July 3, 2008

From: Gary West
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 7:39 AM
Subject: AU

I pull up and watch my brown eyed wonder walk out to the truck.
She leans in the window and we both begin to sob.
She said "I was doing good till you drove up"
Leslie is the real thing.
In a world of fake and fashion she is true blue.
I know that God has a plan. My pain and my loss are deep, Leslie’s
is yet deeper.
She cries and packs, remembers the love. Remembers the 11 weeks of
marriage to her one love. The three and one half years of courtship.
I too cry, he was exactly what I had hoped she would marry. Now we
get a grip for the sake of others and move ahead.
We work as if a time bomb was set to go off. Then hours later, she
steps up into my truck and we cry as I slowly pull away from her former
home. The home that represents her great loss. Her absolute love. Her
other half
Her plans and future were talked over and discussed there. She loved
him. Many men will never know a love from a woman like she had for
Justin.
And yet we see so much evidence of his great love for her. It was
written in his life and on everything he did. Every plan he had, and in
hundreds of pictures.
In the way he honored her. He slept on the floor at his buddies
apartment from early January till the wedding in March.
He didn't want to soil Leslie’s reputation or put pressure on her.
That sacrifice was representative of how Justin loved Leslie. He
wanted her to be as strong a Christian as she could be. For that I loved
him.
I think God feels the same way when we allow people with honor,
people with deep faith and people with deep commitment to not be pulled
down by our personal desires. I believe that he loves us for allowing
the faithful to be just that.
Theirs is a true love story. She loves him still. I told her
yesterday that I know that I will cry every day for the rest of my life.
I am without remedy.
She couldn't hardly talk because of her tears but she told me "dad,
I am just mad, we were so happy". I grabbed her hand and started to
pray.
I prayed to God, knowing that His hand was in the middle of this
episode, knowing that He could have prevented it. Knowing that He is in
charge of it all. I prayed anyway.
She seemed to calm some. I seemed to melt further. It was as if the
cut was made brand new by the tears, the tremendous grief, the depth of
the loss.
It was so new that my emotions snapped and for a while I sobbed
like she. I am a mess when it overtakes me like that. Yesterday found me
in waves of tears, waves of loss, tossed about by emotions, like a leaf
in a hurricane. Unable to get a grip, unable to have a say in the
direction that I was swept.
She calms me now. I start instructing her to be patient, to wait on
God in this episode. I tell her that He will not leave this story with
this ending. That He will not allow this to be permanent. That he has a
plan, if we can just wait.....
We talk about heaven, Allen and Justin and cry some more. She
tells me that Carmen (in my office) always told her she was living a
fairy tale. That her whole life and all the parts were like a fairly
tale to others. Now that is gone. Leslie and I wonder to what end.
We talk about people getting saved, people already sliding back.
She is furious that salvation is tossed back so easily. Like a soda can
it is thrown out so flippantly. She says that she is having a hard time
not telling people "How she really feels"

I think "Oh Lord"