Given Strength

I met Cameron at a rehearsal for Maranatha’s production of Pirates of Penzance. Through Chorale and the play, we became friends. It was on the first Chorale trip that I heard Cameron’s story. It’s a story about an accident that I’m sure many of you remember hearing about on the news. I’ve asked Cameron to share his story and what God taught him through the accident. 

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Put yourself in the place of a 16-year-old boy. What is at the forefront of your mind? Girls, of course. And in the case of this particular 16-year-old, one girl. I thought that she was just perfect for me, so I couldn’t stop talking to her. All I wanted to do was talk to her and think about her. Little did I know that, as serious as I thought the issue of this one girl was, I was about to come face-to-face with a much more serious issue.

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Despite the cloudy skies, it was a beautiful Saturday morning. I had been having a fantastic week with the other kids in my youth group at camp CoBeAc, and unfortunately, it was over. So we loaded up on our bus and started the seven hour journey home to Indianapolis. It was a fairly typical bus ride, meaning that it was filled with people laughing, talking, yelling, and sleeping.

A few minutes before we got back to church, our youth pastor, Chad Phelps, stood up and started giving instructions for when we got off the bus. As we took the exit off the interstate, I felt the bus jerk. In fact, everyone felt it, and we became fixed on the road ahead, wondering why we weren’t slowing down. The light was red, and the driver couldn’t stop. He yanked the wheel to the left, hoping to make the turn without hitting anyone. But he was going too fast. As we turned, I knew what was going to happen.

We smashed into the concrete median, and everything slowed down and went blurry.

The bus had flipped over the median and was lying on its side on top of the median. I had stayed inside the bus, landing on my back against a window pane. As things became less foggy and I began to understand what had happened, I rolled out of the bus and started searching for my friends.

The air was filled with the smells of diesel, oil, and blood. It didn’t take long to see just how much damage had been done. Pastor Chad was lying on the pavement in a pool of blood. His face was barely recognizable because it was so pale and broken. My friend Olivia had her feet trapped between the bus and the median, and she was lying on top of someone else. The person she was lying on was just as broken and bloody as Chad. It was Courtney, Pastor Chad’s pregnant wife. I almost tripped over another person. This time it was Tonya Weindorf, a chaperone.

Time seemed to fly by. It took two hours to get all the teens checked out and sent to the hospital. I was one of five people to be released from the scene, but the rest of the twenty-something teens were sent to the hospital either by ambulance or by helicopter.

When I got home, I found the image of our bus sideways on the median plastered across the news, both local and national. “3 killed in Indianapolis bus crash, officials say” said FOX News. “3 dead after bus carrying teens crashes in Indianapolis” said CNN. This 16-year-old was in that crash. This 16-year-old should be dead.

Why?

Why were my friends hurt? Why am I still alive? Why in the world did we have to crash? Why did God let Chad, Courtney, and Mrs. Weindorf be killed?

You can ask God “why” all day long, and you’ll never see His finger write the answer in the sky or hear His voice tell all His purposes. Isaiah 55:8 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (King James Version, 2001). We don’t get to know right away why God lets certain things to happen.

And it stinks.

We suffer, we weep, we stay awake at night. There is no relief from our grief, yet we are expected to continue on with life almost as if nothing ever happened. Two of my closest friends and a friend’s mother were killed in one of the most graphic and tragic ways possible, and I’m just supposed to go to school and cross-country practice like it was the start of any other normal year?

“My flesh and my heart faileth” (Ibid). That’s the first part of Psalm 73:26, and I think we can all relate to that. For months after the crash, I couldn’t find hope in my heart. The only source of strength for my soul was the presence of God. Spending lengthy amounts of time in the Psalms and in prayer, leaning on God, and learning to trust Him is what got me through that time. “But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever” (Ibid).

The sweetest phrase I have ever heard is “but God.” Despite the fact that I am a delicate, helpless creature, God will give me strength. In fact, it is because I am delicate and helpless that He, through His unending love, chooses to give strength to those who ask for it.

Where am I today? When it comes to the bus crash, Chad, Courtney, their unborn baby, and Mrs. Weindorf, I am resting in the arms of my Father. He has given me peace, even through the most tragic circumstance I have ever faced.

You don’t need to worry about it. You don’t need to think about it every day for the rest of your life. You really shouldn’t do either of those because there’s nothing you can do to make it all better. What you need to do is trust. Realize that God is in control, He knows what’s going on, and He understands. Most importantly, understand that God’s way is the best way, no matter how hard it may seem at the time. If we trust His plan, we will be given strength.

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.”

- Psalm 73:25-26

- Cameron Rankin