quiet

I have lost friends and family to heart failures and cancers, but never to suicide. This particular friend, Kelly, was more of a friend of friend, someone whose phone number I used to have but lost after high school. I spent plenty of time with him back in the day, but it was my close friends who shared late nights with him as we got older. I know his voluptuous laugh had spread beyond his friends to so many of those he was mentoring, evangelizing, learning from, and sharing with. My heart breaks for his parents, his brother and sister, his fellow seminary students, his friends, and for all the people who will never understand what he was going through.

I slowly lost touch with Kelly in college and after. He prodded my faith and beliefs in a bar one winter break while we were home for Christmas, and I shrugged it off, wondering when he had done a religious about-face. I wish I had heard him out, not because I needed evangelizing but because he was gracious enough to spend his time on me. How many other people do I know that care about the fate of my soul?  

Losing him has stirred a melancholic mental tornado rather than tears. As a Christian, hearing about the death of a seminary student who had started his own evangelistic network makes you revisit the dark places that are just easier to tune out in church. I know that some of his peers are fearing for his soul, but there is only one thing that I'm certain of in all this, and it's that no God I know could possibly turn away Kelly, regardless of what took him to such a desperate place...there's no better time for His mercy. I don't envy the pastor at tomorrow's service who is expected to answer impossible questions and quiet the bleeding hearts of so many confused and angry people, but I'm more than ready for the reminders of peace, joy, and unyielding grace.