it could have been me

My first thought was: "I am so insensitive; I am not going to cry. How awful of me." Next thing I knew, I was crying.

The fear and shock kept me rooted to the chair before tip-toeing upstairs for a supply of kleenex. Once there, I knew I needed to hear Mark's voice before he went to work. Risking the chance he could be in the shower, yet he answered the phone, and I couldn't speak.

Relief flooded through my eyes at having him at the other end of the phone. "Sorry..." was all I could say for a few minutes as he waited quietly, and perhaps a little upset at the other end. Finally I muttered through my weeping, "My co-worker was stabbed to death. I am so scared: IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME." Finally, he pulled enough of the details out of me to understand.

I have had trouble sleeping past six o'clock in the morning. That morning, I chose to respond to my natural clock, which meant I had time to spare before going to work. Instead of settling down to tea and a book in the sunroom that morning, I decided to treat myself to a small latte and lemon loaf from Starbuck's. I really wanted steamed milk with something sweet. Heading to the car, I felt I forgot something. Maybe it was just because I threw my routine off by twenty minutes, but then I remembered my book. Still, something was not right.

I drove by my office about the time the murder would have taken place. I thought about just grabbing a cup of coffee from the coffee pot and adding cold milk to it. But I continued a block further to Starbuck's.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I retraced my drive twenty minutes later and saw the two cop cars blocking our back entrance, the sheriff doing a u-turn past me to join them, and then seeing all the yellow tape at the far end of our parking lot. Surely, this was just a burglary? There are other businesses that line that part of the parking lot...

Susan greeted me at the door. "Go to the chapel. It's not good news." I knew I wanted my hands free, so I dropped my purse at my desk on the way. Bad news could mean a lot of things. No one is dead, I told myself, because I didn't want it to be so.

"Did you hear what happened?"

I shook my head.

"Kesha was stabbed to death."

After talking to Mark, I had enough sense about me to realize this was probably personal and nothing to be afraid of. A stabbing, a single woman, outside of her work building--it suggested someone familiar with her footsteps, hers alone. This turned out to be true.

So, that morning, it probably would not have been me. At some point, though, I could have become someone's target. It could have been me. In an instant, I was my mother receiving the news that I was gruesomely killed; I was me, at college, with my dad telling me Mom had been the victim of a murder, not the victim of her health; I was Kesha, in terror, confronting the man with one last hope he was a good man. I never, ever, want to be in the shoes of any one of those women; I never, ever, want the women in my family to be in those shoes either. So I tried to pray against that between my choking fear.

I almost felt hopeless as I imagined her daughters and mother taking the news. They know Christ though. They have hope, and rejoice beyond their own grief.

you are the branches

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." JESUS

Last week, the president of our mission shared that grape vines require significant pruning to produce good fruit. Vines produce branches in three stages. The final stage is worthless, so the branch must be cut back to nothing that it might begin the fruit-producing cycle again.

I understood how I could apply this gardening technique to my own spiritual growth. If nothing else, it could give me patience the next time God is improving upon my character. But this…

I knew the Bible said somewhere that all things are worked for His good; I had been working on resting God’s sovereignty in all things; and I wanted to see this immediately following Kesha’s murder. What good could possibly come from this?

The analogy of the vines returned to my mind. Did He mean to prune this branch to the point of death that others might produce good fruit for His glory? How? She was such a solid, private, behind-the-curtain character of our show. How could we respond, or what are we waiting for, that would glorify Him?