Yesterday, I had the rare opportunity to spend a good part of the day with Carson.  It was a mother/son kind of day.  I'm more often paired off with Blair, while the boys go and do whatever it is that boys go and do, but yesterday.....it was just him and me.  It was nice.  By his choice, we grabbed pizza for lunch and saw a sports movie (bonus that we stood behind Mississippi State's QB in the ticket line).  And apparently when getting out of a movie two hours after lunch, boys are ready to eat again, so we drove through McDonald's to get him a couple of cheeseburgers and a shake.  Don't judge me based on the nutritional content of this paragraph.     

After we got home, I started making dinner.  Nothing special.  Just an ordinary Tuesday night.  I thought I'd do something with chicken.

It was then, on that just ordinary, nothing special, chicken casserole kind of Tuesday night, that we received the news that one of Carson’s classmates/teammates/friends had just been killed in an ATV accident. 

Wow.  It stopped us all in our tracks.  A 13 year old dying while enjoying his first day of summer?  There had to be some mistake.  That doesn't happen.

Sam was the most likeable kid.  Always smiling.  Always polite.  Great sense of humor.  Kind.  Very athletic.  Well loved by everyone.  A huge heart.  Larger than life personality.  

I don't think there's a mother in this town, who didn't lose her breath when she heard the news.  It didn't matter if you recognized the name or not.  It didn't matter how many differences there are among us, mothers.....religion, race, age, address.....when we hear of a child dying, we all become the same.  We put ourselves in that mother's place.  I think it's because we all carry the same deepest fear.....the fear of losing a baby and when we hear that one of us has had her fear realized......our hearts bleed for her.  We ache for her.  We cry for her.  We plead to God for her. 

Here, I'd just enjoyed an afternoon with my son and, at about the same time, another mother, who sits just down the bleachers from me in the basketball gym and the baseball field, was processing the worst news of her life. 

That will shut up your complaining.  That will reorder your priorities.  That will make you stop and grab your children. 

Motherhood and Muffin Tops may sit quietly for the next few days.  The 8th graders will be taking up money to send flowers to the funeral home from the class of 2018.  We'll be talking a good bit more about death, heaven, and hope around here.  And like so many others, we'll be driving our dressed up son to the funeral home to do something he's never had to do before....say goodbye to someone his own age.  Things that 13 year olds shouldn't have to do.  But this life is full of things like that. 

In the sadness and emptiness, we do have hope though.  Jesus offered Sam the gift of salvation and we know for sure that Sam had accepted that gift.

It's been a dark, gloomy day here.  The clouds, the darkness, the water dripping off the house.....they all seem to be fitting today. 

A mother has lost her child. 

Let's all pray for Sam's mom.
    

“Someday you will read or hear that I am dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” -Billy Graham