Adversity, forgiveness and something very good…
On my birthday, this year, I got a phone call from Michelle Shelton, a neighbor, that brought back memories of something that happened 2612 days ago.
Her son, Phillip, had been killed, in a one car accident, on Interstate 8. He was 21-years-old and had just moved out a few days earlier. Unfortunately, Phillip’s life had been impacted by problems with drugs. It is unknown at this point if drugs or alcohol played a role in his death, but the circumstances point that way.
As I spoke with Michelle, memories, of the day my life changed forever, came flooding back; Hoping that Kevin would come marching in the front door and straighten this misunderstanding out. But he never has.
Michelle asked me to speak at Phillip’s celebration of life. I said that I would, but thought she would change her mind later as I never knew Phillip personally. Michelle didn’t change her mind. We spoke at length about what I would say. I didn’t feel it was the time or the place to “preach” about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and we don’t know for a fact that either was involved in this tragedy.
Before the celebration of life, I met with Chris Robilatto, who is a pastor at our church. Truth is, I didn’t know what I would say and I didn’t feel that I could say anything that would help. Chris asked me if I had considered the possibility that this wasn’t about me speaking, but instead God taking this opportunity to use me to share a message. Truth is, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Chris has a way of pointing things like that out to me. Duh! “God uses the unimpressive to do His work.” Actually, Bev just reminded me of this…yeah, she’s good at pointing those sorts of things out to me too.
With Michelle’s blessing, I spoke about adversity and how it often defines our lives, forgiveness and making something very good come from a tragedy like theirs.
I hope I never have to do that again.
Something very good will come from this…
