My Brother Is Still Breathing

My brother is still breathing, and I’m writing this like a eulogy.

My brother was a Marine. He writes at Jawbone Devotional.

That name takes me to Samson, after the thousand men.

“And he was sore athirst, and called on the LORD, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” (Judges 15:18)

The thousand men are dead. Samson is still alive.

And now he is asking God whether he came through all that to die of thirst.

My brother wrote:

“Survival has been my language, but survival is a poor substitute for life.”

He wrote that the war never ended. That it moved inside his chest.

“I am not giving up. I am not quitting on life.”

The latest note I can find, he wrote for the post “When the Sun Stops Setting.” It was written for people who have sat through too many midnights.

I can read what he wrote. I can’t tell from a page how he is today.

Here’s the thing. I’d rather see him in this chaos.

I want my brother here. The one who is hard to be around. The one who thinks I’m wrong and says so.

We don’t agree on everything. He can be wrong and still be my blood.

I can be wrong too.

“But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof Enhakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day.” (Judges 15:19)

Samson called on the same God who brought him through the fight. God gave him water.

The chapter lets him need it.

Brother, call me. You don’t have to have the words ready.

I want you here for it.

Somebody reading this has a brother who went quiet.

Go check on him.

Adam