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Where can we find hope to go on?

On February 26th, 1999, I was driving home from the Lynden, Washington McDonald's, which is only a mile from my home, where my wife and myself had taken our two sons and met with a handful of friends for a burger. It was a cold and stormy night but we were excited because we planned to go out dancing that night. We sent one of our sons home with friends and were planning to leave our three year old at home with one of his sisters. I prepared to turn on River Road where I lived as an ambulance turned onto River Road before me. It was around 8:30 p.m. Being a Whatcom County Support Officer, it's my job to respond to tragedy and trauma with the hopes of assisting the family and friends that were not directly involved with the incident, with their emotional, physical and spiritual needs as we are trained in a crisis situation. Seeing the Med 1 unit only alerted me to the possibility of a serious problem with a neighbor.

I told Sheba (my wife) we should go down and see which of our neighbors was experiencing trouble. As I rounded the curve down from my house, all I could see was red and blue lights that stretched about 1/4 mile down Flynn Rd in front of a neighbor's house. As I approached the scene, I got out and walked up to the State Trooper, showed him my ID and he told me it was a car accident, 5 seriously injured and 1 fatality. I still didn't think too much about this. I made my way through the emergency vehicles and as I rounded the last Med 1 I saw the tail end of the car, my daughter's car. As I walked up to the car, they were trying to get Denesha, my daughter and the driver of the car, out of the car with the "Jaw's of Life". She was screaming, but alive. I looked across to the passenger seat and saw DeAna, my other daughter and knew she was the fatality. I was in shock but continued to respond but couldn't tell you what I was thinking. I remember thinking how well the medics were handling the number of injuries and had such positive control of the situation.

I started back toward the van to tell Sheba to return to the house, and as I passed the Trooper I told him I wasn't leaving because the two girls were my daughters. I later found out the poor officer was devastated by the news. I told Sheba she should go back home and that the girls were involved in the accident and I would be home shortly to tell her what happened. She went home reluctantly but did not want to scare our three- year-old son by attempting to get closer to the scene of the accident. However, she had absolutely no reason to fear that anyone was seriously injured as it is a gravel country back road and didn't seem possible that anyone could be hurt on it. She never dreamed that one of them was dead. She left as one of the ambulances followed her down River Road, she turned into our driveway and they screamed on to the hospital. As she left, Sgt. Jim Lever, a friend and State Trooper, drove up. The officer on scene had radioed and told him the father of the girls was on scene, but Jim didn't know it was me. We saw each other and walked up and just hugged and cried for a minute. We sort of got ourselves together and completed what needed to be done before going back to the house and telling Sheba one of the girls had been killed.

Jim took me to my house. Sheba never sensed anything was terribly wrong, having just spoken to her sister on the phone and being assured that many medical vehicles respond to an accident and doesn't mean anything terribly serious. Knowing from experience that a Sergeant on site usually meant there was a death still didn't clue her in as she thought he was just driving me home. She came out to meet me and as I stepped from the car I knew this would be the toughest death notification I would ever have. As I explained to my wife that our beautiful daughter was dead, she just fell in my arms. As I had felt at first, belief was still not present.

The main reason I never dreamed that the girls would be involved is I had just seen them at 8:10 PM as they had come by the McDonald's while we were there. They would normally go home a more direct way, not the back way. Denesha should not have been driving because she had just gotten her license, and the rule is no driving with passengers for one year. DeAna had let her drive because it was Denesha's car and she convinced DeAna just to allow her to drive the short distance to our home where DeAna was going to leave Denesha at home and take the rest of her passengers to a youth function. There were six kids in the car and they were all hurt seriously.

Meanwhile Denesha was on her way to the hospital. After we got over the initial shock, we called Becky, my sister in-law, and told her and her family what had happened. Becky came over and picked up Tom, our three- year- old, and kept him while we drove to the hospital to check on Denesha and the other four boys that were injured.

When I had arrived at the hospital, there were a dozen friends and associates waiting to give their support. Firemen, Medics, Troopers and Pastors responded to assist the need of a fellow First Responder.

Denesha was being airlifted to Seattle for better care. My senior pastor offered to drive me down to Seattle. I reluctantly left my wife and two of our children at home and we left Bellingham about midnight and had a hundred miles ahead of us on one rainy night.

The weeks and months that followed were life changing. The questions that continued to come to mind were: why did this happen? How do we adjust to it? What will take the pain away? And will our lives ever return to where they were?

Through all the waves of pain and grief, as I asked for help through prayer and asked the Lord Jesus to help me through this, I started feeling the understanding and peace we all need to get through a life changing crisis in our life.

Have you ever heard a word that immediately caused you to remember a traumatic event in your life?
Do you have feelings of frustration, depression, helplessness, self-pity, anger or fear?
Are you unable to be alone with yourself, to sit peacefully, without feeling you must do something, or go somewhere?

Is there no peace in your life?

I've been all these places and for many years had no idea where to find the Hope.

As a young man, I always felt if someone was going to find the answer to a question I had, it would be me. I searched through parties, drinking and always trying to be the guy with no worries and plenty of friends. I knew if I worked hard enough and made enough money, I could buy all the things I needed to make me happy. During the course of my younger years, I managed to make several million dollars, travel to 35 different countries and buy all the things that I could think of to make me happy. The things accumulated, but the satisfaction in my life didn't come about.

Over the course of several years my eyes were open to many things that would change that emptiness and hopelessness that life can cause. Then the test of a lifetime brought full understanding to me to where I would find the hope, strength and understanding to know how to find peace in my life.

