Kyle Lake: A tribute

Posted: 12/05/05

Kyle Lake: A tribute

I met Kyle Lake twenty years ago while on a church youth choir tour. His hometown of Tyler, Texas was the second stop for us. The Lakes with their 3 boys and one girl had offered to be a host family and my best friend, Colleen and I were thrilled at our good fortune of winding up in a house with three good looking boys. That was the epic stuff that teenage girls dreams are made of.

I met my husband, John, through them. They were all hunting buddies and attended church every time the doors were even slightly open.

The last time John and I saw Kyle was a Christmas Eve service a few years ago in Tyler. He told us all about his church in Waco with a thrilled look in his eye, unusual for a pastor in the throes of Christmastime. His church was for people who didn’t fit in at other churches, he explained.

Out of every pore, Kyle communicated to people the hope that God actually liked them. What a concept. Approachable, funny and friendly, Kyle was a shining manifestation of God’s acceptance. He was a personalized invitation to God’s grace.

When we got word this Sunday that a freak accident had snuffed out his life it was very hard to believe. About to baptize a young woman, he was electrocuted by a microphone; a bizarre incident which in 15 years of my being in ministry I had never heard of happening. Here was this incredibly vibrant man with three small children and a loving wife, taken in a second.

We arrived at the funeral in Waco and when I rounded the corner, hot tears shot down my cheeks. There were pictures as far as the eye could see of Kyle and his children, his wife, his friends, his family. It suddenly hit me that this man would never walk on earth again. What a senseless tragedy.

It has made me think. Funerals always do, I guess. Here was this beautiful person so full of love for God and mankind taken in an instant.

I think I do a decent job of seizing the day but admit I am often too preoccupied to truly live. I get caught up in the hamster wheel of paying bills, getting everyone to activities on time and ensuring that we all have clean socks and signed permission slips. In constant motion, yet getting no where.

If I have been impacted by anything it is Kyle’s legacy of living each day to the fullest. It’s a tired cliche which is often said, rarely attempted and almost never incarnated. We are warned to stop and smell the roses but unless they’re being distributed in a Chick-Fil-A Kids Meal, it’s just not going to happen.

How often with my faux-listening skills do I nod at my own children while being barraged by 38 additional bits of stimuli and then wonder why the cat got placed in the dryer? I zip through bored board games of "Sorry!" fighting back the urge to swiftly move everyone’s pawns to hasten the end of the game, rushing my kids along instead of watching them. How I needed this reminder to, as Robin William’s character often quoted in Dead Poet’s Society, “to suck the marrow out of life,” not just give it a listless lick now and then.

Overwhelmed by time demands, I wonder how my Heavenly Father does it. He’s never in a hurry and he has way more children than I do. Yet, he is always available. I know that he wouldn’t ask if He could move my pieces or draw a card for me to hasten the game’s end and get to the important stuff. His word says that you and I, as his creation, are the important stuff.

If the Tsunami, Katrina, Bird Flu threat on the horizon and now the loss of our very young friend in the act of loving others has taught me anything it is to live in the moment with the sunroof down and the wind blowing through the smiles of my children. To reach out in love as I am loved, to soak in the sun and revel in the grasp of my daughter’s hand while she’ll still hold mine and give band aides to my son while he’s still young enough to want one.

Many others knew Kyle far better than I did but you certainly didn’t have to know him well to be inspired by him.

Nov. 1, when Kyle was buried, was All Saints Day. As all saints do, he lived a life of love to God and service to man. That, I have to believe, was no accident.