I cried in anguish. As I struggled to drive home, my vision blurred by tears, I
couldn't help repeatedly asking, "God, WHY?"
Then bitterness crept in. "God is good," Jaime had written
just 13 days before his death. Somehow it was hard to accept that fact now. How could a
good God allow something like this to happen? Of all the people, why Jaime?
Throughout the sleepless night the question arose again and again,
"God, why?" And then guilt again, and anger at being home. "What if I had
been there? Could my being with Jaime in that moment of danger changed the outcome
somehow?" I'd lost many friends in Vietnam, but somehow this struck a nerve that
wouldn't heal. Of all the people, why Jaime? It just didn't seem fair. Where was God?
A couple weeks later a letter arrived from the executive officer of the
Ranger detachment detailing for me how Jaime had died. Jaime had been covering the rear of
a recon element that walked into an enemy bunker complex. As the firefight ensued Jaime
realized the danger that threatened the three men ahead of him. Leaving his more secure
area at the rear of the team he rushed forward firing his weapon and throwing more than a
dozen grenades, permitting his comrades to safely withdraw. Then, as the team pulled back,
a round from a malfunctioning helicopter minigun struck him and took his life.
For his heroic actions that day, Jaime was awarded the Silver Star
Medal. But the point that stood out far above his heroic actions was the love for his
comrades that compelled him to risk his life that they might live. It was so
characteristic of the Jesus Jaime loved so much Who once said, "Greater love hath no
man that this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Of Jaime Pacheco, the Ranger executive officer wrote: "I can
honestly say that he is one of the few in this world who had no enemies." Still I
couldn't help wondering, and questioning God.
The following Sunday I attended church with a mixture of anger and
puzzlement in God's failure to protect my friend. The choir stood to sing, and the song
was Jaime's favorite, "Jesus, There's Just Something About that name". Again I
could not restrain the tears.
Then came the letter from Jaime's wife, a letter filled with both
sorrow and faith. "Yes, 'God is Good'," she wrote. "It is my wish and
prayer that the 'Good God' continue helping me face my future with a smile, a smile at God
in loving acceptance of whatever He sends into my life now, so that I may merit to have
the radiant, smiling face of Christ gaze on me for all eternity."
Still I wept long and bitter tears. For two months I mourned and
questioned, wondered and wept. Few had been my acquaintances that had been allowed to
become so close, and despite my puzzlement at how God could have allowed Jaime to die, I
knew deep inside that the bond that had grown between us had been nurtured by God for some
unknown reason in His master plan.
I picked up Jaime's last letter to me and read it as I had so many
times in the previous weeks. It was so bright and characteristic of Jaime's simple faith,
and as I read I could almost picture the light in Jaime's eyes and the smile that was so
uniquely characteristic of him. I read it again, "Yes, that is the way to be Doug,
God IS Good." I found that statement a little hard to accept now that Jaime
was gone. At the letter's end he had written, "Amigo, Asta Luego," and I
remembered that warm night in Vietnam just scant months earlier when we had parted and
Jaime had vanished into the darkness with those words.
And then, finally, his closing signature, "In CHRIST Your Brother...."
but wait, there was something sandwiched between the words in CAPITAL letters, something I
had never noticed before. Yes, this letter written just 13 days before Jaime Pacheco would
sacrifice his life for his friends, was closed "In CHRIST,