Andrew Paul -- redemption

Andrew is the name of a coward I knew in 8th grade. Typical of most cowards, he was also a brooding bully – one that tormented me daily throughout that last junior high year. Even when my insightful 14-year-old self confronted him about how he picked on me merely as a way of making himself look good in front of his friends, he scoffed, deflecting the remark with, “Oh, and you know everything. Ha.”
I pitied the boy because not only was he never honest with me, but he also was never honest with himself.
Andrew is also the name of a brave young man I knew in college. Like many brave souls, he was jovial, with a hearty laugh which resounded through the hallways. I last spoke to him when visiting campus after I’d graduated. He gave me a huge smile, said it was great to see me, and congratulated me on my recent engagement to his dorm buddy. I last saw him less than a year later at my fiancé’s graduation. Andy arrived for the ceremony, bald, swollen, assisted by a walker, dying from a brain tumor. He was greeting and congratulating his graduating class, a class he was simply witnessing, due to his illness.
Later that same year, I was married, pregnant, and kneeling beside Andy’s body in a casket, asking for his prayers that I might be a good mother.
Even though his life was cut short at age 22, his was the most beautiful funeral I’d ever attended, mostly because he had led a beautiful life.
I believe a name can be redeemed. What once was a sound of scorn in my ears became a lift of delight. We all have our weaknesses, our faults, our dark hidden corners of the soul. Some of us flagrantly display inadequacies; some of us painstakingly mask them. But we all have them. Every one of us is in some way wanting strength, healing, light.
For a select few, the answer greets them with a knock to the ground, a blinding flash, and a reprimanding voice from heaven. So it was for Paul, “Persecutor of Christians” turned “Pillar of Faith.” Yet for most of us, direction, wisdom, and redemption are found through a long winding road. And as long as we continue on the journey, we maintain hope.