Our Dash

Before yesterday mornings phone call I had decided we were going to visit about living life to it's fullest. About taking advantage of opportunities. About not just sitting on those opportunities we're given or putting them in a safe place for later.

We are still going to talk about living life to it's fullest. However we are reminded this morning we just don't know how long our life or the lives of those we love is. Our lives have a starting point and an ending point. The dash in between those two points is the time we spend here on earth. 

I want to congratulate John and Delores. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with family and friends in our cabin Friday evening. They are friends of ours and are about 5 years ahead of us on their dash.

 Marvin and Jean have spent much of the latter part of their dash helping and serving others. Marvin has been recuperating from some health issues. Yet he put 100% effort into finishing a cabinet for me when he easily could have said that he was just not up to it.

 Gerald's dash ended at 97 years old. Church bells rang during he and Clarissa's wedding in 1945 letting folks know World War II was over. They had 6 children. 5 boys and 1 girl. Kathy and Jan grew up as childhood friends in Wright, Iowa. Allen died when he was 15. Calvin, Ken, Norm, and Dave are all friends. Thank you all for your friendships and thank you Kathy for the picture. 

I'm just going to be honest. I can't visit with you about this last story without crying. However my purpose this morning is not about me. Or our crew. My goal is to point you and your sympathies to Linda and family. To remind us all that we can't get through these times without hanging on, to faith, to family, to friends. And to maybe answer some questions on how the rest of a very long day finished.

About mid day we received a phone call from Russ, our sheriff. He asked me if I had heard about the accident. I hadn't. He said Kevin and Linda were in an accident near Pleasant Hill hauling soybeans to ADM in Des Moines and that Kevin was killed. I was numb. We gathered in the office and BJ prayed because I couldn't without crying. Linda is our bookkeeper. Kevin was a friend, classmate, neighbor, and frequent visitor to our shop for morning coffee. We worked for them and they worked for us. 

Russ said he and Brent were asking if our crew would be willing to clean up the spilled soybeans. Kasey and Devin left in the semi. Kurt, Brad, and Josh were backfilling at Josh's new house. They immediately hooked up Josh's grain vac. BJ and Andy loaded Karl's tractor. The rest of us headed to Pleasant Hill with shovels.

Hwy 163 westbound was closed for several hours. Law enforcement allowed us to come through. While we were waiting for the investigation to finish up we could see we were going to be short of grain vac hose since the soybeans were all the way to a bank sign. I called Mark, a cattle feeder in the area, and asked if he owned a Rem grain vac. He said he did and he and his son would be glad to bring extra hose. Even in hard times it's a small world. He said Linda's brother Larry has backed up to his cattle chute many times hauling cattle for him. Linda also helped him unload seed boxes here one day a couple of years back when I was gone. Mark asked me to pass along his sincere condolences to the family. Thanks for you and your sons help Mark.

After we had cleaned out the remaining soybeans in the trailer and were waiting for the truck to be lifted and removed Kurt came up to me on the tractor and handed me this book. Here he had found it laying along the highway. The title was quite fitting. As I browsed I was reminded, we don't pray to inform God. He already knows everything. He wants us to come to Him and ask, like we want our children to come to us and ask. I was also reminded that prayer is not a spare tire when the rest of life goes flat. As our Creator, as our Savior, and as our Father in Heaven, he wants us, he created us to have a personal relationship with Him. Linda and family, hang on to God, His promises, and His grace as hard as you can, even when you have all theses questions, why did this happen?

And also remember you have hundreds, maybe even thousands of folks that care about you, that love you, that are praying for you. And they want to show you that love and caring by being willing to help you if and when you need it.

So, what about the rest of us? How are we to process this huge loss? Let's remind ourselves we have no control or knowledge of how long our dash between our birth and our death will be. Let's save the visit of taking advantage of opportunities during our dash for another week. Let's live our dash to the fullest, for the purpose we were created for. And lets be ready when our dash ends. Kevin was ready. He had accepted Christ's gift of covering his wrongs and he is in heaven this morning catching up with his brothers Steve and Bill, and his parents.

As I came in the office early this morning a song was playing on KCWN 99.9. It said, "Give me the strength to surrender. Give me the strength to let go. Show me the way".