The Color of Hope (36 page)
Aunt Gwynn glanced over at her sisters and back to Teri. “I’ve been back to Hope Springs one time in almost four decades, and I came in bitterness. I’m back today because of Sam and the hope she’s inspired that there could actually be unity.”
Teri stared at her, taking it in. “That’s incredible. Thank you.”
“Thank
you
,” Aunt Gwynn said, “for raising such a special young lady.”
Minutes later they filed out of the room, Stephanie feeling a mix of emotions.
Lord, I hate that we’re going to this memorial service. I hate
that we’ll be talking about Sam in the past tense. I hate everything about last
weekend, and I will never underst and it.
She took a breath.
But I need my focus to be on You. Please . . . have
Your way today.
L
ibby and more than a dozen relatives arrived early at the high school, the landscape filled already with hundreds of people. The line began at one of the entrances and snaked down the sidewalk and around the parking lot. News reports had mentioned that family and friends would be wearing white with a red accent. Many in the crowd had done the same. The image was striking, especially against the backdrop of a sunny, cloudless sky.
A limousine service from a neighboring town had offered the use of as many as five cars. Since Teri’s family was small, she insisted that the Sanders family make use of them. The drivers dropped them off at the front, and an officer escorted them all inside. Stephanie and Teri went a different direction from the rest, who headed to the gym.
The scene inside was captivating. There were rows and rows of chairs with a big red bow tied around the back of each, and up front, a dazzling array of flowers—all of them red.
“Who tied all those bows?” Libby said. She mentally calculated the time it must have taken in her event-planning brain.
“I’m not sure,” Janelle said. “But a lot of people were volunteering to help however they could.”
“Students did it.” Charley gazed at the sight. “The varsity and JV volleyball teams spearheaded it.”
Two guys serving as ushers came to man their posts as time neared for the doors to open. They handed Libby and the others a program. Sam’s picture was on the cover—the one that had been shown on the news—with her full name and dates that reflected a life cut much too short. Libby opened it and skimmed the order of service, noting Todd’s and Travis’s names on the program.
Family members moved to take their seats behind the first two reserved rows as people started flowing in. Libby spotted Travis, though, and backed out of her row to speak to him.
“Save my seat,” she told Janelle.
Travis was talking to a guy Libby recognized as the owner of a funeral home in Hope Springs. As Libby understood it, a private graveside ceremony would take place later this evening. She waited for them to finish and approached him.
“Hey.” She hugged him, then looked into his eyes. “How are you doing?”
He took a moment to answer. “I don’t know. This is incredibly sad. So incredibly sad,” he said again. “It hit me hard when I walked in.” His eyes brimmed. “I just wish I could wind back time and rush into that house and save her. You know?”
“I know.”
She hugged him again, and he held on extra seconds. She felt him wipe a tear.
He sighed. “How did the reunion go with Aunt Gwynn and Keisha and everybody?”
Libby had told him of their plan to fly in. “Really good. But we’ll talk about that later. I know you need to focus.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m praying for you.”
“I needed this.” His gaze penetrated. “Thank you.”
Walking back, Libby saw Janelle talking to a group of women, probably from her Soul Sisters Bible study. Trina was among them, and Libby caught her looking straight at her.
She spoke when she got near enough. “Hi, Trina, how are you?”
“I’m doing well.” The smile wasn’t bright like prior times. “How about yourself?”
Libby nodded thoughtfully. “On a day like today, it would be hard to complain about anything.”
Trina nodded in agreement. “Amen.”
Libby took her seat and couldn’t help glancing behind at the people pouring in, many of them teens. Marcus had positioned himself near the entrance, talking to many of them. Charley was in a different area, hugging the girls who were in tears.
Janelle returned to her seat beside Libby, and Libby turned to her.
“I just realized,” Libby said. “Aunt Gwynn and Keisha are here.”
Janelle quirked a brow. “A little too much sun for you out there?”
