Ten days from twenty years ago I sent an email to a friend.

A dear friend.

Maybe one of the only friends who was willing to really see me at the time.

You know what it feels like, I’m sure, to have a friend who can really see you. The kind who can look at you and in one moment knows you’re having a bad day. Or the kind who knows when you need to be called out and isn’t afraid to be the one to do it. Or the kind who picks up the phone at just the right time and who knows you’re not ‘fine’ even when you continue to say you are…

Ten days from twenty years ago, I sent an email to that friend.

It was April 26^th, 2006.

“Betsy,” I wrote, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can make it tonight. I got behind on my schoolwork, and I should really stay here on campus and finish my project. Sorry to bail last minute – I just think I have to in order to get this done by the time its due.”

I ran into her in person a couple hours later.

“Hey Bets, I’m sorry about tonight,” I shrugged, “I know I said I would be there to help, but I got really behind on this photography project, and I need to stay back and work on it.”

She pinched a suspicious eye at me.

“You’re ditching your coworkers?” she said light-heartedly. “Come on, it’s going to be fun. We’re getting pizza on the way.”

I shook my head.

“I just don’t think I can. I’m too far behind on this project,” I said, apologetically.

“Okaaaaaay,” she pulled on the word when she answered, “I guess we can manage without you, but we’ll miss you.”

She rehoisted one strap of a heavy backpack over her shoulder and tossed wayward strands of blonde hair back from her face.

“But,” she said, “out with it. What’s the real reason you’re bailing?”

Two years my senior and a near expert on the behaviors of college females, she didn’t need a lot to know her suspicions were spot on. She knew I was neglecting my schoolwork for one reason – one very handsome reason.  

“Well, I… I… I sort of…,” I stammered.

“Uh-huh,” she smiled knowingly before her tone shifted. She was kind, but she was also the RA, a senior, and well-versed in what made a guy worthy of a woman’s precious time and energy.  

“I told you that guy was bad news,” she said, gently shaking her head.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, I know,” I said.

I was a little annoyed at her persistent disapproval of the guy I liked, but I knew her intentions were to protect me. If I had to suffer a little big-sister energy from her later, fine, but I had to get out of going to Marion for the night. My project really couldn’t wait any longer.

“Okay,” she smiled, rubbing my shoulder. “You don’t have to come, but when I get back later tonight, we’re going to talk about this guy. Deal?”

I half-smiled agreement at her.

I knew accountability would be waiting for me as soon as that big silver catering van returned to campus later that night…

That night was ten days from twenty years ago today.

Six hours later it was dark.

I parked my car outside the chapel and breathed in the evening spring of Indiana air.

It was fresh. Free of humidity and the stars were just beginning to sparkle among slowly drifting moonlit clouds.

I remember watching the sky for a minute. I stretched and breathed the air in deeply. I let my head fall back to take in the expansive midwestern sky and smiled. I was content. I considered ambling over to the football field and laying down on the fifty-yard line and forgetting the project altogether, but I couldn’t do it. The first thing Betsy would ask me is if I got my work finished. I couldn’t bail on the trip to Marion and bail on my project too. I had to have something to show for ditching my co-workers while they went to work without me.

I exhaled defeat and opened the door behind the driver side of my car. I lifted out my backpack, pitched it over a shoulder, and bent to lift an overstuffed photography binder from the backseat. Submitted to the task in front of me, I took one more breath and started to turn from the car, but when I did, something caught my eye. Someone.

His name was Jon.

He was a good friend. We’d suffered through J-term Statistics only a few months before and I knew him as a kind, highly reasoned, even more rational kind of a guy. He was one of those personalities that embodied peace.

And he was sprinting. Sprinting across campus, in the dark, with a look of agony on his face.

“Jon?!” I yelled.

He ignored me.

I watched as he ran and he slowed only for a moment – to open the door at Campus Safety.

Was there an emergency on campus I didn’t know about? Was he in trouble?

I heard a shout from another direction and spun toward it.

It was another student, also running toward Campus Safety. In the dark.

As my view expanded I noticed, from one side of campus to another, students were coming, first in the singles, then in groups, all headed toward Campus Safety and the chapel.

I called Betsy.

Voicemail.

I called again.

Voicemail.

I called again.

Voicemail.

I left her a message, describing what I was watching, asking her if she was okay and what I should do next.

Then I called my sister. She was a student on campus as well. I’d just seen her, but I wanted to make sure she was safe.

She was.

Then my phone rang.

It was my parents.

They’d seen it on TV. They knew my sister and I worked in catering, and they’d seen images of a Taylor University catering van smashed to smithereens on the side of the highway.

A semi-truck driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted over into oncoming traffic. Our traffic.

We had to wait a while to find out, but eventually we were told that five of the seven people in the van had died, and one was in critical care.

We sat in the chapel for hours, and around two a.m., after the bodies had been identified*, they read aloud the names of those who had passed.

Betsy was one of them.

I will never – in all my life – forget the wailing sound of agony that arose from the souls in that chapel as those names were read.

That was ten days from twenty years ago today.

