Regrets

21 Oct, 2000

Dear Phyllis,

It was a wonderful blessing and surprise to see your letter in the mail basket yesterday. There is no way I can explain to you what a blessing it is to write to you. Sunday afternoon when I write the Brannens is easily the highlight of the week for me. I look forward all week to the moment when I can sit with my laptop and enjoy this fellowship. Perhaps you can appreciate that you are unique. I don’t have any other friends that I can write these kinds of letters to, and it is more meat to my own soul than anything you might get from them. If I was 100% selfish there is nothing that I could do that I enjoy more. But I honestly cannot take credit if there is anything of a blessing in what is written. Each week I re-read those letters and am surprised what is there. Each week I am komaru as I know that is the last letter like that. I know it will only be a disappointment if someone expects me to write a letter like that again. I feel like the subject has been exhausted and there is nothing more to say. But then the next week the Lord gives me a new theme. I can’t keep that up anymore than a hose can produce water by grunting. If nothing goes in one end there won’t be anything coming out the other. It is not the hose that produces the water. If there is any blessing it is simply a direct personal message from our Father to you – certainly not from the writer. 

 Today is the third Saturday in a row that it is absolutely gorgeous outside and I long to go somewhere but it is too lonely to go by myself. For a month I have been planning on going to Minakami – up passed Maebashi – where they have a fantastic bunji-jump. There is a bridge over a river over 200 feet below where you can jump off this bridge with a bunji cord fastened to your feet. I have had an obsession for over a month to go up there and jump off the bridge but I can’t find anyone to go with me. It will be a severe disappointment if I don’t get a chance to do this thing this year. Maybe next week. But today I want to write you.

I enjoy writing letters to you very much but I seriously doubt that the Lord is very anxious to use my “writing talents” to bless others. There is the rare person who thanks me for letters but in most cases I fear they are pretty much like my preaching – I enjoy it more than those who have to listen to me. But the theme of the Inverted Kingdom is a subject that has challenged me for years, and a year or so ago I decided to put something on paper. I doubt that it will ever get published as I can’t imagine a publisher who would do it, and then I don’t know who would ever be interested in reading it, but I have put several things on paper. At present I have finished 32 chapters. My goal is 30, so I have written a couple extra in view of culling out the poorer ones. They are very short being usually about two pages each. A book would probably have less on a page than this writing paper so it might be 100 pages in a small book. I hate to impose on your time and the time of others but I would be grateful for the input you might have on this subject. Does Dan have E-mail? If he – or any friend – has E-mail, and could print them out there, I could send this material that way which would be faster and cheaper. Of course I can send it through the regular mail but it costs me $1.15 for every letter, and over $2.00 if there are over four pages. If we can get one copy there, then you could make several copies to share with others who would be willing to help in this project. If anyone has E-mail would you please have them contact me at <billcookjapan@hotmail.com>.

 I think I told you in a letter a couple weeks ago that I had to go to Karuizawa to replace a kitchen floor in a cabin at TEAM center. The cabin used to be Hellands and before that it belonged to Manley Chase. The people living in there at the moment are Cam and Kristi Caulman from Tacoma. They said they were like spiritual children of Myron and Irene. They were very surprised when I told them that the Hegges were old friends of mine. Though I have not had the intimate contact with the Hegges for the past three years like I have with you I still have enormous respect for them. There is something about Myron’s quiet solidness that I have always greatly respected. I have always felt like I was talking with a real man of God every time I have spoken with him.

