The Man on the Couch in His Pajamas

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few chosen."
- Matthew 20:16

In 1998, I was on patrol one Sunday afternoon when a call came over the radio. Dispatch said a woman just left Keithville returning to her home in Dallas, but she left her house keys at her parent’s house. Cell phones were rare in those days, so the caller asked the Sheriff’s Office to find her before she reached Texas. I was in Keithville between the caller's house and I-20 on Woolworth Road and figured she had to be in front of me. I drove three miles and found her car north bound at the Buncomb Road intersection. When I pulled her over, she wanted to know why I stopped her. I told her about the keys she left at her parent’s house. Dispatch called her father, Bill Bailey, and minutes later, he arrived with her keys.

Bill Bailey lived two houses down from me, but we had never met. Some neighbors considered him difficult, others called him a drunk. After that day, we became friends. 

Mr Bailey had a big Ford tractor he drove up and down the road with an ever-present cigar clenched between his teeth. He cut things, bushogged brush, moved dirt, and anything else a tractor could do. I had an old cinder block shed in my backyard, but whoever built it failed to put rebar in the concrete foundation. The slab cracked causing the walls to lean and fall. I tore it down to its foundation, leaving a 10 x 12 slab of cracked, unusable foundation. Mr Bailey saw it, and in less than an hour, scooped the whole thing up with his tractor and front end loader and dumped it in a sink hole across the road. After that, he tilled a spot for a garden. 

During down times on patrol, I often stopped by his house, and we talked about crime, evil, and God. He wasn’t a church going man…he left that task to his wife, but he had a sense of honor and right and wrong. During one of our conversations, he told me through tears that alcohol almost destroyed his life. He had been sober for three years.

In June 2001, Colleen, the kids, and I were unloading the car after a trip to Six Flags when the phone rang. Colleen handed the phone to me. It was Mrs Bailey, Bill's wife. She told me Mr Bailey was in the hospital, and he had been diagnosed with lymphoma. She asked me to call him. I didn’t know what lymphoma was, but it didn’t sound good.

I called Mr. Bailey at the hospital. He was glad I called. He told me was scared, and didn’t expect to live much longer. He said, “If I get out of the hospital, I think I would like to go to church with you.”

I told him I was glad he mentioned it because I had been meaning to ask him if he was right with God.

It was quiet for a moment and he asked what I meant.

"Mr. Bailey...if you have to stand before God tonight, will He look at you and say, ‘Come in thou good and faithful servant to the joy of your Lord,’ or will He say, ‘Depart from me for I never knew you?’”

It was quiet again.

“I hope I’ll be found good enough to be allowed into heaven.”

“The Bible says, ‘There is no good, no, not one.’ We have to be righteous, and since we aren’t, the only hope for us is to have the righteousness of someone else.”

I thought about our conversation all night. He was in turmoil and uncomfortable talking about God. I asked myself if I pushed him too hard...

The next evening, we went to the hospital to see Mr. Bailey. He was thrilled to see someone other than the hospital staff. He said hello to Colleen and the kids, and he called me to his side, shook my hand with both of his, and hugged me.

“Our conversation last night was helpful.”

I wondered why. He was on his death bed with little hope, and the day before I told him he was not going to heaven because he was not a good person.

I asked Colleen to wait for me outside. Mr Bailey said goodbye to the kids, and when the door closed behind them, he started asking questions.

He was desperate, and I was scared for him, but I knew I had to be honest about his situation. I told him what the Bible says about sin, righteousness, and judgment, and it was direct and offensive.

I asked him if he ever told a lie. Without hesitation, he said he had, but when I told him people who tell lies are called liars, he winced. He admitted he stole some things in his life time. I asked him if he was a thief, and he dropped his head and shook it up and down. I told him the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," and he was quick to say he had never killed anyone. When I told him Jesus said anyone who is angry with another person is guilty of murder in their heart, he squinted, bit down on his lip, and told me there were two people in his life he would never forgive. He said two men he knew treated him so badly, they did not deserve forgiveness. He would not forgive them because they deserved nothing but punishment.

I told him Jesus said we must forgive others or he will not forgive us. Mr Bailey leaned back in his bed and sulked. Up to that moment he was willing to do anything to ease his fear, but he was not willing to forgive. 

I told him Jesus’ parable of the man who was forgiven a huge debt, and then self-righteously threw another man in jail who owed him a small amount. The first man was condemned for his unforgiveness and ingratitude. I explained how Christ’s forgiveness is so complete and costly, it makes offenses committed against us trivial, and how God's gift of repentance helps us recognize we cannot be righteous without Jesus Christ himself. We must have the righteousness of Christ to be right with God. 

While I spoke, his demeanor changed. He had come to the crossroads. He leaned up in the bed on one elbow. I asked him if he needed to repent. 

“Yes, yes, yes.” 

I asked him if he wanted to pray. He grabbed my hand with both of his hands and cried.

“Yes! Yes!”

I didn’t lead him in a prayer; I just held his hands and listened. 

He called out to Christ for forgiveness from God, and he was contrite. It was a desperate cry of a dying man for forgiveness and salvation.

Mr Bailey was released from the hospital a week later.

In September 2001, he came by on his tractor. He was smiling and grateful. He drilled twenty four holes in the ground for a barn I was building. 

As fall arrived, Mr Bailey struggled with chemotherapy. He was in and out of the hospital. On December 20th, I visited him at the hospital. He told me he thought his cancer had returned, but he knew it was in the Lord’s hands. Mrs Bailey told me he was a changed man.

On December 22, he came home from the hospital. He was looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and daughters. Colleen fixed them a pecan pie, and my nine year old daughter Olivia and I took the pie to him that evening.

Mrs Bailey answered the door and led us inside. Mr Bailey was on the couch in his pajamas, an oxygen tube in his nose. He smiled, eagerly. I sat the pie on the table behind him, then reached over the couch and put my hand on his shoulder. He turned toward me, took my arm with both hands and lay his head on my arm. He rubbed his whiskers back and forth across my arm and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” 

It was the last time I saw him. Two days later, on Christmas Eve, he died at 73. 

God performed a miracle on Mr. Bailey. It was not the miracle of physical healing, it was something far greater. It was the miracle of new life that continues  forever. 

Mrs Bailey said he died peacefully, something that was impossible before his conversion. 

I think of him often.