A year later, I stood on a stage in that same chapel and spoke to the crowd who’d come to remember. Remembering tragedy isn’t easy. Especially when it’s only a year old. And to be honest with you, I don’t remember much of what I said that day. I’m sure my twenty-year-old self knew not but to throw trite cliches into a speech I couldn’t even write until thirty minutes before I was meant to give it.

I tried. I tried many times. But words don’t always come easy. Especially when you know they’ll fall short.

What I do remember is sharing a hope that whatever lives we lived after our friends’ departures would be lives that our friends would have been proud of – that maybe it was our charge to carry their legacies into a future they wouldn’t get to see. That our minutes, however few or however many, were meant to be lived on purpose. With intention. Minutes that mattered.

Ten days from twenty years ago, here am I, wondering about those legacies – those minutes – and I wonder if we’ve carried them well. I wonder if my life is a life Betsy would be proud of – if her never-ending belief in me was made worth it. If I’ve made her belief in me worth it.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he writes that time can be used destructively or constructively – it’s our choice. He says we must come to see that progress never comes through inevitability. It comes only through the tireless efforts and persistent work of people who are willing to be co-workers with God. He says we must use our time creatively and realize it is always the time to do the right thing.

MLK Jr. was of course, speaking into the civil rights obscenities of the time, but I find his words incredibly relevant to the discussion of how we use our minutes here on this earth. That in whatever work we find ourselves engaging, we are called to be co-workers with God, using our time here to do what is right.

I wonder – in the ten days from twenty years ago – if my efforts have been enough or my work persistent enough or creative enough to do right by the legacies left for me to carry. If you’ve read the post Destination Now you know I believe, with our victory in hand, the only thing we have left to do is to use our minutes here in a way that brings glory to the foot of the throne of God.

What I’m met with tonight is the persistent reminder that the choice is ours and ours alone. It will not come through inevitability, but through our active choices to live lives that lean into love; mercy; grace; patience; and kindness. Lives that see people. Lives that serve people. Lives that clothe the naked and feed the hungry and visit with those in prison. The blueprint for a life of richness really hasn’t changed in two thousand years.

Taylor University teaches that concept well because they teach the gospel well, and my pursuit of the Bible was, in large part, formed in that same chapel where I heard those names read and where I stood to speak a year later.

But what TU does exceptionally well is teach young people how to find a community and thrive in it – something I did not do well when I was there.

I watched. I observed. I saw what I was missing, and I carried on in my own path. It could be tacked up to grief or survivor guilt or not knowing what the heck to do with five funerals in a few weeks – one of which wasn’t even the right funeral* (see note). Whatever the reason, when I was there, I didn’t do community well. I saw what they did and how they did it and I stood back from it. It’s a choice that would have made Betsy cringe.

But in this age where we are more connected than ever, we are more isolated than ever. Loneliness is at an all time high. Social media has made people feel excluded, less-than – a constant reminder that they don’t have what they think they ought. There’s an overwhelm of opinion with no discussion. An obscene public diary of unfiltered, unthinking expression puked onto a comment section with no care for anything but the need for self-validation, forgetting that there is an inherently valuable human on the other side of that screen.

When I think about the need for meaningful community, and the invaluable gift TU taught me by showing me how to do it, I can’t help but think that is one of the best ways to use minutes well in 2026. That ten days from twenty years ago, a tragedy occurred in part to show us now, right now, how important people are. People. Real, live, living, breathing people. Whatever gender, or color, or belief system, or ability, or education, or race, or heritage, or nationality, or political stance, or anything else – that people matter. Community matters. How we use our minutes matters.

Progress does not come through inevitability, but by our active choice to do something purposeful; something right; something that matters.

Can I wonder with you tonight – what will make your minutes matter to you?

What call do you need to make to apologize? Or, who do you need to forgive? Do you need to reach out to someone you know is hurting? What letter do you need to write? Maybe it’s for you. Maybe it’s for someone else. In what way can you begin to mend a broken bridge? Or clothe someone who is naked? Or feed someone who is hungry? Who needs a visit from you? Who needs to be seen by you? Who needs to be reminded that whatever the social media feed is showing them, they are still invaluable. Beautiful. And absolutely worthy of love and kindness and respect.

Do it.

And I, here in this stormy Nashville night, will do it right along with you, just as soon as I’m done typing this letter to you, my dear, co-journeying friends. 

And in ten days, from twenty years from now, may we know we loved well. Served well. Lived well. Not for our own sense of fulfillment, but to bring the gospel closer to the feet of a hurting world. Because truly, what greater thing is there to be done in all the world? 

Here’s to pushing back the horizon.

love, nic

*It should be noted, with all respect, that I have purposefully not mentioned the “Mistaken Identity” part of this post, only because it is thing too great for me to even begin to describe and I leave that to the people directly impacted by it. It is essentially important and I do not desire to offend anyone by leaving it out, but instead hope to honor them by not trying to tell a part of the story that is not mine to tell. With that, all the love and respect to all the family, friends, and loved ones involved in the mistaken identity.