Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [27]
I love you means I’ll be with you wherever you must go
I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you – make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
And I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you
I see it in your tears – you wonder where you are
The wind is growing colder and the sky is growing dark
Though it’s something neither of us understands
We can walk through this together if we hold each other’s hand
I said for better or worse I’d be with you
So no matter where you’re going I will go there too
I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you – make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I know sometimes I let you down
But I won’t let you go – we’ll always be together
11
With Hope
But we do not want you to be uninformed,
brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may
not grieve as others do who have no hope.
1 Thessalonians 4:13 ESV
It was Friday evening, January 2, 1998. Steven and I had recently joined a small group of four or five other couples from our church, and all the families had gathered at the home of our friends Terri and Dan Coley. The University of Tennessee was playing in the national championship football game, and the adults were cheering and yelling at the TV while the kids were having a great time running around the Coleys’ house.
I’ve always been a big fan of college sports, but by halftime I needed to go home as I was struggling with bad cramps. Being in my bed with a heating pad sounded like a great way to watch the second half of the game. Steven helped me gather up our kids, and we said goodbye and headed home.
Our friend Lori Mullican decided to leave at halftime as well. She had two little girls, Erin, eight, and Alex, five. She wanted to get them home to bed since they were going hiking with friends early the next morning. As Steven and I pulled out of the driveway, I saw Lori getting her girls situated in the back seat, helping them with their seat belts.
Off we drove, trying to get home soon so we wouldn’t miss much of the second half.
Lori hopped into her Honda Accord and headed down the same road we had taken a minute earlier. Her house was close by, so she didn’t fasten her own safety belt.
Chatting with her girls, she headed down a road we all drove dozens of times each week . . . and the last thing she remembers about that night was approaching a familiar intersection. The traffic light was green.
What Lori doesn’t remember is the seventeen-year-old driver of a truck approaching the same intersection. His eyes were on his rearview mirror, and he didn’t see his light turn red. He never even slowed down and T-boned Lori’s side of the car at full speed, right behind the driver’s seat. Right where Erin was sitting.
The next thing Lori knew was that she was lying on a very hard bed. Every part of her hurt. She would later find out that she had a broken neck, abrasions, lacerations, and bruises everywhere. Ironically, not wearing her seat belt had saved her life; she had been thrown clear of the spinning car through the front driver’s side window and so had been spared more serious injuries.
As she regained consciousness, though, all she cared about were her daughters. A nurse got her husband, Ray . . . and he told her that Alex had been leaking cerebral fluid through a crack in her skull, but she was alive. Then Ray had to do the hardest thing he had ever done: he told Lori that Erin did not make it.
When we got the phone call that night, I couldn’t believe it. We prayed for this precious family. Then we agreed that Steven should go to the hospital to offer what comfort and prayer that he could. Being the “newbies” of the small group, we wrestled with how much to enter in, and we tried our best to support those