One Heartbeat Away

Yesterday, a mother in our town had to bury her 19 year old son. Yet another family has suffered a great loss.

Cameron was a friend of all our girls who swim -- he graduated from school last year, and spent this past year becoming a Lance Corporal in the Marines. Great kid, very friendly, and had recently been working again as a lifeguard at the Rec Center pool this spring. He was the one who welcomed all the new lifeguard staff at the recent cookout -- and Rose is one of the new lifeguards who noticed.

He had bought a new motorcycle, and was doing donuts in a parking lot when he lost control and came off the bike. This is somewhat of a freak accident, as he was bleeding internally and they couldn't find it and get it stopped -- even after being airlifted to Greenville, NC and removing a kidney and his spleen. We never expected to lose him.

When you live in a town of just over 15,000 people, you get to know everyone. Hunk O Man led a prayer vigil for Cameron over on the baseball field behind The Rec. Something like 600 people attending the viewing and funeral. Most of them were high schoolers, friends of this great kid.

Rose was hit hard, and rightly so. Someone her age vanished from this life into the next. Bug took a different emotional approach -- she is glad he is with God. But both ways, the solid fact that we are all just one heartbeat away from life eternal with Him has been brought to the tender age of just 17 in our family.

For me, the thing that knots in my chest is the fact that another mother is burying another child. Somehow this just seems the wrongest of wrongs; this is not the way it was supposed to be.

As I head off to church this morning to play piano for praise team, to hear Hunk O Man talk about Joseph and the idea of how futile revenge is, I am remembering that I am just one heartbeat away from my God, as are my children, as are my parents, as are we all.

I am remembering that in the culmination of wrongs in this world, my Saviour was a child whose mother and Father had to bury him. It is not the way of things; it is not the way it was supposed to be when everything was created. But great blessing and love can come of even such an unnatural thing.

I am praying for Mrs. Gordon (Cameron's mom) and the Chapmans, especially Will Franklin Chapman. Please stand in the gap for them with me.