The Ultimate Christian Contradiction
In 2008, I stood in line inside a Family Dollar store in North Little Rock, Arkansas, when an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while walked up to me. We smiled and hugged one another, asking the typical questions: “How have you been? What have you been up to? How is your family?” to which I replied with the typical answers: “I’m good. I’ve been working hard and watching my kids grow. The family is great.”
But her answers were anything but typical. And little did I know that as I listened to her tell the story about how just a week before, her ex-husband had died unexpectedly, the fear of death was crawling in through my ear and would take up residence inside of me for the next five years.
“He called me Thursday,” she began, “and said he was having the worst headache he’d ever had in his life.”
“That’s awful,” I told her as I listened intently.
(Yes, listen carefully to every word, Jessica—you don’t want to miss this.)
“He was scared. I could hear it in his voice. I knew something was wrong. I told him to call 9-1-1.”
“What happened?” I asked as a strange feeling swept through me; I pressed my hand to my chest, and my pulse began to race.
(You know what happened…it could happen to you. It will happen to you.)
My friend’s expression shifted from shock to sadness; she shook her head.
“He died,” she said. “It was a brain aneurysm. I couldn’t believe it. He had been fine the day before, and then just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“he was gone.”
I gasped and felt that dark, warm, threatening feeling expand so thickly inside of my chest that it began to squeeze my heart.
“That’s terrible…I can’t believe it…”
(You better believe it. You should be more prepared for death’s visit.)
I checked out my items, and we walked into the parking lot together. We talked a couple more minutes, hugged once more, and said our goodbyes, knowing we’d likely never see each other again unless it was another chance meeting somewhere on our separate paths.
To this day, seventeen years later, I haven’t seen or heard a whisper of her.
When I think back on that day, I often wonder why, after many years, I had to run into her in that store. What purpose did it serve to talk to her in that particular moment, only to say goodbye and never see her again? If our chance meeting had happened a little more than a week earlier, before her ex-husband died so tragically, or if I’d driven to the store just thirty minutes later, I would’ve missed her and escaped the spirit of fear that latched onto me with razor-sharp talons.
But that’s not what happened.
We were both there in a rare, perfect, disastrous moment, like two planes colliding in midair.
And it felt intentional.
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