Testimony of faith. Another knew

It’s an October morning, dark and bright at the same time. My daughters (18 and 20 years old) are going to school by car. The eldest drives. The journey is not long. Twenty minutes. The road winds, then runs along the straight line of an airstrip for several kilometers, due east. Opposite, the rising sun levels the asphalt, dazzling. The young driver, surprised, slows down and brakes. In front of her, drowned in light, a tractor equipped with a six-inch plow bursts onto the road. The plow entered the passenger compartment, brushed against the driver’s shoulder and hit the passenger’s head. A helicopter transports her to Nancy University Hospital. In the evening, the intern invites us to come and take leave of our beloved Marie-Hélène. There is no way she will survive. We are devastated with grief and pain.

She is kept alive artificially, because she carries an organ donor card. Committed to our faith, lived in a traditional evangelical environment, we consult ourselves, his parents, brothers and sisters, and give our agreement to a sample.

A few weeks later, putting away his things, we discovered his diary. “What I am waiting for,” she wrote, mentioning the young friend she has been seeing for several months, “is to be loved for myself…” She continues: “I would especially like to have a look on this eternal beyond (…) but it is not possible. The light is too strong, we can only close our eyelids (…) it is only a moment of eternity. »

As a family, we read and reread these last words from our daughter’s diary. In the impossible consolation of this unjust loss, enlightened by our faith, we hear a word emerge between us and take courage: if Marie-Hélène was able to write such words, it is because another knew. We are not alone.

It took me time to grieve, because I first had to support my children: a very angry son, my daughter who was driving the car… Our evangelical community helped us, and today, my faith in eternal life is peaceful. Where they are, our deceased are free from the limits of this world.