TEACH ME HOW TO LIVE

For nearly a decade I have walked through the boarding door of an airplane at least two, sometimes four or eight, times in the course of most every single week. I count most of the AirTran terminal staff at KCI as personal friends. I have often joked with them that I could recite the pre-flight briefings from memory with complete accuracy.

My weekly return to Kansas City involves a walk from one end to another of the Atlanta airport. I have done it so often that I can name most of the advertising posters along the walk. There are ads for hotels, airport shuttles, and the King Center, among others.

One of the signs pictures the bright face of a ten-year-old boy wearing a baseball cap with a bat drawn expectantly behind his back. The expression on his face is firm and determined. He could be either of my sons. Four decades ago he could be me.

The large letters say, “He wants to be a baseball player when he grows up.” The smaller copy tells the story of his fight with an immune deficiency that threatens his future. It is obvious that he knows -to the extent any of us do- what he is up against. Still, he responds with courage and determination.

As I walked past the sign to security this morning I remembered the story of another courageous young woman in the Atlanta suburb I lived in during the 1980s and 1990s. Her name was Danielle. She was amazingly gifted as a vocalist, singing recitals of Donizetti and Faure at the age of 13. She was a championship tennis player, a straight-A student and a leader in the youth group of her church.

Danielle’s life seemed as charmed as anyone’s in history until one day she went to the office of the school nurse with a splitting headache. When the pain did not respond to over-the-counter treatment her parents took her to the doctor. Test “just precautionary” were ordered, but the results were the most feared. Brain tumor. Inoperable. Nine to fifteen months. Maybe.

Danielle faced decisions that no human should ever have to face, much less a child. She chose to trust God, give thanks for the life she had been given, and enjoy every remaining day to the fullest. Though her singing and tennis skills faded as the disease progressed, her courage inspired thousands in her church, in her school and in her community.

She died during the wee hours of a Monday night. Her completed homework that she would never submit waited on the breakfast table of her home. Her selected clothes for the school day that would never happen hung on the door of her closet.

I read her story and obituary in the newspaper as the plane lifted into the air. The photo of a smiling Danielle speaking to her youth peers about facing death with hope centered the article. In the dark of my imagination my mind superimposed the face of my own daughter over the one of the fallen child.

I hid my face with the newspaper and wept.

God does not promise us lives free of suffering and death. Not only does faith in God not protect us against suffering, sometimes it becomes the source of our suffering. To the disappointment of those who would seek to bring people to the Church by making them “feel good,” it is Jesus Himself Who commanded “...take up thy cross and follow Me.”

The victory that God gives us over death through the passion and resurrection of our Lord is that He Himself will not only be with us through the valley of the shadow of death, but that He will raise us up to live eternally with Him.

“ I shall not die, but live, and proclaim the works of the Lord!” -Psalm 118:17

Soli Deo Gloria,
Bill