Here Lies a Christian Young Man

Today marks 31 years since my cousin, Michael Wayne Correll, died shortly before his 16th birthday.

Thirty-one years is a long time. Memories fade. Details get blurry around the edges. There are things about that night I can no longer remember clearly and moments I will probably never forget. But when August 9 comes around, I still think about Michael. I think about Kentucky. I think about Lake Cumberland. I think about a song he couldn’t stop singing. And I think about just how quickly a normal day can become a day that changes your life forever.

The Bible says, “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). I was 16 years old when I learned how true those words really are.

Those Kentucky Summers

For many summers, my family would travel to Kentucky to visit our cousins. It was usually one of the last big adventures before school started again, and I looked forward to it every year. Calling it a “visit” really doesn’t do it justice. It was more like a never-ending sleepover combined with summer camp, a family reunion, and whatever trouble a bunch of kids could find outside.

Between three families, there were six girls and three boys, plus what seemed like hundreds of friends constantly coming and going. Michael was 15 about to turn 16, I was already 16, and since there always seemed to be girls around, we certainly didn’t complain.

We packed as much fun as humanly possible into those weeks. A lot of it revolved around the water. My cousins had a boat, and Lake Cumberland became our playground. We swam, tubed, waterskied, and explored the lake. That’s where I first learned to waterski. We went cliff diving. I learned to fly fish. We hiked, fished ponds, played sports, had water fights, and once even came across a rattlesnake. Around Michael’s house, we drove a go-kart so much that we basically created a track around the property. If I remember correctly, we eventually broke an axle or something and had to get it welded back together.

We built a homemade slip-and-slide down the hill in the backyard. At night, we stayed up making ridiculous Christian rap music videos with a gigantic VHS video camera. For some reason, we also became obsessed with the music of the movie Sister Act. We ate like royalty and then woke up the next morning ready to do it all over again. Those were good summers, and Michael was a big reason why.

The Kind of Kid Everybody Loved

Michael was a genuine soul. He always seemed to have a smile on his face. As I think back over those years, I honestly don’t remember seeing him angry with anybody. He loved people, and people loved him. He was also a prankster. He loved teasing the girls and stirring things up, and I was usually happy to assist whenever I could. But underneath all the joking was a genuinely kind young man.

Michael also loved Jesus. At almost 16, he already seemed to have an idea of what he wanted to do with his life. I remember him being involved in some kind of junior police program because he wanted to go into law enforcement someday. Meanwhile, at 16, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life.

My family owned a Christian bookstore at the time, which meant I had access to just about every Christian rock, rap, and metal album I could get my hands on. Whenever we went to Kentucky, I brought music with me and introduced everybody to different bands. That summer, one song especially stuck with Michael: “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline. He sang it constantly. All week long, I heard Michael singing about going to his Father’s house.

None of us could have imagined what those words would soon mean.

August 9, 1995

On Wednesday, August 9, 1995, all of our families headed out for another day on Lake Cumberland. That year, a kind older gentleman from my cousins’ church had loaned us his houseboat. We would take it out onto the lake, anchor it in a cove, and spend the day swimming, eating, talking, and relaxing. We also had the smaller runabout boat, so groups would rotate in and out to waterski and tube.

It was an oasis. Michael and I would float around the houseboat in inner tubes, talking, joking, and messing around. There was swimming, pranking, eating, skiing, tubing, laughter, and all the things we had done on so many summer days before. Nothing about that day felt like a final day.

That’s one of the things about life we so easily forget. We don’t know when we’re experiencing something for the last time. Scripture warns us not to assume tomorrow belongs to us: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). We certainly didn’t know what that day would bring.

That Night

That evening, we eventually called it a day and returned the houseboat to the harbor. Lake Cumberland is incredibly deep, and we knew that swimming around the harbor required caution. You either wore a life jacket or kept some kind of flotation device nearby.

Once the houseboat was docked, it was plugged into shore power. We settled in, played games, joked around, and ate late-night snacks. After spending nearly the entire day in the water, I was tired and content to stay on the boat. But a few people wanted one more swim, and Michael jumped in.

Only a few people had decided to go into the water, and after 31 years, some of the exact details of the next few minutes have become fuzzy. But there are certain images that have never left me. I remember screams. We rushed toward the back of the boat. Michael’s mother, Viola, had jumped into the water to help. Almost immediately, something was terribly wrong. When she touched the water, she was stunned. She couldn’t swim normally and quickly went under, but somehow managed to grab onto a rubber raft floating nearby.

I remember trying to help her. At one point, I was standing on top of the railing preparing to dive into the water myself. Something stopped me. I can’t explain it any better than that. Whether it was God directly protecting me, an angel, or simply the providence of God holding me back at exactly the right moment, I believe the Lord prevented me from jumping into that water.

Viola looked up toward us and tried to communicate what was happening: electrocution. Someone rushed to the front of the boat, disconnected the electrical power, and shut everything down. We later learned that work performed on the houseboat had apparently exposed electrical wiring, allowing electricity to enter the surrounding water.

But Michael was gone.

Where Is Michael?

At first, nobody really understood what had happened. Michael was a prankster, after all. Maybe he was hiding. Maybe he had somehow escaped the electrical current and swam toward another boat. Maybe he had made it to shore. Maybe he was hiding in the woods and was about to pull off the worst practical joke imaginable. Nobody wanted to believe the other possibility.

