Not Big Enough!

On Monday I went to a memorial service for a friend of the family named Mike. I had been told about it on Friday, but forgot until my dad called me and told me how he died. He killed himself with a shotgun. Dad told me he didn't want my brother and I walking into that without knowing.

As I sat through the service, the preacher kept talking about salvation and how we are not to say Mike was without God. Mike had committied himself to the Lord when he was younger. He and his family went to a church where, later, I was baptized. It's weird how things come full circle.

Mike and his family used to live across the street from us in a trailer court. We knew each other since we could remember and played together. One day, Mike, his brother Ty, my brother Dana, and I were playing hide and go seek. I saw a canoe laying bottom up behind a shed and decided that would be a great hiding spot. Mike saw me and tried to help me get under the boat. He dropped the boat as I slid under and it hit me in the back of the head. I immediately went home feeling the back of my head and seeing blood on my hands. I got 6 stitches and still have a dent in my head.

When I was in high school, Mike got me drunk and we played drinking games. Good memories.

We drifted apart when they moved to North Lewisburgh. I would see them every now and then in Marysville, but it was years apart.

When the memorial service was over we met with the family at a banquet hall. We ate and Mike's mother made fun of me because I work in a correctional facility. She told my brother and me to go see Steve, Mike's dad. He couldn't come eat because he has diabetes. So we went to their house and saw Steve.

Steve hadn't changed. He was just the way I remember him which was comforting under the circumstances. Steve was telling stories as usual until his neices left. Then he told Dana and I the whole graphic story of how Mike killed himself. He told it with such serenity and peacefulness that it was horrific. As he told the story, I kept wringing my hands. I almost felt like I was going to pass out or throw up. I couldn't drown out Stave's voice with my own thoughts. All I could do was visualize it in every detail.

Afterward, Dana and I talked and we both said we wanted to stop Steve, but felt like we couldn't. I was distraught and wanted to cry. Casey, said I was white as a ghost when I got home. The images are still swirling around my head a week later.

This is a situation that had a profound affect on my faith. I don't know what is happening to Mike's soul. It's not for me to decide. He was alive after he shot the gun. How do I know he didn't call upon God afterward. He could hear his father and squezzed his hand three times. Maybe he was talking with God before he passed away.

As Christians we assume that we have it all figured out because we know what the bible says. I'm not so sure anymore. I still have my foundation of faith, but I am now rethinking certain aspects of what I thought to be truth. I don't think God wants us to condemn. We've done enough of that!

Besides Mike came to salvation a long time ago. Is there enough grace to cover this or is he condemned? I am not so quick to respond. I think I want to let God handle that one.

I am not big enough for it!