Mark Woods was perhaps the finest counselor I’ve ever known. While he was never my personal counselor, he was a friend for 30 years and the one person I could refer someone to without reservation. To say that Mark was special is to denigrate his significance. He went way beyond special. He was bright, engaging, but most of all he was honest. Honest and full of grace. He embraced and shared the powerful truth that there is nothing a believer could do that would cause God to stop loving him/her. That may sound like a simple concept, but Mark understood its profound power to change a person’s life for good. Along the way there would be struggles of every kind. Even defeats. But God’s loyal love would prevail.
I first met Mark when he became interested in a colleague of mine, Peggy Wehmeyer. Mark suddenly found a series of excuses to bound through the door and into the DTS PR department where Peggy served as director of public relations. It wasn’t long until they were dating. Peggy and I went our separate ways professionally about that time, me to consulting services for nonprofits, she to a much more glamorous gig at the local ABC affiliate, WFAA-TV. Peggy was at WFAA for about a dozen years, then moved on to ABC News in New York, working for Peter Jennings. Meanwhile, Mark completed his master’s degree in theology and went on to earn his doctorate in psychology.
Rather than abandon the faith for fortune, Mark always kept his professional practice aligned with a church. Just two, in fact, in more than two decades of helping people. I sent family and close friends to Mark, and he was invariably a great help. He didn’t create dependent people, he helped free them up to be what God uniquely designed them to be.
One of Mark’s great triumphs became his closest male friend. That friend is also my good friend, Steve Roach. For 20 years they moved together through life, probably walking thousands of miles as they stayed connected with each other, with God, and with their struggles. They were modern day David and Jonathans.
Mark, against all preconceptions, took his own life Friday, May 30, 2008. From what I know there were a handful of reasons that made sense to him in the midst of enormous loss and frustration. In short, the church shot its wounded again. But those of us who knew him and saw the product of his wisdom and grace see past the tragic moment and into the face of a good man who is now safely in the arms of a loving God who specializes in forgiveness.