“And your parents are in town too,” Libby said, “plus my dad. How often does that happen?”
“Let’s see,” Janelle said. “It’s happened once in my lifetime.”
Libby gave a single confirming nod. “There you have it.”
“There I have what?”
“You and Kory should get married tomorrow.”
Janelle showed surprise at the thought. “But nothing’s planned.”
“Nothing was planned last week either,” Libby said, “except to just do it.” She looked at Sam’s face on her program. “I don’t know about you, but I’m really struck by the need to make the most of every day God gives us.”
S
tephanie and Teri held hands with Todd and Travis as the pastors took turns praying for friends and loved ones, especially Teri, for the service, for those in attendance, and beyond.
Teri looked them both in the eye when they were done. “When I had to make arrangements,” she said, “I thought I had nowhere to go but the funeral home. I felt like I might want to call on a pastor, but I didn’t know you. And I figured I had no right, seeing as we didn’t go to church. The two of you doing this just . . .” Her head dropped. “Thank you.”
“I think God went ahead and made these arrangements,” Todd said. “He knew what He had in mind. We’re humbled to be able to take part.”
“And we’re glad to have met you, Teri,” Travis said. “We hope the connection continues long beyond today.”
Miss Collins, an office secretary at the high school, walked into the classroom. “They said to tell you all it’s time.”
Teri reached a shaky hand toward Stephanie, and together they
walked down the hall, past a line of people still filing into the gym. They both paused at the sight of the crowd and decorations inside, which they hadn’t seen, but someone guided them to the front row.
Todd went straight to the podium up front and looked out over the crowd. “People are still being seated in the back, but we’re going to go ahead and get started,” he said. He waited a few seconds. “One hardly knows how to begin a service like this. You have come from near and far to remember the life of a precious girl, Samara Renee Johnston. Many of you come with questions. That’s appropriate. Many are angry and casting blame. That’s understandable. Some are even angry at God. It’s okay to acknowledge that.” He paused. “When tragedy hits, we struggle with how to respond. And honestly, that struggle won’t end today. We’re not here to give you all the answers. We don’t know all the answers. We’re here to remember Sam’s life and to reflect on her death insofar as it sounds a warning as to how we ought to treat our fellow man. And we’re here to point you to One who has all wisdom and knowledge, whose understanding is limitless, and who is able to give peace and strength, even in times like this.”
Todd gestured to the robed choir members who’d assembled on his right. “In honor of Sam, we have reassembled the joint choir for New Jerusalem and Calvary Church, which we’re calling the Unity Choir. They will sing two selections for us.”
Stephanie listened with her eyes closed, needing her soul saturated.
After the second song, four of Sam’s classmates came forward. When they contacted Stephanie, she remembered them as the ones who’d been sitting with Sam at lunch one day. Stephanie had let Teri decide if they should be on the program, and she was quick to say yes.
Three of the teens read Scripture verses. The fourth had written an original poem encouraging people to be the one to look for
the outsider or the loner in a crowd and to befriend them. After another choir selection, Travis came forward.
“When I first heard about the events that led to Sam’s tragic end, I was very angry,” he said.
Stephanie saw heads focus forward as people seemed to be surprised at how Travis began.
“Yes, I’m a pastor,” he said, “but I’m human. And I was angry. How could someone treat this girl this way?” He spoke slowly, deliberately. “How could others pile on, publicly humiliating and demeaning her? How could people be so sick?”
The gym was silent, the only sound a baby crying in the distance.
“But then I remembered my own sin sickness,” he said. “I remembered things I did in my past, before I knew Jesus, that hurt and demeaned people. And I remembered things I did
after
knowing Christ that I regretted.”
Stephanie could tell Travis was feeling this in a deep place.
He sighed. “A weekend like the one we just had puts our sin natures on blast. Like a siren, it lets us know something is wrong deep in our souls. It lets us know we are in desperate need of a Savior. And I’m going to tell you about that Savior . . .”
