Close to Home

[I've been slow in posting this week because my mornings have been taken up with playing in the band for our church Vacation Bible School.]

Yesterday morning, in our men's Bible study group, I was informed that the mayor of Coppell (where I work) had died in what was presumably a murder/suicide the night before. This was shocking to all of us because on the 4th of July, we had her here in our worship service where we honored her with a plaque for her service to our community. About 4 weeks before this, she had been on campus along with Chamber of Commerce members giving her annual state of the city address.

We hear stories like this all the time, but this one has been shockingly close to home.

I work in a church, so we see a lot of births, wedding and funerals. Strangely, though, I didn't see this nearly as much at the previous church I worked at - well, except for the births, there were a lot of those. I think the difference is all about location. That was a very open community and commuter location. This is a very small, secluded community and we are one of the mainstays of the neighborhood.

In less than a year of working here we've buried two infants, seen a local middle schooler die tragically, and lost a number of adult parents of our church members. At my previous church, I know that we conducted a couple of funerals in my time there, but they didn't really seem to effect the whole church or community at large.

After having worked so long on the video that we played the day the mayor was here and participating in the 4th of July parade, I feel a lot more connected to this community and so things like this are just a lot more pronounced, I guess. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days and weeks as the community processes what has happened and we determine how we can reach out and support those who have been affected.