31 Jan 2013
Lost.
That’s a four letter word nobody ever wants to hear.
Our first encounter with lost occurred when our oldest son, John, was about three years old.
We took a family vacation to Disney World with Tammy’s parents, Lindsey, and John.
Lindsey was still in a stroller.
We took the tram across and walked through the front gates.
Tammy’s dad and I went to rent a stroller for John while Tammy and her mom watched Lindsey.
John was excited to be there, and unknown to anyone, he followed us to rent the stroller.
When we returned with the stroller, John was nowhere to be found.
Panic doesn’t begin to describe the next few minutes.
Tammy’s dad and I ran looking for John.
Fortunately, someone recognized John was lost and was standing with him just past the information center leading to Main Street.
This took less than two minutes, but this was no longer the happiest place on earth.
Tammy cried most of the day, but in this case our lost got found.
It was another 10 years before we had another lost event.
We lived in Boston.
One Saturday morning Tammy went for a walk with a friend.
Shortly after she left I heard the screen door close.
I got up to see what was going on.
I checked the kids’ rooms.
James was gone.
I put on my shoes, and started running through the neighborhood and looking for James.
After about thirty minutes, I ran into someone who was walking and she said two men who were going golfing had seen a little boy sitting on the curb in his pajamas so they knocked on the door of the house he was sitting in front of, and woke them up. They took James in and called the police.
I arrived before the police did, and that’s where I found James, sitting on their floor and playing with their cat.
Lost, but found.
“James is missing” is how our third lost event began.
For 17 days I held out hope for a Lazarus resurrection as we watched boats and divers spend hours on Ocean Pond searching for James.
The morning of January 31st began with a phone call from Tom Newbern.
We needed to come to Ocean Pond.
Tammy asked, “Have they found…..” and before she could finish, Tom just said, “You need to come.”
We rushed the 10 minutes across Highway 41 and down that familiar gravel road to the clubhouse where we were ushered inside and upstairs.
They had found James.
This time the found didn’t work like I had prayed for it to happen.
I clung to the hope they would somehow find him alive, but Sheriff Prine told us no.
As we watched the car drive away with James we walked outside to the warmest day we had seen during that period.
We met the dog teams who had found James, and talked briefly with the leader of the team that had recovered him.
We looked overhead as a two ship formation of A-10’s flew over Ocean Pond for James and performed the missing man formation.
A friend put together a video later that week, and one of the captions underneath a picture of James read, “forever in His arms.”
James was found and was where he desired to be.
Reliving this two years later doesn’t make it any easier, but looking back at this desperate time for us, we can see what a beautiful portrait it paints of Christ’s love for us, something that James would want everyone to know.
As we saw teams from three states converge on a 500 acre pond for 17 days to search for James, it’s easy to picture the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep, with the shepherd leaving the 99 to find the one.
I go back to John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
This is the motto of the pararescue teams that recovered James, but it perfectly describes the men and women who searched during those 17 days in the most horrible of conditions.
Examples of love and compassion were everywhere during the search, and have continued as part of James’ legacy.
I believe James would want his legacy to seek out the lost for Christ, to show God’s grace and mercy and to lead others to that personal relationship with Christ he professed and proudly shared.
He would look forward to hearing them sing those familiar words from Amazing Grace, “I once was lost, but now am found.”
Helping the lost get found.
That’s what it’s all about.