F - Jayson Ferguson

I feel that I have to give a bit of a disclaimer before I start this post. All month, I have been participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day I write a post based on a letter of the alphabet and my theme for the month has been people who have deeply impacted my life. It has been fun.

I expect today to be fun as well, but I have two concerns.

1. We have a friend visiting from out of town and we took her to the beach this morning. While there I holed up in a bar and drank many beers.
2. Today's post is about the man I consider to be my best friend and with all the alcohol in my system, I worry that it may be pretty sappy.

Here goes:

Today's post is about a man named Jayson Ferguson. The most arrogant and self-confident person I have ever met in my life.

I met Jayson about 20 years ago. After I was married and had two children, I decided to go to college (not the way I recommend doing it). I went to a Bible college and they had a side class called Spiritual Formation Groups. This wasn't really a class. It was a group of 10 to 12 students of the same year as you that you met with once a week. The time was spent doing a short Bible study and getting to know each other. This was typically your first group of friends since it was a small group setting. The members were expected to be there for each other, share advice, pray for each other and just generally be an encouragement as we all tackled school together.

The school did their best to put people of the same types together, but I had resisted. They had five main groups for each gender.

• Freshman
• Sophomore
• Junior
• Senior
• Non-traditional

They figured people of the same age would have more in common and (today) I agree. Now, technically, I was what you would call a 'non-traditional student'. There were three criteria to get this label. If you were married, had children or were over 30 years old, you were considered to not be one of the traditional students. I met all of those criteria. However, I had worked with youth for years before going to school and still considered myself young at heart. I insisted that I should be placed with the other incoming freshman.

Reluctantly, my advisor allowed this. It took about two weeks for me to realize I had made a big mistake. I may have had the ability to relate to the youth of the day, but they could not really relate to me. As we shared about our lives and the things we struggled with while in school, I was the only one who had children and was married. When I shared, the advice they offered was ridiculous. These guys meant well but had no idea what they were talking about. Our daily struggles were not at all the same.

I transferred to a non-traditional Spiritual Formation Group the next semester.

There, I met a whole new bunch of guys. Several of them I still talk to today. Jayson was a part of that group. The first week, I shared that I had been at school for a whole semester and I was a little worried about my wife. I was meeting new people every day in class, but she hadn't really made any friends. Jayson immediately invited us to his house for dinner that weekend to meet his wife. He had the same problem.

That weekend, all of us immediately hit it off. Over the course of the next years in college, we all hung out at each others' houses. We babysat each others' kids. We picked each other up from work when needed (poor college students). We went on double dates. We all got along great. I have hundreds of pictures of our children playing together.

Jayson and I had a similar sense of humor and loved to play practical jokes on people. We often sacrificed an entire night of sleep to sabotage the cars of our professors so they could not make it to class or bricked their office doors shut. In the summer, we got a group of other non-traditional students together to play Lazer Tag on the campus when there were no other students there. It was a great few years.

When I left school and moved to Puerto Rico, Jayson was one of the few college friends who kept in touch. Years later, after I had gotten divorced, my daughter and I moved to the same town as Jayson and Ellen (his wife) because I looked for a job in their area. It was great to be around my old friend again. While there, my daughter started dating his son.

Our careers eventually took us in different directions again, but years later I was remarried and we went to go spend a week with them in Florida. The bond was still there. It was a great week.

Today, we are twelve time zones apart but I still consider Jayson to be my best friend. We talk about once a month to stay caught up and look forward to the day when we can get together and cause a little trouble again.

Each of these A to Z  Challenge posts has been about someone who I feel has impacted my life and Jayson is one of those people. Jayson is the man who has reminded me many times when I am concerned about the way something I have done is perceived, "The lion never concerns himself with the opinion of the sheep." Jayson does not waste his time wondering about what other people think of him. He advises that as long as you are not hurting other people, then just let you be you. I try to remember that every day.

He and I were part of a search party in college looking for another friend who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Digging through drainage ditches at 3 a.m. and walking cornfields looking for a body leads to a lot of deep conversations and reflection about what being a friend means.

I got into some legal trouble while in college and Jayson immediately stood up to go confront my accusers and defend my character. We have each lent each other money in tough times and listened to each other when the other was going through a rough patch. He has been a true friend.

The plan for years has been to retire in the same town so we can make life difficult for our neighbors. That is still years away but I am really looking forward to it.

Jayson, I have to say "I love you, man."

I had to add the man onto the end. Otherwise, it sounds gay.

---

This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.