mourning with those I don't even know...

In my Bible study today, I was asked the question, "What is one trait you like about yourself?" I took a minute to think. There are talents that I used to possess that I feel I have let gone waste (writing--for example), but one thing I have not lost is my tendency to easily empathize or sympathize with the hurting. I'm a softy, I guess--sometimes overly sensitive. I put myself in others' places, trying to wonder how they must really feel.

That hurts in times like these.

At church on Wednesday night I found out that friends of mine had just lost a dear friend from college and seminary in a car accident. I never met Amber Mathenia, but now I know that she was a 28-year-old missionary to Ethiopia that was home on furlough. She and her husband had an adopted 4-year-old daughter from Ethiopia, and they had just completed a domestic adoption of a six-month-old boy. Amber's husband had been on a 2-week trip back to Ethiopia, and she was killed the night before his return.

"Please pray for my friend who is just now getting off a plane and learning that his wife died yesterday," our youth pastor announced in church Wednesday night. Oh, how my heart ached for him and those babies and their families and their friends.

I thought about Courtney. It's been over 8 years. Wow--has it really been that long? In many ways it feels like it was yesterday. It was her death in a car accident that changed my life forever.

That day had started out so normal--I was so innocent, so naive. I was returning to my dorm room from the shower when the phone rang. It was for me. I will never forget that moment. I was wearing a yellow bathrobe, and I had a towel on my head. Brantley, my roommate, was sitting in a chair, and I fell down to her when I heard the words, "Courtney is dead." Dead? Dead? How can it be? Hurt, maybe. But, dead? No....no, no, no....NO!

And so today I think about and mourn with and pray for those dear friends and family of this sweet missionary who I never had the privilege of knowing.

Courtney has spent every day face-to-face with Jesus since Dec. 9, 1999. She has held his nail-scarred hands. She has looked Him in the eyes. She has kissed His cheek.

When I worship my Lord, I am joining Courtney in what she spends every minute of every day of eternity doing.

I pray that Amber Mathenia's family and friends may, too, know the joy of knowing their loved one is in the very physical Presence of our her Savior amidst their mourning of her passing from them.

Oh, Lord--please be near to the Mathenia family now.