Why men like Martin matter.
Martin VanSoest was my father-in-law.
Which meant I married his daughter, Lennie, fifty-two years ago this coming July 22.
On that day I will be deep in the wilderness, camping alone.
My wife isn’t with me on the trail anymore. We lost her battle with cancer just months after our Golden Anniversary.
She is why Martin matters.
At Martin’s memorial service, appropriately enough, Psalm 15 was read.
In the very first verse the psalmist David asks God rhetorically, ‘who may ascend your holy mountain?’
Interesting question I reflected upon following my own ascent of a mountain most difficult just this week, and then sat by the alpine lake at the very spot my wife and I had sat together when dating 54 years ago.
In the only four verses that follow in Psalm 15 David answers his own question and there, as it turns out, he describes Martin, the father of my wife.
The description of the man who gets to climb ‘the mountain’ is simple, yet profound.
The portrait of the man who would impact generations to come is painted not with flourishes of a brush nor fine strokes of a quill as an artist might.
There are no flowery expressions depicting the one whose daughter I married.
And, not surprisingly, the answer has nothing to do with material possessions, but rather very much to do with the possession of character.
For example, loving your neighbor.
And like keeping your promises.
And it was this example of character, and loving others, and more that my father-in-law lived out before – and instilled within – the one who would be my dear wife.
Who then, in turn, also kept, and helped me keep, our until-death-do-us-part promise.
