We Are Never Promised Tomorrow.

April 1998 was one of the most memorable months of my life.  I was twenty years old, and I had just been hired for my first youth ministry position near Evansville, Indiana.  The process of getting that position, packing up and moving happened so quickly that I didn't get a chance to catch up with one of my best friends to say goodbye.  Her name was Danielle Dickson.

Danielle and I first met after she spent a summer at church camp with my sister, also named Danielle.  She attended Four Mile Run Christian Church, and I had grown up attending Mineral Ridge Church of Christ, just a few miles away.  By this time, however, my sister and I were going to another church, and we'd often pick Danielle up and bring her with us.  She became a good friend during that time.

Right after I settled into my new home in Indiana, Danielle sent me an email, lovingly chastising me for heading out of town without her seeing me off.  These were the days when calling long distance was expensive, so most days we would talk via email.  She insisted on taking me out to dinner the next time I was in Ohio.  We emailed pretty much every day for that first week after I moved, but there’s one email I'll always remember.

I was sitting at my computer one afternoon, finishing up my very first lesson for our youth group meeting that night.  Then I heard the familiar phrase, "You've got mail" indicating a new message on my AOL account.  It was from Danielle.  She'd had a rough day, and wondered if I could give her a call so we could talk.  I sent back a quick message that I was really busy, and I'd call her in the morning.  I quickly got back to my lesson, based on James 4:13-14.  

"13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

The topic of my lesson for that evening was "We are never promised tomorrow."  I wanted to instill in the students the idea that we should make the most of every day, every interaction, because we never know when it will be our last day.  How I wish I'd taken my own advice.

I came home exhausted from youth group that evening and quickly went to bed.  The next morning I woke up, ready to start my day.  As was my routine, I got online to check my email messages.  There was another email from Danielle.  As I opened it and began to read, I quickly realized it hadn't been written by Danielle, but by her father.

He wrote that Danielle and her friend Shari were out late the night before.  Driving home near Newton Falls, it appears Danielle fell asleep at the wheel.  She lost control of the car, going off the road and into a concrete abutment on Newton Falls-Bailey Road.  Shari was alive but not expected to survive (she passed away the following week).  Danielle had been killed instantly.

The last thing I ever said to one of my best friends was I'm too busy to talk to you right now.  What's worse?  I said it while planning a lesson about never being promised tomorrow.  Oh, how I wish I'd taken my own advice.  I'll confess I had a hard time forgiving myself for that night.  I couldn't think of Danielle without thinking of that email.  Years later, I would become the youth minister at her church.  Every year, we raised money for a camp fund in her honor.  I would look at the display set up by her family with photos of her, all the while I was still angry with myself for what I said to her that last night.

Time and perspective have allowed me to see things differently.  Still, I want to pass along a few lessons I learned from my mistake.

1) We are never promised tomorrow.  Don't assume that you'll still be here tomorrow.  Don't assume others will be either.  If it can be said today, say it.  If it can be done today, do it.  Don't wait.  You may live to regret it. 

2) Forgive yourself.  Holding onto regret or anger over a mistake you made will only eat at you.  If you let it, it will consume you.  That one moment, that one email, does not define my friendship with Danielle.  It does not define my life.  In forgiving myself, I made a choice to focus on the 99.9% of my interactions with Danielle that I was proud of, rather than the one I wasn't proud of. Dwelling on the bad changed nothing. All it did was affect my ability to see the good.  And there was so much good.  

3) Learn from your mistakes.  It's not a question of whether we will mess up.  We all will.  Way more often than any of us will care to admit.  What defines us is how we respond to the mistakes we make.  Do we let them defeat us?  Do they keep us stuck in the past, constantly dwelling on that moment where it all went wrong?  Or do we learn from it, and allow it to help us to grow.  My hero Rachel Joy Scott said, "I've had my ups and downs, and I fell a few times.  But I did not give up...don't give up."

4) See things with an eternal perspective.  This life is not the end for any of us.  My friend didn't die that morning in April 1998.  Her body did. Her soul, who she really is, lives on.  I know she'd placed her trust in Christ, and that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  I know I'll see her again, and when I do, the last thing either of us will be concerned about is an email I sent.  That gives me hope.