A New Hope

You may have lost someone of great value to you. Grief is not a condition but a response to the loss of any significant person, object or opportunity. It is an experience of deprivation and anxiety that can show itself in one's behavior, emotions, thinking, physiology, interpersonal relationships and spirituality.

Grief, writes Billy Graham, is a certainty - something most of us will experience at some time in life. "When death separates us from someone we love there is a time when we think no one has suffered as we have. But grief is universal". It is the method of handling grief that is unique and personal. You can expect to grieve differently from other people - not so differently that you cannot find fellowship in suffering with them, yet so differently that no one else's grief is exactly like your own. The loss you have sustained is your loss and your grief is absolutely your own. How you grieve depends on your personality, background, religious beliefs, relationship with the deceased and cultural environment.

Grief goes through a process in time. Many will tell you that "time will heal". Indeed it does but knowing how it heals is beneficial. There are a common series of stages that you go through when you lose someone precious to you. These stages may take anywhere from eighteen months to several years or longer. Just knowing about these stages offers you an opportunity to be gentle on yourself and more patient with life and yourself.

Asking "Why?"

On February 13, 1947, a plane bound for Quito, Ecuador crashed into a 14,000 foot high peak not far from Bogota and then dropped into a ravine far below. A young man named Glenn Chambers was on his way to fulfilling his life long dream - ministry. He died instantly, as did everyone on the flight. Before he left the Miami airport earlier that day, he dashed off a note to his mom on a piece of paper he found on the floor of the terminal. That scrap of paper was once a printed piece of advertisement with the single word WHY sprawled across the center. Between the mailing and delivery of the note, Glenn was killed. When the letter reached his mother, there staring up at her was the haunting question - WHY?

Persistently asking "Why?" is an appeal for meaning. You may be searching for some reason to make the death of your loved one seem fair and understandable. "Why?" is most often unanswerable.

The death of another person leaves us feeling vulnerable and reveals to us that we are not in control of everything. In the depths of your own grief, you may have been struck by the absurdity, pointlessness, and meaninglessness of the death of your loved one. You may feel abandoned. Sometimes you might even feel angry at that person for leaving you. As you ponder your future without this person, you may be asking if there is any meaning at all to this death and - now that your loved one is gone - if there is any meaning to your own life from now on. Without some meaning, life will either stand still or erupt into chaos as you begin to fill every waking moment with activity. It is true that time heals and softens the traumatic blow but how do we begin to find hope as we try to find a meaning for our own existence?

Where will my hope come from?

There are many who grieve without any hope for the future. For them, death is the end of a relationship forever. When a grieving person has no religious beliefs or refuses to consider the claims of Christ, there is no hope. As a result, the pain is greater, the grieving may be more difficult and presumably there is greater potential for pathological grief. However, God works after the fact of the death to bring meaning to your life. God works through all of these unanswerable questions. By putting aside our search for an explanation and a reason and grounding ourselves in one single truth, it will allow us to resist the temptation to place this severe loss at the center of our whole lives and live in a perpetual state of growing bitterness.

This truth is that:

God is too kind to do anything cruel.

Too wise to make a mistake.

Too deep to explain Himself.

If you are a Christian, this doesn't need to be explained to you. You already know that you are given a reason to hope, even in times of sorrow.

What is being a Christian all about?

A person who calls himself a Christian does so on the grounds that they believe that Jesus Christ is their Savior and Lord. In the Bible, the infallible word of God, Romans 10:9 says "If you confess with your mouth, Jesus Christ is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved". There are two parts to being a Christian.

Salvation

What is salvation? Salvation is a free gift. You cannot earn it, buy it or receive it through another person who is a believer in your family. It is a personal decision. Salvation is "being saved" - rescued by God's love for us. It means spending eternity in heaven with God.

For a Christian, death is not the end of existence; it is the beginning of life eternal. The one who believes in Christ knows that Christians will always be with the Lord in heaven. Because God is perfect and just, His holiness demands punishment for man's sin. God, out of His great love for us, sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world as a man, born of a virgin, to make substitutionary atonement for the believer's sin. In this way, God's wrath is satisfied and our full punishment has been received and paid in full by Jesus Christ, who died on the cross as an atonement for our sin. This is available to anyone who will believe, no matter what their past has been. This is evidenced in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he sent His only Begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life". God desires that no man shall perish but all should have everlasting life, but the truth must be received by faith.

Redemption

Redemption is about living. After receiving Christ as your Savior and Lord, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps you in your daily struggles and gives you the power to resist temptations. As you ask the Lord to forgive you for your past mistakes, He wipes the slate clean and redeems you through the blood of the Lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ which was shed to bring us forgiveness.

Being redeemed means you will begin to live a different lifestyle. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that "Whoever is in Christ is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come". It is an opportunity to become a covenant partner with Jesus Christ and begin again.

We must individually RECEIVE Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.

We Must Receive Christ
"As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12)

We Receive Christ Through Faith
"By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9).

When We Receive Christ, We Experience a New Birth
John 3:1-8 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him." In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. " "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

We Receive Christ by Personal Invitation
[Christ speaking] "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him" (Revelation 3:20).

Receiving Christ involves turning to God from self (repentance) and trusting Christ to come into our lives to forgive our sins and to make us what He wants us to be. Just to agree intellectually that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for our sins is not enough. Nor is it enough to have an emotional experience. We receive Jesus Christ by faith, as an act of the will.

You Can Receive Christ Right Now by Faith Through Prayer (Prayer is talking to God)

God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. The following is a suggested prayer:

"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be."

Does this prayer express the desire of your heart?

If it does, I invite you to pray this prayer right now, and Christ will come into your life, as He promised