Byron from Boston

Byron.
Byron From Boston. That is what everyone came to know him as. Five years ago, Byron and I were both new to the dorms and we ended up roommates. It was always odd to me how we ended up being placed together, because we were nothing near the same:
I was an eighteen year old freshman, just off the farm, and he was a mid-twenty-something student from Boston.
I came here for an education and to meet people who would be important to me all my life. He came here because he had a tattoo that was the same as our mascot emblem...and quite possibly to evade the law from somewhere up north.
I would enter our room with my Bible in hand, he would enter with some home-made paraphernalia.
I once cleaned up, up-chuck from a girl he brought to the dorm drunk. He often made sport of eating my guppies and tetras.

We were so very different.

I remember thinking (almost on a daily basis) that this match was just too crazy...this type of roommate match never happened, and that it had to be by God's ordaining that it ended up this way.

Those five months were at times tough, and they were always trying. Even Byron's closest of friends ask me how I survived it...how I never requested a roommate change. The answer to that question was simply I felt like that was where I was suppose to be.

Yesterday, I recieved this facebook message:

hey man, long time no talk. i know you and byron didn't always see eye to eye, hell who are we kidding-neither one of yall liked the other. lol. anyway, his wife (yes he got married just over a year ago) got ahold of me yesterday (sat) morning and told me she found him dead on their couch. like i said they got married just before valentine's day last year, and she is pregnant with their son. i'm not exactly sure when she's due, but i know it's close-within a month or 2. my heart goes out to all his family, but especially his wife. i can't imagine what it would be like to find your husband dead on the couch and be carrying his son. anyway, i just thought you might like to know. take care brad.

I have been at a deep loss for words...and really a loss for directional thought as well.

All I know is that everyday I felt like I was placed in that place and situation by God...
and looking back I still can not see my difference in the life of Byron.

If I am unable to purposefully assist, help, and plant, in the life of an individual, when God very directly tells me and reminds me to daily...
How am I able to purposefully do those things in the lives of those who I do not feel that constant reminder?


Once I heard the news, I looked at his facebook page...his religious views (i had hoped to be different than I had known them to be), stated "...we all die".

Today, please pray for Byron's family, for their future.
Please pray that God constantly pangs our hearts with aches for those who do not know Him.
Please pray that we follow those aches...that we share our Lord, daily and with all we see.



...WE ALL DIE. not just me (bradley, you), but also all those we see. If we have a message to share, we are not only limited to our time but also theirs.
Something I had forgotten, now remembered.