You mentioned Rosemary. I really don’t know what to say about that subject. I believe you know my heart – although I am not sure I know it myself. I believe I have a real love for her and that is the basic reason we are divorced. For several years I used the Scripture as a chain to keep her enslaved. I feel so sorry for her as I fear the devil has stolen her blind and she doesn’t know it. Worse still she has been held a hostage by religion and I suspect this is still the case. I’m sure it was a great relief for her when she finally got the papers processed to bury the marriage and I have no desire to bring her back into bondage. If she had allowed the Lord to do some things for her I believe she could be enjoying a very fulfilling life here with NLL today. She would love this place and I am sure she would be a very popular figure with all the staff. But that is all academic. If pigs had wings they could fly. I would be very surprised if we ever exchanged greetings again on this planet. I have reoccurring dreams of her having cancer and in her last days having a desire to see me before she sails out into eternity. Her son David contacts me and says that his mother wants to see me. Then I have a great conflict it my heart. In my mind, sometimes I go to the hospital where she tearfully apologizes and I forgive her; sometimes I suggest she contacts her husband Junji and have him comfort her; and sometimes I just ignore the plea. I am sure I will never be confronted with this scenario but it is an unsettled issue in my own heart. This morning I read the whole book of Hosea. It was terrible. I wish that book was not in the Bible. It is impossible to read it without seeing Rosemary in every verse, and I – of course – am blameless. That is not what the Bible is for. It is not for the other person. The Bible is for me and no one else. But I see the speck in her eye as Mt. Fuji and the log in my own eye as dust. I do pray for her with genuine emotion daily asking the Lord to give her His richest blessing. I have been praying much that the Lord would give her a wonderful husband that she could truly love; and the leading candidate is the man she did (does ?) love – Junji. She made two serious mistakes in life; the first was when she married me and the second was when she didn’t marry him. I am sure she is honest with very few people these days. I don’t know how she could be. When she was at Link Care her counselor told me he was confident she was absolutely up front with him, but then he was shocked when I told him what she had said to her spiritual father. In unguarded moments she has told me some deep secrets of her heart but I can’t imagine her telling anyone else these things if she was in control of her speech. Out of curiosity I am interested in hearing how she is doing and appreciate the little notes you share with me. I am most grateful for the love that you show to her and would thank anyone who would help her. But I don’t have the faintest idea if she would be interested or helped by reading anything I wrote to you. I will leave that decision entirely to your discretion. I have no opinion.  She did write me one letter over a year ago and it was months before I opened it and read it. Basically what she said was, ”even though we are divorced we can still be friends, and please don’t disown your sons”. Out of love and respect for her I never replied. And she has never written since.

When I was first saved my spiritual family had a cute little daughter and we were very good friends. She sometimes remarked, “Bill, you will be in Japan for a year and a half and when you get back I will have a year of Bible school behind me.” (with the hint that we might get married). I liked her very much but she was a fickeled little girl that turned me on-and-off-on-and-off. Finally after a couple years her dad wrote me that she had married some other pilot. I thought, Praise God! Good riddance! Thirty eight years later I was down in Florida visiting the folks and on Sunday morning in church a white hair lady sitting in front of us turned around with a broad smile to shake hands and said, “Bill, it is wonderful to see you again.” I looked at her bewildered and asked, “Are you Charlotte?” She was thrilled to see me and wanted me to meet her husband. I liked him and we got along fine, but that night when they came over for supper Charlotte sat right across from me at the table and I never looked at her, or spoke to her, once. I looked at everything in the room except her. I was amazed. Thirty eight years later and I still hadn’t gotten over the hurt. It was just like it was yesterday.

I don’t know why the Lord made such a sensitive man that carries grievances so deeply so long. I never say the Lord’s Prayer because it would be blatant lie. I beg the Lord for Him to be more gracious with me than I am with people I have had problems with. Yes, I know theology, but that still doesn’t help me to get over some pretty big hang-ups.

 Perhaps you can see why the deep longing of my heart is to go to Laos and disappear in the jungles. Each time I go south I hope I will not return and each time I am disappointed when I safely get back to Japan. I don’t like the idea of getting bite by a snake but a land mine would be OK as long as I don’t survive. Where I plan to go this next time is an unusually dangerous place and perhaps the Lord may be more gracious to me – but that is something that is entirely in His hands. I have had a singularly unproductive life and don’t see much chance of things being different in the future, but there are cases of the Lord taking rejects out of the garbage can to use for some specific purpose. If he keeps me faithful and I can only glorify Him then I will be busy for eternity for this greatest of all miracles.

Thank you again for your patience and wonderful love.

                                                                In our gracious long suffering Saviour, bill