Because I Can't Not...

 

Who doesn’t enjoy boasting about famous people they know or have met?  Since Dickey’s Barbecue recently came to town, I delight in telling people how my grandfather was personal friends with the original Dickey, who was from Dallas.  That was two generations ago, but it doesn’t stop me from boasting.  A bigger claim to fame involves the two seconds I appeared up close as an extra in the first movie Ron Howard ever produced, “Cotton Candy,” which he filmed at Lake Highlands High School the year I graduated.  Are you impressed yet?

Here's another one, lame though it is.  Would you believe I am a fourth generation descendant of Sergei Rachmaninoff?  Not by pedigree, but by pedagogy.  Rachmaninoff taught a child prodigy named Ruth Slenczynska (the last surviving student, who made her most recent album at age 97 in 2021).  Years ago, Ruth Slenczynska taught another child prodigy, Hamilton Monroe.  When I was in my thirties in Oaxaca, Mexico, I was blessed to become a student of Hamilton Monroe just before he passed away.  This doesn’t exactly impress anyone except maybe Isaac, one of my own piano students who is now a piano teacher himself, five generations removed from Rachmaninoff.

 

Allan and Joan Eubank 2005

I even relish telling the story of a sort of famous woman I know in Thailand, who had been a Broadway star right up there with Doris Day until she gave up her fame to marry Allan Eubank and become a lifelong missionary.  On a side note, Joan's bigger claim to fame was not her singing career, but that she became the mother of David Eubank, the founder of Free Burma Rangers.  This is her legacy, worth an entire biography, but I still can’t help boasting that I know her.  She even sang at my wedding the first time around, which her husband officiated

The simple truth is that I can’t keep a good story to myself, especially when it comes to famous people.  I once served Peggy Fleming at a restaurant. I waited on a golfing hall-of-famer at a department store (though I had never heard of Lee Trevino at the time, back in the 1970’s).  While working for my dad, I  delivered office furniture to Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach, whom I met in person! Oh, and only a few years ago, I saw the not-so-famous Adam, from the cable network show “Adam Ruins Everything.”  He was actually amazed that I recognized him or knew who he was.  No one else in the Oaxaca airport had a clue.

 

The point is that if I met the most famous person on earth today – even just a casual sighting – I would surely blab the news all over social media.  Likewise if I found a job with an incredible salary, benefits, and eternal rewards, wouldn’t I encourage my friends to apply?  If I discovered a power source totally independent of electricity, gas, or batteries, or a cure for every ailment, how could I keep silent?  I couldn’t!

 

To take it a step further, what if I were madly, incurably in love with the most amazing person, the only 100% perfect man who ever lived?  Yeah, baby, I’d be flaunting it big time.  Look at mediocre me, inferior in every way, yet chosen by a Royal Prince who loves me thoroughly, unconditionally, and eternally.  I have an absolute guarantee He will never leave me, reject me, or betray me.  He covers all my faults and actually makes me lovely and radiant in the glow of his love.  He’s never too busy to listen to me.  His advice is always spot on.  He is faithful.  His bank account is bottomless.  He’s the world’s best physician.  I could fill a book with all the wonderful things I have seen Him do.

 

That is what I intend to do: write a book about the wondrous love and power of God as told through my story.  In fact, that's exactly what I am doing this fall.  I can't NOT tell all the amazing things I've seen Him do.

Stay tuned if you want to hear more....