The Impact of Seventeen

Friday night, Centerpoint SR. Knights played a regular season football games against Dierks SR. Outlaws in Dierks. Centerpoint's # 55 had leg cramps during the game but played his heart out.

Saturday morning, while hunting w/ friends, he again had leg cramps while in the water, went under & wasn't seen again. Saturday night's candlelight vigil brought over three hundred people searching for answers, ready to give of thier hearts, prayers and love to a family devestated.

Monday, we mourned, we laughed, we cried, we stood in awe of the impact one young life had on us all. His mother & I spoke as we stood by her oldest son's coffin, embracing as she told me that if any one thing happened in a positive way from this, it was Trevor's rededicating his life & getting baptised Sunday. She knew when she heard that that maybe it was reason enough. At visitation, people spoke on the young man's behalf, one woman standing up to give her nieces' testimony that she wouldn't have been saved or baptised had he not talked to her about God's grace. As we drove home from visitation, Trevor said I am going to talk to Dalton & Tony @ church. I want to be that guy, the one that helps lead people to God. A couple weeks earlier, he ordered his sr. ring w/ a cross , a baseball & a basketball on it.

Tuesday, we stood together as a community from all corners of the state, from other states, FHA friends lining one wall as football teammates in jerseys lined the other wall, baseball teammates, coaches, church leaders, church friends, family & family friends all stood as one to say goodbye to an incredible young man that was a true testimony to God's grace & pure love. It was said that he touched far more lives in losing his @ the young age of 17 than he would have had he lived to the age of eighty. If the fve hour vistation of over fifteen hundred people and the church standing room only from inside to outside were any indication, then yes, his impact was huge.

Tomorrow night, I'll celebrate love, pure & true, laughter, a sense of having almost everyone together that will hold me tight in it's embrace & carry me through one more time until we meet again. Quietly & with deep thanks that almost all of mine are together under one roof.

Thank you, God, for thinking about me, I'm alive & doing fine.