Andy with Katy at the Prom 2007
This is my precious Daniel. Turns 13 in July. Plays baseball, basketball, football, you name it, he will want to see if he can succeed at it.The one thing I pray that he never tries are drugs. This week Daniel participated in a new program for 6th graders called "The Drugstore Project." He was chosen by his teacher to be the kid who chooses drugs, and is caught stealing them in front of his classmates. There were 9 stations set up at a middle school, each one showing the consequences of using ANY drug, and how it affects your body, your friends and family. John and I participated as his parents. I knew what what would happen at each station: arrest, juvenile hall, juvenile court, probation..a party, the emergency room, and his funeral. What I didn't realize, is how real it would become. Daniel is awesome, spunky, happy, makes good choices, keeps his grades good, but each step along the way helped me to realize that no child is immune to the pressures of their peers, to the possibility that our children could make one wrong choice ONE time. While we knew all the time that this was not real, that Daniel was acting, and the kids that give him a drug to try at the party were kids we knew that didn't use drugs, it somehow became real as the program progressed. As he passed out at the party, as paramedics arrived and put a breathing tube in Daniel's mouth and put him on a stretcher, as we progressed to the emergency room, I began to feel a panic.. a what if feeling any mother or father would feel as we watched the doctor and the nurses try to revive my son. I was not watching ER, I was seeing life leave Daniel as they used a "fake" defib on him, twice. Then announced the time of death. As we sat in the "waiting room", the doctor kindly came in and calmly informed us that our son had "died." Not real, I told myself, he is alive in the next room, I will be fine. Not fine. As we walked over to the boy with the sheet pulled over his head, I forgot I was on a Middle School Campus, in front of Daniel's class, in a tent that was not really a hospital. When they pulled the sheet back, and I saw Daniel lifeless. Tears, panic. "NO!" was all that my brain would scream. Tears, real tears, grief and terror as I held his face and stroked his hair. "Daniel, please, please, come back, no, no,no. Please Daniel, don't leave, NO!" I held his face and cried in my own world until someone touched me and told me that the class had left and moved on to the final station, the funeral home. I stepped back and came back to the real world, and I realized that it felt way too real for me. Daniel pulled back the sheet and said "Good job mom!" Good job?? what did he mean ..."Good job"? Daniel, my precious Daniel, mama was not acting. Do you know, could you even understand what your life means to me? We shared painful memories, and shattered hopes at the funeral, and then, we stepped away and held our son again. I did not want to let him go. For 3 days I just wanted to hold him. I thought about the parents that have to live that nightmare, with no homecoming. I pray for the 900 6th graders that experienced this program and watched a classmate choose to end their life that day with no intention of doing so. I pray that it touched each one in such a way that they will NEVER give in, never even take a step into the world of drugs. Last Tuesday was a day that I will never forget. I will never stop praying that the hearts of my children will be so full of love from God, family, and good friends that they will never fill it with something else that will always leave them empty, but fill it with Christ."Do not be overcome by evil my dear Daniel, but overcome evil with good." 
