What If I Told Them?

Meet my friend Lacie. In this shot we're in her back yard in Colorado Springs, which looks out on Pike's Peak. Lacie is on staff with Cru, and she spends her days reaching out and opening her cozy home to Air Force cadets. She even has a good friend who's a female fighter pilot. (Can't say I've ever even met one of those!) We had a fascinating phone conversation this week about women in the military and today's decision about raising the restriction on allowing them in combat. But I digress.

The night this photo was taken (last May), Lacie built a bonfire, and a bunch of young folks showed up with food. We had a blast. They even got me to play "Bloody Red Baron" on the ukelele. And sing it. No alcohol involved. I swear. They had me reading the lyrics off somebody's iPhone. Those crazy youngsters!

When Lacie was fifteen, her neighbor was on his way home from a bar one January night, and he hit her with his truck. She lost her leg at the scene. Her mom saved her life, but the next eighteen months involved so many surgeries that Lacie can't really remember the day-to-day experience of that time.

But one thing from then she definitely does remember. After Lacie came home from the hospital, that neighbor called to apologize. And she heard her mother tell him, “In light of all Christ has forgiven us, how can we not forgive you?”

Having her mom's example of what it looks like to forgive, Lacie told me, is "what set me on a course for accepting it. And in turn, with lots of time, I could see God’s grace to me....  I would not trade being an amputee for anything."

One book that has encouraged her a lot is called The Cure. She told me about this video she loves that goes with that book: