Strong emotions

With our whole school I mourn this week the passing of basketball coach and science teacher Randy Cave who succumbed Tuesday afternoon after a rough fight with Burkitt's lymphoma. I will not here spend time extolling the wonderful work that he did with his students and players, as time has already been spent on that for those who needed to hear it.

What I do want to discuss is the guilt that I feel. I knew that Randy was not a Christian. He showed no signs of it in his outward life, and at times seemed resentful towards spiritual topics. And during the whole year last year, I ate lunch with him every day, and never said word one to him about the gospel. I hope that my life was a witness for Christ, but I never had a direct conversation with him about it. I did not go and visit him in the hospital, though I certainly prayed for him (less often than I should have). I did not go and talk to him about what he was thinking and feeling at the end of his life, and what he needed to do about the next life.

At his memorial service, not much was said about where Randy will be spending eternity. The focus was on the things he left behind for this world, and they were indeed worth praising. His care and love for the kids he worked with is something every teacher should emulate. But rather than give me more hope, I felt more hopeless knowing that all of Cave's life was focused on this world. But I don't know how to tell the truth to my fellow teachers in a way that won't be too intensely painful right now like it is for me. I don't want to see the whole school following the false idea that Randy's work as a teacher earned him enough recognition from God to let him into heaven. I want to minister as a result of this event, but I think it is far too soon to be that direct about it. As a result I feel mute, impotent, unable to help those around me the way I want to. I pray that God would take charge of my guilt, my grief, and my love for my fellow teachers and my students, and give me wisdom to know how to handle them all.

Almost in the same breath, I would have to thank God for the other powerful emotional event that he has brought into my life, this one quite positive. I recently renewed my close friendship with Donna Szabo, a Grove City College history/ed. major who I had tutored in Physics a couple years back. On Wednesday, after discussing the above events with her on the phone, I asked her to be my girlfriend and she graciously accepted. We are still riding a bit on the ecstatic emotions of that night, but we are also buckling down to the real work of defining what our relationship will mean, and especially how it will glorify God. I'm hopeful that this will be a powerfully maturing experience for both of us. She is still studying at Grove City and plans to graduate in 2007 after taking a fifth year of courses, finishing with Student Teaching (just like I did!). She has been interested in moving down to Virginia, and hopefully I've just given her one more reason.

I feel really trite announcing this here but if you want to talk about it in more detail I will talk to you personally, no problem. I guess I should post a picture or something. That's her on the left, with her sister who she's just helped get ready for homecoming.