Today is a sad day with a happy ending. I’m in Little Rock to bury my sister’s 30 year old son Shaun Michael Braswell. Last weekend, he was riding his motorcycle headed home when a man who was two times the legal limit for alcohol hit him. After a couple of days in the hospital, it was determined that he had no brain function, and he was declared dead.

Besides the fact that he was so young, it’s also a sad story because he led such a difficult life full of an unstable (at best) upbringing, uncertainty of who he really was and who he really desired to be, and many poor choices on his own part. He was a lost little boy in a man’s body. Shaun had a huge, 9 year old boy smile every time I ever saw him. He was so desperate for love and family, desiring to “belong,” just as each of us does. His hugs were always strong and clinging.

A couple of years ago, he had an encounter with Jesus at a revival with his aunt and cousin. As he held his cousin’s hand, he prayed with her and her husband, accepting Christ as his Savior. Although he never took that next step and became a true Christ follower, he is in Heaven now, out of the pain of his life, free at last from his demons!

Shaun was a father to a beautiful three month old baby girl named Jada. While she will never know her father, she has a chance to end the history of drug and alcohol abuse, the heritage left behind by three generations. As I held her in my arms a few nights ago, I told her that Jesus loves her. I prayed over her and asked that God would engrain those words in her little heart and mind. I asked God to place people in her life who would point her to Him, who would love her with His love, who would guide her down the path to being a true Christ follower. She is Shaun Michael’s future now. This can be a new beginning. God makes all things new, and that is my prayer for this precious child and her mother.

As I go through this day, my heart is full of hurt and sadness as I look not only at Shaun’s short life but also at his mother’s, at his grandmother’s, at the disease of drug and alcohol addiction. My heart is also full of hope, though, the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, the knowledge that our eternity is not dependent on the daily choices we make here on Earth but on the one choice that we make in placing our faith in Him.

This afternoon, I will fly back to family, to the squeals of delight, the longed-for, precious hugs, the stories of the past few days, and the loving arms of my wonderful, godly husband. I long for those moments as I sit here and type, preparing to go to a service to remember a young man who was once a little boy just like mine. May God show me how to love my children, how to guide them into a love for Him!

In John 1, the Bible tells us that each blessing we receive is from Jesus, is due to His grace and mercy for us. I thank you, Jesus, for so many blessings beginning with the smiling faces that will be waiting for me when I drive into the driveway of my home this afternoon. You have been good to me, God; You have been good!!