A Life.

They came to the funeral. Kids who had known Craig in elementary school. They posted on Facebook about all the times Craig had helped them with homework or lifted them up when they were down.

The teens and twenty-year-old's that Craig had hung around with told the same story. How great Craig was and how he had helped them. This was a surprise to us adults because we had spent years trying to help Craig.

His father left the family when Craig was 18 months old. One day soon after his father left, a friend of ours bent down and asked Craig how he was. He lifted his little arms and said, "Daddy? Daddy?" He missed his dad then and missed him all his life.

Craig had a step-father who was cold and self-involved. I guess he did his best, but he didn't understand children and what they needed.

When he was a teen, he started getting into trouble. First came drinking and then drugs. He became addicted to ecstasy and then cocaine. He would get jobs and quit jobs. He would get into fights and have to go to emergency. He was nice when he was sober but angry when he was drunk or on drugs. He got into trouble with bad people and the police.

But he believed there was a God. He told me he prayed. He tried to stop drugs. He said when he was clean he wanted to go to schools and warn kids about drugs. The last year of his life he got a good job and was doing well but then he fell back into the old ways. When he died he had drank a lot of alcohol that night. He lay down to sleep on the sofa and never woke up. He drank too much. The sofa was soft and his head was face down. He was too deeply asleep to turn over and he was smothered.

I felt God wanted me to share with everyone about Craig's life and death. I'm not sure why. When his mother was crying alone in her bedroom the day after Craig died she said she felt God touch her left shoulder. She said she smiled and said, "Hello, God." Then, to her surprise, she felt Craig touch her right shoulder and say, "I'm happy, Mom."

I think God took Craig that night because he was headed for more terrible trouble; also, as I said in my last post, "God loved him." His was a life. A life God touched but couldn't help, so he took it to Himself.