, other than to say it was a miracle that I came back from that one alive. The phone call that I mentioned was one of the critical moments of my life. Had that call come two minutes earlier or two minutes later I seriously question that I would be here today. The devil has been telling me for years that I am the biggest wart on the Body of Christ and that the Lord would be much more honored by my absence than by my presence. If I really wanted to do the Lord and everybody else a favor than my absence from the scene would be the greatest contribution. I was convinced the Lord had so engineered my circumstances that I had little option but to walk off into the jungles and hope I never came back. I was within two minutes of making that a reality when Mark called.

I know finances are not important but that trip really set me back. Including the money I lost, the total for that trip was close to $2,500. To a lot of folks that is not much, but to me it is a fortune. I can’t remember the last time I held that much money in my hands. That means I will have to stay pretty much to home for several months now to try to get caught up.

 One strange feature of my frequent trip to SEA is that I have become a man without a country. Most of my experiences in the states for the past 20 years have been such negative, painful ventures that I have a deep dislike for America and hope I never have to cross the Pacific any further than Okinawa. I have always had a deep love for Japan but now that is starting to fade and I feel as much at home in Thailand, Vietnam, or Laos. Perhaps one of the attractions for the later three is that I haven’t lived there long enough to compile a repartee of bad experiences and it still holds a certain degree of romanticism to be able to go to those countries. But along with several countries having it-seems-like-home feel, yet at the same time, I have lost the distinction that “this is my home”. Hopefully NLL will always be my home until I “get home” but when I am here I get lonesome to get back down south again.

Two days ago would have been my 30^th wedding anniversary. Needless to say it past without recognition but I had to discipline myself to keep from thinking about it. We had a missionary artist friend who lived in Nagoya draw a beautiful banner for our wedding in the Union Church. The banner read “Of Him, Through Him, To Him”. Ironically, that was the very problem. To this day, Rosemary has never able to bring herself to accept that the marriage was OF GOD; and consequently she was never able to appropriate the grace to do it Through God. And in the tragic end there was nothing to present To God but a sordid festering mass of SIN.         

The Lord is increasingly filling my heart with love for Rosemary and I have been praying that the Lord might bless her by providing a wonderful man that she could love and share her remaining life with. I know it sounds unscriptural but nearly everything else that has happened in the past 12 years has been unscriptural and it would be good to see something that would be constructive rather than the unending downward spiral of Christ-dishonoring tragic events. She was always so unhappy with me and she loved Junji so much, I would really like to see her marry him – if he is still available – or some equivalent that she could love and respect. It is out of love for her that I plan to remain permanently history. She sent me one letter a year ago. I was away from here for several months and it got mislaid after I got back. Months later I found it in a stack of other papers and finally got around to reading it. There was nothing significant; she said that even though we were divorced we could still be friends, and encouraged me not to reject the boys. For her sake I never answered it.

After that last fiasco for one year in the states, we proved that our marriage was impossible. That was my best shot. I could not have done better than I did that last year. My commitment to her was unconditional, I demanded or requested nothing of her, I placed myself in submission to her, never fought her on any issue, and did my dead level best to please her; and the result of that was for her to go out and run up a pointless debt of $25,000 just to vent her hostility against me. The Lord loves her – and I love her – too much to force her into that yoke again; and I am sure I will never see her face or hear her voice again on the planet.

David and Shinobu called me on Fathers Day which was very thoughtful of them, but I have been composing a letter in my mind ever since suggesting that we quit this charade of father-son and suggest that we just accept each other as distant friends. His dad died ten years ago and nothing I have been able to do since then has been able to restore the bond that was destroyed. I have never been his father since he made his decision to cut the cord between us and launch out on a life of sin. I have no idea where he stands with the Lord now but I do know that I am not his father.

It hurts me to write a similar letter to Jay. I have always had a good bond with him, but after he decided to reject his name as Cook he legally made the choice that I am no longer his dad. I was John Paton Cook’s father, but I have no genetic or legal ties to Jay (?) Kobayashi. I have no idea why he did that except that it terminated me.

 

Gomen nasai for this morbid epistle. I don’t mean to depress you, but perhaps you might thank the Lord again for the wonderful life He has given you and the privilege of such a happy marriage. You are becoming a member of a minority group in America, and millions of Americans will never know the joy and honor that is yours. The next time I will try to write something more uplifting.

 

                                                         In the keeping and grace of our faithful Lord Jesus, bill