I can't imagine it ever gets easy

to watch the last few seconds of someone's life. I woke up this morning with a few clear goals in mind. Get a hair cut, get an oil change/car wash, and get all caught up on homework. The hair cut went as planned. The car wash did not. I brought a book with me to read while I was waiting. An excellent book by Brian Hogan, "There's s Sheep in my Bathtub", about his part in the birth of a Mongolian church planting movement. I was very engaged in the book so I barely noticed as a large (my size), well dressed, black dude was walking towards me. I was leaning against the wall and reading in the middle of two larger sections of lobby at this car wash. I looked up as he approached and he kept walking, although I noticed he was walking really close to me. Just as his left shoulder passed by the middle of my chest he collapsed to the ground right at my feet and went into a full-on grand mal seizure. I stood there and stared at him for what must have been about 5 seconds. In that time an older dude who claimed he knew what he was doing was on the ground holding his head so it wouldn't bang on the floor. I spend the rest of the time thinking of him as "ninja doctor". After 5 seconds of staring at this poor man in trouble, it occurs to me to pray. The first thing that comes into my head is that this is some manifestation of spiritual warfare and I pray for the man to be liberated from the demon wrecking havoc of his body. I pray for him to never have seizures again. I pray that the seizure will subside. I pray that all of this will cement a relationship between this man and Jesus Christ. I pray that this event would have a ripple effect that spreads to his friends and family. After 5 minutes of pretty wild flailing, he starts to calm down. He begins to breathe hard and heavy but he is laying pretty still. Ninja doctor announces that the man is coming out of the seizure and that everything is fine.

It is still a few more minutes until the paramedics arrive. Every couple of minutes I say a few more prayers. I pray for him to be alright. I pray for people in the car wash to come to know Christ. It is a weird situation. There really isn't anywhere to go and the man collapsed right in the middle of the room. Our cars are all being washed and/or maintained so none of us can leave. So we are all left staring at this poor man in the middle of the room. It's sad. He wet himself during the process and he is not conscious. I felt like there should be something I could do to help, but there was nothing. The paramedics arrive and start hooking him up to machines. They give him an IV and hook him up to a heart monitor. After only what seemed like one minute of the medics being on the seen this guy flatlines. They stop trying to get him to the ambulance and start on cpr and and blasting him with the defibrillator. That is really a horrible thing to watch. For over 20 minutes this goes on. One huge ripped up fireman is pumping his chest the whole time. I start to notice that I am not the only one praying and people are openly weeping now. This guy is somewhere around 30 years old and we all know we are watching him die.

There was no medical emergency card in his wallet. No bracelet or necklace. The manager of the car wash talks to someone on his cell phone and no one confirms that he has a history of seizures. For all I know this man was getting his car washed this morning and dropped dead completely out of the blue. I don't know his name. I don't know for certain he is dead. They had not given up on him when they drove off. But it had been some time since his heart was beating on it's own.

I feel like a jerk. Not only could I not help this man but as his life is being taken away I am generally ungrateful for the life that I have. Even this incident doesn't change that. I wish I could give up mine so he could live. I figure he probably valued his life. I pray to God today to save this man's life knowing that I ask Him to end mine. It was more than I was looking to handle on hardly any sleep.

So to the man who collapsed at the CarSpa in Addison this morning, I hope you knew Christ. I pray that you miraculously pull through. I pray that your family and friends, as well as the people who witnessed this and their family and friends, can all feel Christ's love ripple through their lives. That God is always using difficult and tragic situations to bring His Kingdom to more and more people.