A tribute to my friend Ginny Good

L.M. Montgomery wrote in Anne of Green Gables, “True friends are always together in spirit.”

I think this is true because I still feel connected to my friend, Ginny Good, who passed away unexpectedly over a week ago. I am so sad, but I am grateful for her friendship.

One of the most beautiful and soul-filling surprises in life are the unexpected friendships you develop with people you meet doing normal things. Ginny Good was a friend I didn’t expect, who grew into a kindred spirit, who grew into a prayer partner, ministry partner, and confidante. She has now left a big hole where competition, creativity, collaboration, and celebration used to be.

This picture above (in Timisoara, Romania) is Classic Ginny. It combined Ginny, art, and architecture, along with her explicit instructions for me as to how I should take her picture. I took several shots, which brought her approval of disapproval. This picture made the cut. I think it’s Ginny in all her glorious personality.

Friends

Twenty-some years ago, Ginny’s path crossed mine through a couple avenues. We chatted and eventually uncovered a mutual love for art, travel, painting, architecture, teaching, parenting, and the mission field. I think the artist in each of us noticed the other and leaned in. I thought, “She gets me.” That’s a wonderful revelation. Ginny appreciated sarcasm and humor, so we were pretty much like peas and carrots when we discussed things.

Eventually, our paths crossed everywhere: book clubs, Bible studies, beach retreats, Shakespearean plays, open-air concerts, art shows, staff parties, and friend trips around Richmond and the Mid-Atlantic. The whole of our many group experiences together were also peppered with intimate conversations and individual memories. We witnessed each other’s triumphs and weaknesses. You had to spend a lot of time with Ginny to see her vulnerability. Her normal persona was marked by steadfast resilience and quiet confidence.

Competition

Ginny and I shared a fierce competitive spirit surrounding any kind of game. To my way of thinking, game-playing is a unique kind of love language, only appreciated and understood by other competitive game-players (everybody else judges us!). So again, we were kindred spirits. Ginny quietly took charge of all game-related experiences; everyone seemed content to let her lead because she knew what she was doing and she was going to win. Ginny explained the rules, enforced the rules, but–I have to be honest–bent the rules when it benefitted her team. We usually played games late into the night. It was always more pleasant if we ended a game while Ginny was still winning; she did not love going to bed if she was behind.

It was nearly impossible to beat Ginny at cards. Win or lose, we both wanted to play. Playing with each other was the most fun; playing against each other made the games more even. So I was usually Ginny’s nemesis, and she was mine. But she usually won.

However, when I introduced Dutch Blitz to a group of obliging game-playing ladies of which Ginny was a participant, I finally found the chink in her armor: Ginny could not win at Dutch Blitz! This leveled the playing field for everyone else, and it provided delightful entertainment for me. Not winning really annoyed her. She proclaimed that Dutch Blitz was a ridiculous game, and she didn’t like it.

She wore me down, and eventually, we stopped playing Dutch Blitz as a group because Ginny wouldn’t play it. Whenever I pulled out the Blitz cards, Ginny would stand up and say she was tired and going to bed. (Yep, she could even win by not playing at all.) One time, just to goad her, I said, “How about we play something else then?” Miraculously, Ginny no longer felt tired, and she settled in for another round of cards.

Love

Ginny conquered everything that faced her: beating cancer twice, becoming a respected painter, managing her family, being a Gigi Extraordinaire to her three grandchildren, loving Rick and her daughters well, directing a preschool and leading a devoted staff, traveling the world, capturing the attention of a room full of children or women and inspiring them to draw.

Ginny read voraciously. We were constantly sharing book and movie suggestions. Usually, when I suggested a book to her, she would say, “Yes, I loved it! I already read it on my Kindle.” Ginny and I loved the shared experience of book discussions. She was interested in what other people thought, even as she shared her own opinions and perspectives. Ginny and I could talk about parenting, politics, church, sports, or anything without stepping on each other’s toes. I typically walked away from our conversations feeing encouraged and affirmed. Maybe that was her gift, or maybe we were both just being ourselves so talking was easy. I’m not sure anymore. But I know during a really hard season when I was losing friends and losing myself, she stuck.

I loved hearing Ginny’s opinions about something because she spoke the truth plainly and succinctly. She did not badmouth people, which I find astonishing for an opinionated person. Her words always carried encouragement and wisdom. I valued Ginny’s perspective because she spoke from experience and never gave me a clichéd response to anything.

To know Ginny was to appreciate her artistry. Ginny took beautiful photographs and painted extraordinary sceneries. I loved attending her art shows, seeing her work hanging alongside other local artists. Without knowing which paintings were hers, I would invariably be drawn to her pieces.

