LEAVING TOO SOON

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I often think of those I have known in this life who seemingly left this old world before their time; most especially my classmates who passed away just before, or shortly after graduating from high school.

"Janice" was the daughter of a music minister, was in my school choral group, and, whereas, I was a member of the Class of '67', she was a member of the Class of '68'. 

I had graduated just nine months earlier, and was in my second semester of my first year of college when it happened. 

Janice and a friend were involved in a one vehicle accident. "Jim" was taking her home from a date when a thunderstorm arose. It wasn't just any storm, but what we always called a "gully washer." Jim turned into what he thought was the street which led into Janice's subdivision. However, he turned ten or fifteen feet before the entranceway, and ran into a rain swollen ditch.

Now, the car began to sink. Somehow, Jim managed to open the driver's door, or to swim through his open window. Janice was not so fortunate. The car quickly filled with water, and she drowned.

Janice's mother wrote a book about her own life and childhood, as well as her marriage and family. Of course, "Brenda" alluded to Janice, her love for God, and her church, her involvement in high school activities, her great potential, and, sadly, the circumstances surrounding her daughter's death.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have thought about Janice over the past half century. Oddly enough, though we were in chorus together, I don't recall saying a word to her, nor she to me. Of course, we were aware of one another's presence. But, as I reflect on it now, it seems strange that we never spoke. Be that as it may, I saw Janice on a daily basis, and, like her mother, I realized her potential. I knew she would make a difference as an adult. She was not granted the opportunity to do so.

And I have wondered, "Why have I been granted seven and a half decades of life when Janice never reached twenty?"

However, the mystery involves more than our respective years of life on earth. For you see, I have been involved in four potentially fatal vehicular accidents,... and come through without so much as a scratch. Beyond this, I have experienced several other situations in which I was a hair's breath from going on to my reward, but lived.

There are simply no easy answers. It seems so inestimably unfair. Why has someone like me been afforded so many 'near misses,' when someone like Janice was taken from us "first thing out?"

Yes, I have often wondered 'why' as I have stood at Janice's gravesite. (And I have stood there several times in recent years). And, as a pastoral counselor, I have had no easy answers to share with those who have asked me this question about a myriad of other young people who have preceded us in death, (and who had done nothing to endanger themselves).

Why do young people, often of such extraordinary potential, leave us before their time?

Until...

Well, the answer was written in the good Book multiplied thousands of years before you, or I, or Janice moved, and lived and breathed.

"My times are in His hands." (Psalm 31:15)

And it occurred to me. 

We are here at God's convenience. We will remain here 'til He calls us Home; whether we have reached age 2 or 102. In relation to this question someone wiser than me once said,

"God was simply done with him (or her) here."

And I know, the foregoing answer to the question seems at the same time both sufficient and insufficient.

But it is the only answer we've got.

by Bill McDonald, PhD