Thank You for Wynter, God

I don't even know if I will live another moment. This car that I'm in right now with my family could encounter a drunk driver or be a part of a tragic eight car pile-up on I-95. One or none of the four of us could or could not survive the crash. Does thinking like this make your skin crawl? It makes mine crawl.

However, this horrifying scenario makes the brevity of life no less real. I've been mulling over this since I got married 12 years ago and began to consider how closely attached another person's life is to mine ... thinking about stuff like who will die first ... my husband or me? I've been contemplating the vapor-like quality of life even more so within the past month.

Wynter's Passing

On July 25th this year, when I learned of the passing of 38 year-old Wynter Pitts, beautiful wife, mom of four (her oldest daughter played Danielle Jordan in the movie War Room) author, speaker, and blogger, I was taken aback, to say the least. As far as I know, she did not experience an elongated illness. According to her family, she stopped breathing and that was it. Wow ...

I believe this hit me hard because:

• Wynter was the cousin of Dr. Tony Evans' children. Dr. Evans is the well-known founder and pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Texas. I follow his children closely because I admire and am inspired by them. Not only do I respect what they're doing in God's kingdom, but I'm close in age with them and went to the same high school, summer camps, and after school programs with them. I feel some sort of connection with them even if they don't remember me.

• Wynter left a husband and four blossoming girls, all under the age of 15, behind.

• Wynter was the age that I just turned a few days ago.

• This was so sudden ... I mean, she was alive and then she wasn't. Her heart ... stopped.

The Hope That Matters

On the other side of this token, what's breath-taking is the strength with which her immediate and extended family are responding. Her husband Jonathan writes, "We are heartbroken and in much pain, but we rest in the hope that we have in Jesus Christ ... So if Wynter's life and sudden passing teaches you anything, learn to live every day in light of that fact."

What fact? The fact that there is HOPE to be had in JESUS and KNOWING HIM. And this is not a cliche' or bandwagon talk; I KNOW what I'm talking about. I've had my own issues, trials, and heart breaks as I've learned of the goodness and God-ness of God. I've experienced miscarriage and scary diagnoses, a car spinning out of control on a busy highway with my husband and me in it, and so on. And even if you're reading this knowing that you've experienced way worse, it doesn't make the track record that God has created for Himself in my own life obsolete. What it does is makes it obvious that God not only has a track record in one person's life, but He has a track record that supersedes just one person's life and sits high for all to see.

When it comes to the fragility of our existence and what Jonathan Pitts wants people to learn from Wynter and her unexpected death ... the true tragedy is when one dies not knowing JESUS as the forgiver of his sin. This is because when you don't know CHRIST, you're playing Russian Roulette with the whisper of life that we know on this side of eternity. When your time is up here, and you find yourself not having accepted CHRIST into your heart, you're a gon-er ... forever. There is no hope of life for you after death, like there is for the Christian.

John 11:25 says, "Jesus said to her (Martha when her brother Lazarus had died), I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live."

More Freedom

Wynter's death has introduced me to a new level of freedom. This is the putting away of time wasters -- nursing a bad attitude that's not worth having, allowing fear to immobilize me or anxiety to taunt me, choosing the ridiculous pace of life over soundness within my family, loafing on God and not letting Him get out of me what He knows He put in me ... just making the wrong call on what really matters.

My next moment is not a luxury that I'm certain to have. So I best get to living in the light of this.

I thank God that the death of His saints carries a glory that erases lethargic living.

Thank You for Wynter, God.

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