This is going to be long.

Last week’s preaching taught us to seize every opportunity to win the lost.

Sometimes we will never know whether we made a difference until we reach heaven.

We lived in close community with a family for three years in Germany. We kept up with them afterwards here on the East Coast, as our paths crossed from time to time.

Then they died.

I can use their names because everyone who knew them well knows the story.

Elena and Doug Brown and Carmina, their non-verbal daughter with autism.

Elena was the only child of Hans and Carmen Weickardt. Her dad was a Luftwaffe pilot in World War II. He was up over Dresden doing bomb damage assessment within an hour of when we flattened the city.

Her dad was born in Bonn, Germany; her mom in Paris, France; Elena in Madrid, Spain (her mom was Spanish). They came to the U.S. with Werner von Braun and his team of scientists.

Elena became a citizen and eventually a naval officer. She married Doug, another naval officer. She was a devout Catholic; he was an atheist.

When they came to Germany, she was my boss. Doug transferred to the reserves to stay home with Carmina. Her parents eventually came over to help with Carmina and the home and to re-establish German residency as a fire had destroyed the records of Hans Weickardt and his Luftwaffe service.

I knew them all well.

Hans and Carmen stayed on in Germany when the Browns came back to the States. Hans lived till over age 100. By then, Carmen was fluent enough in German that she stayed right on in their small town. She used to call me every year during the holidays.

Back in the U.S., the Browns eventually retired from the military and settled in the Seattle, Washington area. Doug took to running marathons. He was several minutes over the finish line at the Boston Marathon when the bomb went off about 15 years ago.

I called Elena when I heard about the bomb. She assured me Doug was okay. Only he wasn’t.

After that marathon, he started obsessively running marathons everywhere, especially on all continents. The best we can say after the fact is he had severe survivor’s guilt.

He went into a mental health crisis and turned all his guns into the police. Unfortunately, he kept back one that belonged to his brother who was in South America, working for US AID.

The first I knew of all this was, driving to work in Yorktown one day right before Christmas 2015, I got a call from Joey who was at our house for the holidays. He told me Doug Brown had just killed his family and himself. I was glad I was off the interstate as I immediately went into shock.

The Browns had been very close friends. We both had a special needs child. Elena, as my boss in Germany, had thrown me a wedding shower at her house. She had sacrificially put herself in my place on the watchbill so I could leave Europe before Noel’s entry visa expired. The Gulf War had just started and my relief was delayed for several months in her transit to Germany.

Our lives had intertwined; we had talked about the Lord many times. I do not know for sure but I think Elena had come to accept salvation by faith through grace, despite the fact she remained in her familiar Catholic church. Doug had even started emailing me faith-based things he saw. Perhaps, even in mental illness, he found the gift of salvation.

He also had sent Elena an email from a marathon in Athens, Greece that showed how to transfer part of a Navy retirement to a special needs child. She forwarded it to me and I found it on an unused email account several months after their death. I do not believe Doug planned to kill his family. They had even bought a facility they were setting up to be a group home for Carmina after their natural death.

So much tragedy. I know we were a gospel witness to them. I hope it was enough and we will see them again.

The point is that we never know someone else’s desperation unless they tell us. But we can always share the gospel.