The Saddest Day

Thursday September 29, 2005 a 17 year old named Brad killed himself.

Wednesday September 28,2005 the only words I had for him were. "Why cant yall sit still for 30 minutes?."

Steven and I work with the youth group in our church. We attend activites with them, friday
nights after football games, monday night gym jams and wednesday night youth meetings. Most of the time we end up walking outside patroling the parking lot and keeping the peace. Working "Security" and keeping an eye on couples hiding in dark corners.

During services most of the youth workers honestly dont pay much attention to the kids. They sit amoung our "core kids", and concentrate on the message ect.. But Steven and I have made a habbit of sitting amoung the non-church kids. The skaters and the thugs who attend only on wednesday nights. At first they balked to our pressence, but after a time they have begun to accept that we will sit amoung them every single week, and it is far better to be called down by one of us rather than Rodney calling them out in service.

This past wednesday was like any other week. Except for the fact that there were over 200 present. As usual there was a separation,core youth churchy type kids on one side, thugs and non -churchy type kids on the other. I took my seat beside the girls with Brad and his buddy Ryan directly behind me to my left. Ryan had his feet proped on my chair and kept inching it forward. I turned in exasperation and asked Brad why they couldnt sit still "for a 30 minute sermon when they could sit for a 3 hour movie?" He grinned at me and played what I said off.

Sunday at his funeral Pastor Rodney spoke about the "What if's" and related this loss to the loss of Lazurus to Martha and Mary. I know that very likely there is nothing that I could have said to him that would have changed the outcome of thursday evening. There isnt anything differnt I could have done. Still it has given me a change of heart.

I am resolving to make a differece in the lives of these kids. I resolve to learn as many of thier names as I can and to make sure that each and every one that I come into contact with knows that I am someone that he or she can trust. I resolve to make every single kid know that they matter, and that they can count on me. I reolve it. We will not lose another one.