I’ve been learning life lessons well before my baptism in 2013. This one sticks out as one of the earlier lessons in my life about what I had not attributed to Fruits of the Spirit. In fact, at twelve, I didn’t really even know what that meant. And what harder of concept to grasp, such as peace, when the world falls apart on a daily basis? We’re stricken with grief almost daily. We don’t get that job we interviewed for which would provide better means to care for ourselves or family. We deal with the loss of loved ones to such awful things like cancer or murder. Such is the case with this particular post. What makes peace one of my favorite fruits of the Spirit? You’ll find out soon enough.
The year was 1999 in the first week of September. My mom and dad were pulling their hairs apart fitting in the pressures of raising me and holding down their jobs all the while helping my oldest brother John and his wife Diana pack and prepare for a big move to Salt Lake City, UT. The ironic thing is Salt Lake City is such an integral part of my family’s concept for leaving the nest, which I don’t know why, it just is. But I digress. Imagine wrangling an awnry twelve-year-old and worrying about the middle wayward son who at that time bounced between his dad and my house like a pinball.
We’d loaded up my dad’s truck, a trailer and a UHAUL and set for the open road. What is only a 4 hour or so trip from Grand Junction to Utah’s capitol city, is more like a boring and emotionally exhaustive trek which seems much longer than half a typical American’s workday. When we finally arrived to John’s new home, they unloaded the couch first so my mom, sister-in-law and myself could have a place to sit before helping them transfer the important things in for the night. Given this was in the days before the big book of mobile telecommunication, I cannot remember exactly how the looming bad news was discovered, but a message somewhere/somehow came through from someone that my brothers’ father was involved in a shooting outside a busy Grand Junction grocery store. And he didn’t survive. What’s worse, my middle brother TJ was sitting in his dad’s truck and watched the entire horror unfold before his eyes. And since TJ had been trying to get a hold of my parents and our brother John, he freaked out and decided he was going to drive the entire distance from Western Colorado to Salt Lake City in the middle of the night to be with us. This was my first major witness of life happening and furthermore, the bigger why do bad things happen to good people conundrum.
In the weeks following that horrible event, pastors and family friends would visit our house to console my brothers and my mom (who even though divorced the man I called Uncle Hobert, had maintained a better friendship with him than marriage). It wasn’t until one of my mom’s cousins whom is a local pastor here in town, taught us about peace. You might be thinking, How in the heck can someone be peaceful in the midst of such a tragedy? Well, I thought the same thing. And the ever so budding learner I was in my adolescence, I surprisingly understood as if I’d came up with the concept myself (though I sooo did not). He told us that while God doesn’t plan for someone to die of disease, famine, murder, etc, He is still presented with decisions to be made. Decisions which literally cause even our Great Father to change the trajectory of people’s lives.
He makes these reassessments so quick, 100 human beings couldn’t measure the speed of His Omnipotence. And while God didn’t plan that happening, He decided to take my Uncle Hobert home to the kingdom because should he have survived such an event, his quality of life would have been so terribly poor, he would have suffered until he passed away from natural causes anyway. And that peace is not necessarily linked to feeling good about a bad situation, but rather having our faith in God who knows better than all of us, is to provide us peace and wholeness in a different fashion knowing that he didn’t suffer long and that God had a better plan. It hurt for my brothers and especially so for TJ. I can only imagine what it was like to watch the man he looked up to so fondly being shot and killed just a couple of yards away. As a matter of fact, I feel like some of my issues are so minuscule compared to witnessing the hands of satan influence such a wicked event.
What I do know, is my uncle along with the other gentleman [David Gilcrease] whom died in vain, were the 9th and 10th Colorado recipients of the Robert P. Connelly Medal for Heroism in addition to the first recipient of Gov. Bill Owens (residing Governor at that time) who started The Governor’s Medal of Valor. Both men showed their selfless acts of heroism in trying to mediate an escalated situation involving an ex-husband dragging an ex-wife into the parking lot by her hair. Unfortunately, all three people lost their lives due to this wicked event. And the husband had shot himself before the police arrived on the scene.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7 NIV)
You see, the peace we sometimes receive from The Holy Spirit is not necessarily to be understood. And when we ourselves go to the throne of His Holiness, will we may even find out the answers to many things. But I can’t help but think, we can have peace every single day if we just give God our troubles (along with our praises) and watch as he washes away the hurt. We may never know why this happened or that. We may never truly understand why our loved ones fall ill to the detriments of Alzheimer’s or cancer. We can, however, find peace and stillness in knowing that God is in control and He will make things right again (when they were misaligned from His great plan) soon, if not sometimes instantaneously. If there isn’t much to be said for this fruit of the Spirit, then what is there?
The Heart Mechanic 