Rescue

Thursday night

Several men were in a motorboat out in the ocean, when one accidentally fell into the water, which was freezing cold. One man jumped in to help him, followed by three more. The first rescuer swam toward the victim, but the other three realized quickly that they would have to turn back. One of them said to the others, "They're headed toward a whirlpool," and there was a real threat of hypothermia. The lone swimmer reached the man who had fallen, but he was in a bad way -- he was so cold that he could no longer swim and fight the strong current which was about to pull him down. This put his friend in a terrible position. He had two awful choices: he could stay and die with his friend, or leave him and feel guilty about it ever after. The rescuer implored his friend to swim, but it was no use. He held onto him with his right arm, but soon the two of them were underwater. Soon he'd have to make an awful decision. For a brief second he closed his eyes, and thought of his young daughter back home. He imagined her playfully touching his beard, as she sometimes did. He opened his eyes and to his surprise, found that he was actually being touched by his frozen friend, who had reached out to him in a last, Herculean effort to survive. The rescuer responded by finding strength that he didn't know he had; he held his friend fast and swam with all his might to get him back to safety.

*****

Yesterday afternoon I attended a memorial service here in Nashville for a young woman who lost a four-year battle with breast cancer last week. She was 27. I had the pleasure of talking with her on only a handfull of occasions; she and my wife were friends. She was so smart, so positive, so friendly, such a life force. She was vivacious. I'm sure that her spirit, and the fact that she never, ever gave up, infused this dream. This is a woman who, despite being afflicted with metasticed cancer, ran and completed last year's Music City Marathon, at a lenghth of 26.2 miles. What a special person she was.