by Teri Ong
I have been keeping a long vigil by my telephone this afternoon. My stomach grips every time the phone rings– it is a condition the Apostle Paul called “bowels of mercy” (King James translation).
Earlier, my husband interrupted a normally routine music lesson to tell me that our daughter’s roommates had just been in a life-threatening car wreck. They had been “t-boned” by a semi. My husband was heading to the hospital.
The semi driver had no time to slow down. The two sisters took the full force in a compact car. The extrication took a long time. One of them had to be air-lifted to the local hospital. Both of the girls suffered severe head injuries among other crushing and grinding traumas. Neither of them are expected to live.
My husband called this the greatest tragedy we have ever seen.
On one level, for these young ladies, “to die is gain.” They are both faithful sisters in Christ. Their ultimate destiny is certain. But on the other hand, for them “to live is Christ.” They have been faithful servants of Christ and had even recently expressed their desire to enter more fully into ministry. Our church’s college group meets Sunday evenings in their living room. They have been excellent role models of how to live out the Christian life in hostile academic environments.
Not only are they faithful sisters in Christ, they are fellow players in my string quartet, fellow teachers in my school , and former students of mine, friends.
As I keep watch over the phone, I keep my hands busy while I pray. My hands are cutting and sewing blocks for a baby blanket. As I pray and work, my grandchildren are noisily playing in the next room. My grandson can’t understand why Grammy is crying about someone who might get to go to heaven.
The blanket is for another former student who is expecting any day now.
Saturday I am entertaining another student and her fiancé. Several former students are getting married this spring.
The Psalmist wrote of this great circle of life and death,
They [God’s creatures] all wait for You
To give them their food in due season,
You give to them, they gather it up;
You open your hand, they are satisfied with good.
You hide Your face, they are dismayed;
You take their spirit and they expire
And return to their dust.
You send forth Your Spirit,
They are created;
And You renew the face of the ground.
(104:27-30)
As I wait for news, I think of other times we have waited; other times we have received hard news. Like the time one of our students was bitten by a poisonous snake and died on the mission field. Like the time one of my second grade students dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in the back of a defective camper…
Sometimes when I hear of some childish misbehavior (or worse) by children who are not mine, I have been tempted to think, “Thank the Lord they weren’t my children.” But I never think that way with my students in any circumstance– They are all my children– now and forever.
One more phone call. One of the sisters has left us.
I am praying very hard that we and the girls’ parents might not be desolated by two deaths. We have seen impossible cases resurrected before. But if they both very soon end up safe in the arms of Jesus, we will say of them what Moses said of Enoch, they “walked with God; and they were not, for God took them.” (Gen. 5:24)
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- Caitlin Kadlub
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- Faith Kadlub. Met her savior today. April 23rd, 2009