Mission

Ginny was a vital mission team member. I think I only led one team without her on it. We’ve been on many trips together to Costa Rica and recently, Romania. I think we might have gone to a few other places together, also. Ginny’s gift as an artist ministered to everyone we served; her talent to create art and teach others to draw impacted our team members and our ministry recipients. Ginny’s art classes always provided women and girls important lessons in self-image and destiny.

Ginny designed murals everywhere we went, and our whole team benefitted from painting inside the lines she drew for us. On one trip to the rainforest, Ginny drew a 50-footlong mural on an exterior cement wall, which we painted every afternoon in the pouring rain, under umbrellas. We were laughing and thinking “This is not going to work.” Ginny just mixed up the paints, told us we were doing great, and said, “I think it will be fine.” And it was.

We were roommates for one of our Costa Rica trips. One night, we were both on the phone telling our husbands about our day; as we recounted the day’s adventures, we began laughing so hard that we had to hang up on our husbands and just howl with laughter, tears streaming down our faces.

I remember asking her to help me pack up the house of a woman who was dying from cancer. She was my son’s elementary PE teacher. Ginny knew her from God Can. We worked our way through her house and her kitchen, sorting and boxing up the things she wanted to keep but would not see again. Ginny could be efficient and compassionate at the same time; I think she faced the cancer fear by staying engaged in helping anyone else experiencing it. Ginny was not a person to survive something and then pretend it never happened to her.

Perhaps Ginny’s greatest contribution to a mission team environment was her attitude. Always the simultaneous optimist and realist, Ginny embraced ideas and figured out how to present truth in a profound yet tactile way. She worked hard and looked for ways to have fun. I relied heavily on Ginny’s wisdom; if I had to make a tough decision, I would often run it by Ginny to see what she thought because I trusted her perspective.

In Romania this past summer, we sat together in a Communist-era ER waiting for Ginny to get multiple tests. I had brought a deck of cards with me, and we played Three-Thirteen to pass the time and distract us from the big scary question. Eventually, Ginny mentioned what we were both thinking–“What if it’s a tumor?” and I replied that it wasn’t a tumor and she was going to be fine. Ginny was exhausted and worried, yet she still managed to beat me at cards. Then she put her head on my shoulder and rested until the nurse came to get her. I sat there praying, “Lord, not Ginny, please. We’ve gotten to be such good friends. Her family needs her. She still has so much to do.”

But what do I know? I’m not God.

From the hospital room, Ginny texted me: “It’s a tumor.” And when she walked out, we just embraced and cried and prayed.

Cancer

Ginny was courageous and optimistic through her surgeries and chemo treatments because she kept deciding to be that way. She had developed strong faith over many years, a faith that she lived out through every area of her life. When she told you to “Trust God,” you listened to her. You knew that her opinion was trustworthy because she had lived out her faith in the face of death more than once. Her faith wasn’t cliché or religious. It was real life, and she was brave enough to talk about it honestly.

This fall, I regularly walked down to the preschool to check on Ginny during my workday. We’d sit on little chairs and share candy and catch up when the kids were busy in another classroom. Just two weeks ago, I taught preschool chapel, and she took videos of me on her phone, even though she wasn’t feeling well.

Friendship

Every day since Ginny’s been gone, I think of something else I want to tell her. We still haven’t poured over pictures from my last trip. I have ideas I want to run by her. The places we still want to go. What book she will recommend next. One of our mutual friends and I just bought tickets to a play that Ginny would’ve gone with us to see, if she were still here. It’s inconceivable that she’s not.

Like so many people who were friends with Ginny, we enjoyed our intersected lives. God loves us so much that he helps us find people who get us, who can see us at our worst and give us some grace and direction so we can grow.

Ginny was a lovely paradox. She was an aggressive card-player and a compassionate caregiver. She painted gorgeous oil landscapes yet made popsicle crafts with three-year-olds. She analyzed literature and read to children. She encouraged women battling cancer even while she battled it herself. She was excellent in everything but remarkable in her loyal friendship.

One of our favorite authors (C.S. Lewis) wrote in The Four Loves:

“Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes…. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.” (66-67)

“Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What? You too? I thought that no one but myself…’” (78)

Ginny, thank you for traveling well through life and for taking me with you on some of your journeys. Someday I’ll join you in your greatest adventure, where if there’s painting, you have a vista that will never disappoint and an eternity to paint it.

And we will sit together in heaven’s chairs and catch up once again.