Thinking About Samantha, 23

In October of last year I received an email from one of our pastors at the Movement Church to please pray for a young woman who had been in a car accident. Her name was Samantha Leonard and she was severely injured. I did not even know Samantha but I began praying for her. Our whole church pulled together and we all prayed for total restoration to Samantha's body. I joined the facebook page devoted to her and I asked my friends to join and to pray for her. I followed the website her family had started and read many messages of hope and faith others had written to her family. I believed she was going to be healed with everything I had. But a few days later we all learned that Samantha had passed away. She was only twenty-three years old. She left behind a devoted family and husband, friends. And people who did not even know her, but would have been blessed to have.

At the time I was twenty-one years old. It really made me think about my time here on earth and how quickly it could end. I considered all of my hopes and dreams for this life and how much I wanted them to come to pass. I thought of my mother and my family and friends and how they would be affected if I left this world at so young an age. And it made my heart break for Samantha and her family. It also affected me deeply because I had felt so strongly that God could and would work a miracle for her. It made me think though of one of my heroes of the faith, Michal Ann Goll. Michal Ann Goll wrote one of my favorite books of all time, Compassion, which is a constant source of inspiration to me. She and her husband Jim Goll wrote so many awesome books, had an amazing ministry, and saw countless people healed. She battled cancer for five years until she passed away in 2008. When I heard the news it was this first time I learned the phrase that she had "graduated to be with the Lord."

So I was walking home on October 6, 2010, and I was thinking of all these things. It had rained that day and there were huge puddles on the ground. I was feeling that strange mixture of sadness and joy that all believers must experience at some point when one of our dear friends has graduated to be with the Lord.

With all that in mind, I wrote this poem that day:

Thinking About Samantha, 23

Sun rays slip through the clouds

and the gray streaked sky is reflected

in a dirty puddle on the asphalt

My shoes shatter this temporary mirror

Droplets fall off a leaf

like a ballerina leaping

forward on one pink foot

The sky weeping more than we ever could

The keening wind passes

over the creek past the window

or maybe it’s the coyotes

The atmosphere above us belies the truth

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain..." -Revelation 21:4