I came to know Wayne as a friend later than many, because although I had revered him from a distance, I was not a student of his, and he had left the seminary before I joined the faculty. But he and I were asked to write a chapter for a Christian formation textbook for seminary students fifteen years ago or so. The topic we were given was “sexuality and spirituality.”

This was one of the few times I have co-authored with anyone other than my husband, and certainly it was an interesting topic to experiment with such a new way of working. Wayne wrote out the first draft long-hand, and then I edited and added and shaped it. And then we negotiated and found our way together. What made it almost hilarious was that Wayne was flat on his back during the whole writing of this chapter–-he had just had back surgery. I would visit him in his home, and we would work on the ideas together. Perhaps that doesn’t sound funny, because he was suffering, and yet he laughed, and he made me laugh. It struck him as quite funny to be writing a chapter on sex with me while he was flat on his back. We became fast friends during that time.

Later on, after I hit a rough and publicly difficult time in the mess at Southern Seminary, I learned what it means to be a friend of Wayne Oates. The phone would ring at odd times, and it would be Wayne, just checking on me, making sure I was laughing as well as crying by telling me the latest Al Mohler joke. I’ll spare those here, but suffice it to say we had some good laughs together.

I loved Wayne because he made me feel like he had just thought of me “out of the blue.” I suspect he recorded on his calendar to stay in touch with me, but it never felt that way. Even after I moved to Texas, the phone would ring and it would be Wayne, just being my pastor, or more accurately my friend. I learned a lot from Wayne, but I suppose the most important gift of all was the simple, yet profoundly important gift of friendship–-a friendship that cannot fix the hurts of life, but earns the right to laugh at them together.