Chapter
24

Back to the couch and the week following the funeral, I remember one encounter in particular that effected a close friend of mine. He was hurting really bad and was having a tough time coming to grips with how God could cause or even let a four-year-old boy like Jackson pass away. He didn’t come to the couch to help me. He came for help. To my friend, Jackson had so much life ahead of him. He’d miss school. He’d miss graduation. He’d miss a love life. He’d miss marriage. He’d miss kids of his own. He’d miss……..

Well, you see the point. My friend seemed to think that God somehow owed Jackson the life that my friend expected him to have. The commandment from Exodus 20 was even discussed where it says:

 

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

 

Had Jackson not properly honored his mother and father? Was that why his days were cut short?

 

I then asked my friend how many days or years accounted for a life “lived long?”

 

He didn’t know exactly, but he thought that surely a life lived long had to be longer than four years four months and ten days.

 

I questioned him, “Why?”

 

 As a doctor in an ER, I would often see extremely elderly people brought into the ER from a nursing home. Some of these patients were living well into their nineties. They were mentally clueless as to what day or even what year it was. They would sometimes be brought into the ER after their PEG tube had been pulled out on accident. Their Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy tube was their feeding tube where they received their nutrition and medications which allowed them to remain alive. Did God somehow owe it to Jackson to mark off a number of days on a calendar in his life to make it to the age of 74 instead of 4? I told my friend that there are many people that I know that live to be a ripe old age in calendar years, but they do not have a full life lived long for the Lord. I would much rather Jackson have lived four complete years lived long for the Lord than decades away from the Lord. I told him to imagine a timeline in his head from the beginning of creation until today. There would be many thousands of years on that timeline, and the difference between 4 years and 74 years would look insignificant on that timeline. I said, “Four or Seventy-Four, every moment counts.”

 

Jackson Dease had made every single moment of his life count. The boy almost never slept. He would roam the house or work on his toys in some organized fashion throughout the night. One night, our alarm system started going off in the middle of the night. Elna and I both sprang from our beds. We split up with Elna running to Alex’s room and me running to Jackson’s. He wasn’t in the room. There was a moment of terror wondering if someone had taken him. However, then Niki arrived with Jackson in her arms. He had decided to go out to ride his bike at 1 am in the middle of the night.

 

I believe that God had laid it on Jackson’s heart to make the most out of every moment he had on this Earth. Whenever Jackson walked into a room, he commanded everyone’s attention. He would speak to complete strangers in an instant. Six days before the accident, we were watching fireworks on the levee of the Mississippi River on the fourth of July in Baton Rouge. Jackson was working the crowds that day as we got ready for the show. He would always be just close enough for us to pounce if he were in any danger but would go from stranger to stranger saying hello. He would drag Alex along wherever he could. Poor Alex didn’t talk much before Jackson passed. I thought it was because she was shy. She wasn’t. She just never got many opportunities to speak. After Jackson passed, I realized that Alex was a talker too, and she had plenty to say about just about everything.

 

I say all this because Jackson led a very full life. He touched more lives in four years, four months, and ten days than most people touch in a 74-year-old lifetime. Bottom line, four or seventy-four, every moment counts.

 

My friend left the house that day and rededicated his life to Christ. He had a bracelet made for himself brazened with 4 or 74 = EMC. By the way, a few years later, he would have a boy himself. He named him, Jackson.

 

Psalms 20 New International Version

 

12 So teach us to number our days,

That we may gain a heart of wisdom.