Here's a story that's terribly sad, and almost unbearably poignant. Remember my talking in this space about how lonely those far north Texas Plains towns seemed? Not long ago, a small-town Baptist pastor and his wife walked onto the tracks in their hometown, Henrietta, as a train barrelled through town. They embraced, then turned their heads away from the locomotive, which obliterated them.
They left no note. The only clue that anything was wrong was a series of text messages Pastor Johnson's wife sent earlier to their adopted son, from whom she was estranged owing to his marriage plans. It doesn't seem possible that that would cause the beloved couple to kill themselves, people say.
I don't know what the meaning of this is. But elements of the story -- a Baptist preacher and his wife, a small Texas town, an oncoming train, their final embrace and turning away from the instrument of their deaths -- sound like a Johnny Cash song. Or something equally hardscrabble and haunting.
Christ Almighty, the burdens people carry, unknown to the rest of us. May the Lord cover them with His mercy.
UPDATE: You gotta read TMatt's commentary on this story, including details I didn't include, especially that haunting line from the Dairy Queen manager. As the Get Religion gang would say, there are a lot more religious ghosts in this story yet to be teased out.
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Upon more mature reflection, I'm with mm. The story as we have it doesn't add up.
More details certainly do need to come out here, but I wouldn't discount the idea that they took their lives because of their son's choices. I don't know these people, so I am not psychoanalyzing what they did. I just want to point out that there are people who are so fanatic about their views, they they can be tipped over the edge. If the son's future spouse wasn't a Christian and/or was politically liberal and/or was bisexual, they could feel that they failed in everything they tried to do. They could feel that the culture they live in is so evil that all their efforts have been hopeless against it. That the world they knew is ending anyway. They could even convince themselves that they're suicide could be the wake up call that sends their son back to Jesus. There is a lot of paranoia and hysteria out there right now. The recent string of hate-motivated shooters are a testament to that.
Your name above is me.
CAP, one thing that struck me in your post about the code of not sharing your problems was that much of rural Texas and most Baptist churches have prohibitions against alcohol - a natural lubricant that often helps folks talk with their friends about life's problems.
hmmmm. interesting.
a month or so ago, my texas town voted to allow the sale of alcohol within city limits for the 1st time since the 1880's. katie bar the door.
Dunno about alcohol, but I have long believed that the reason for the high suicide rate among Scandinavians is that all their folk songs are in major keys. So they can't sing the blues when they need to.
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