Roller Coaster

It was like a scene from a movie. Sunday afternoon, after nap time, Jerry and I sat down at the kitchen table with notebooks, calendars, post-its, ideas, plans... ready to do some planning and general catching-up on life. We each got about 1 sentence out of our mouth and his phone rang. I knew from his words that our little meeting was over.

A lady at our church has a son in the army stationed in Louisiana. He had been killed in a one-car accident on Saturday night and she had just received word via the military showing up in her front yard. Because he was in the military, there is red tape to go through. The next 24 hours were pretty consumed by trying to get all the facts of the accident, finding out when the body would be transported, going to the funeral home to plan the funeral, going to the cemetery, meeting with military personnel. Etc. The family asked Jerry to be with them for most of those moments. Which is truly an honor and privilege for him. But for me, I have to fight off that selfish monster that lives inside of me. I had to fight off being disappointed that we had finally, finally, finally had a little time to ourselves, only to have it interrupted in the first few seconds.

But this is his job. It is the life he loves. And I love it for him. He does it so well. He is great at caring for people. And when tragedy hits, I am so glad he is there for people. Except when it interrupts my plans. But not really. My plans aren't that important. People are important. But still, see, I had these plans.

So do you see the war raging inside of me.

But God is such an incredible Lord. In the midst of the Sunday night tragedy, Jerry made a short trip to the church to look up a song for this lady because her son wanted it at his funeral. While at the church, a family showed up thinking we had Sunday night activities. Those had all been canceled because of our high school graduation. So Jerry spent a little time visiting with this family anyway. Their middle school son had been wondering about baptism and communion and this gave him a chance to ask Jerry some questions. It also gave him a chance to pray for salvation. How cool is that?!?

And last night, Jerry and I went to talk to a lady and her daughter about baptism. The lady is 40, the daughter is 7. At the end of all that, Jerry led them both in a prayer of salvation. How sweet!

So the roller coaster is going to be a trip that is about 2 weeks long. Jerry has a funeral this Saturday, a wedding next Saturday, 2 sermons in the next 2 weeks, 1 Wednesday night study, Logan's 17 birthday and a special trip that he doesn't know about yet, a church picnic on Sunday evening, new pews arriving at church next Tues-Wed-Thur (it takes a few days to get them all set up), the kids' last day of school is tomorrow, and I am trying to do a bunch of stuff for VBS in the midst of all that. Our lives look insane over the next 2 weeks. But as I told someone on Saturday, "We are a roller coaster family." Of course I was describing our love for riding roller coasters at amusement parks. But perhaps it describes the way we live also.