As Travis shared the gospel, Stephanie prayed silently that Teri and others would hear and believe. And then she started feeling jittery—one more song, and it was her turn . . .
She walked up with her notes and set them on the podium. Eyes scanning the breadth of the gym—and the news cameras—her nerves got the best of her.
Lord, please help me.
She looked down at her opening sentence, and it sounded stupid.
Looking out at the crowd again, she took a big breath and turned her notes facedown. She took the wireless microphone from its stand.
“I could say a lot of glowing things about Sam,” she said, “things like, she was so sweet and nice, so quiet and shy, so diligent
and hardworking . . . But if you’re here, you probably already know that. So I think I’ll share who she
really
was. Because I found out one night.”
Stephanie walked away from the podium. “One evening when her guard was down, and she might’ve had a sugar high from too much sweet tea, Sam said, ‘You’ll never guess what I really, really want to be.’ I said, ‘If I’ll never guess, then just tell me what you really, really want to be.’ She grinned and said, ‘I’m too embarrassed to say.’ I said, ‘Sam. Say.’”
Stephanie smiled, mostly to herself, remembering the moment. “Miss Quiet-and-Shy Samara Johnston said, ‘I really, really want to be the next American Idol.’ I said, ‘Sam! I didn’t know you could sing!’ She said, ‘Because I
don’t
sing. At least for people.’”
The audience chuckled slightly, as did Stephanie. “I didn’t want to alarm her,” Stephanie half whispered, “but I knew at this point we had a problem.” She smiled, continuing in her regular voice. “I said gently, ‘Sam, if you want to be the next American Idol, you have to sing . . . for actual people. So here’s what we’ll do. We’ll practice on actual little people.’
“So I assembled a three-judge panel of five-year-olds”—she stopped as she walked across the floor—“I bet y’all think I’m joking. Totally true story. I told Sam she could sing any song she wanted.” She paused again. “Now, at this point, honestly, I’m thinking it’s cute she’s got this pipe dream, but I’ve watched enough singing competition auditions, complaining, ‘Come on,
nobody
in this child’s life told her she couldn’t sing?’ So I was already formulating ways I could nicely respond . . .”
Stephanie put a hand to her hip, shaking her head. “Y’all. She bust out with her song, and she. Could. Sing. She could actually . . .
sing
.”
Emotion snuck up on Stephanie, and she paused a moment.
“I think there was much more where that came from.” She swiped tears. “I think Sam had many hidden talents and dreams that would’ve come out with a little coaxing and an overdose of sweet
tea.” She laughed softly as more tears came. “It’s such a gift that many of those things were revealed in the pages of her journal. But nothing in that journal impacted me like what she wrote her last night on this earth.
“It was disturbing, rambling, and poignant all at once. The first words were, ‘I hate this world. I hate my life. I hate the pain.’” Those words gripped Stephanie even now. It took her a moment to continue.
“And she said . . . she said she’d read where Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ and she wanted to be part of
His
world, His kingdom. And it seemed like she was getting on her knees as she wrote, telling Jesus to please save her, to please let her be part of His kingdom.” She swiped some more, but stopping the tears was fruitless. “The last thing she wrote was this . . .”
Stephanie went back to find it in her notes. “’Jesus, I want to live with You forever, and I want to go now. But I’ll try to hang on . . .’” She looked down at the podium for several seconds, then looked up. “Hours later she logged on to Facebook. And then she just couldn’t hang on . . .”
I don’t know if I can finish, Lord. This is so hard.
She wasn’t even sure
how
to finish. She’d strayed from her message and wasn’t sure where to go from here.
Her eyes landed on a section of seating, and she headed that way. “This is where I first met Sam”—she stood by the row—“at a combined service of Calvary and New Jerusalem. It was Sam’s first joint service. In fact, it was her first
church
service other than when her mom took her as a baby. And she was looking forward to coming back. But the joint services ended because of a lack of unity.”