Authorities arrived. Eventually, divers entered the water. Our family gathered near the dock in a small store, praying and waiting and hoping. I remember trying to lie down and rest, but there was no sleeping. The anxiety was overwhelming. We were waiting for someone to walk through the door and tell us Michael had been found alive.

Hours passed. Eventually, the divers found him in the deep water below. Michael was gone. He was almost 16 years old.

There are moments in life when Scripture becomes more than words you have read in a Bible or heard preached in church. Suddenly, those words describe something you are actually living. Job knew what it meant to experience devastating loss when he said, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). At 16 years old, I certainly didn’t understand everything contained in those words. I just knew that someone who had been laughing, swimming, joking, and singing with us only hours earlier was suddenly gone.

That’s how quickly life can change. At almost 16, you don’t think much about how short life can be. Sixteen feels like the beginning. You think about school, cars, girls, friends, summer vacations, and whatever you’re going to do tomorrow. You don’t think about eternity. But eternity doesn’t ask our age.

And looking back 31 years later, I understand Job’s words differently. Everything we have in this life is ultimately a gift from God, our families, our friendships, our children, our health, and even the days themselves. We hold all of them more loosely than we sometimes realize. That doesn’t make the pain of losing someone we love any less real, but it reminds us that every day we are given with the people we love is precious.

“Come and Go With Me”

There is one detail from that night that has stayed with me all these years. Michael had been singing “Big House” throughout the entire trip. And shortly before he jumped into the water that night, he sang that familiar chorus again, the one inviting others to come along to his Father’s house.

Within minutes, Michael was there.

Not because of a song. Not because he was a good kid. Not because everybody loved him. Michael’s hope was Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies” (John 11:25). And He told His disciples, “In My Father’s house are many rooms… I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).

Those words mean much more to me now than they did when I was 16. Michael spent his final week singing about his Father’s house, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, his earthly life ended. For those of us who knew his faith, however, that wasn’t the end of Michael’s story.

A Butterfly at the Grave

I honestly don’t remember much about the days immediately after Michael died. Grief has a strange way of doing that. Some moments disappear entirely while others become permanently etched into your memory. I remember being asked to serve as one of Michael’s pallbearers. I remember carrying his casket. I remember crying as we carried my almost 16-year-old cousin to his graveside.

And then something happened that I have never forgotten.

After the casket was placed beside the grave, the pallbearers removed the flower boutonnieres we were wearing and placed them on top of Michael’s casket. I believe there were some other flowers there as well. It was a hot summer day, and then suddenly, a little whirlwind came through. It swept the flowers from the top of Michael’s casket and carried them down into the dirt below.

Immediately, I thought about how temporary life is: “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). Here one moment, gone the next.

Then, shortly afterward, a butterfly flew over Michael’s casket and landed on it. I can’t tell you that God sent that butterfly specifically as a supernatural sign. Scripture doesn’t give me the authority to make that claim. But I can tell you what it meant to a grieving 16-year-old boy standing beside his cousin’s grave. It felt like reassurance. Michael was okay. Death had taken his body, but death did not have the final word.

“To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

What I Listened to Instead

There is another part of this story that makes me smile a little now. While Michael had spent the week singing Christian music about his Father’s house, I had started dabbling more in secular music. After he died, I latched onto “Lightning Crashes” by Live. I probably listened to that song a thousand times. At 16, I interpreted it as this profound song about life and death.

Years later, I understood more of the song’s spiritual imagery and realized it certainly wasn’t giving me the Christian hope I actually needed. I should have been listening to “Big House.”

Christianity doesn’t teach that we’re endlessly recycled through different lives. Scripture says, “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We get one earthly life, and that makes this life incredibly precious.

Here Lies a Christian Young Man

Eventually, I returned home. Summer ended. School started. Life somehow continued, as it always seems to do even when you can’t imagine how it possibly could. In English class, we were given an assignment to write about our summer. Most kids probably wrote about vacations, swimming pools, amusement parks, baseball games, or family trips. I wrote about Michael. I told the story of what happened at Lake Cumberland, and I gave my paper a title:

“Here Lies a Christian Young Man.”

Later, those words were engraved on Michael’s headstone. Along with them were words from the song he had loved and sung during his final week. Thirty-one years later, that title means even more to me. Here lies a Christian young man. Not a perfect young man. Not a young man who got to finish all his plans. Not a young man who became the police officer he hoped to become. A Christian young man whose earthly life ended at almost 16 years old but whose hope was placed in Jesus Christ.

Thirty-One Years Later

I am now old enough to understand something I couldn’t fully comprehend standing beside Michael’s grave at 16. Life is unbelievably precious, and unbelievably short.

We make plans as though we have decades guaranteed to us. We worry about things that won’t matter five years from now. We hold grudges. We chase money. We obsess over what other people think. We postpone forgiveness. We put off conversations. We assume we’ll have another summer, another Christmas, another birthday, another phone call, another opportunity to say “I love you.”

But Scripture never promises us tomorrow. “As for man, his days are like grass; like a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more” (Psalm 103:15–16).

That doesn’t make life meaningless. It makes life precious. Every day matters because there aren’t an unlimited number of them. And there is an even greater truth: we need Jesus Christ.

The greatest lesson from Michael’s story isn’t simply that young people can die. It isn’t merely that life is fragile or that we should appreciate our families more. Those things are true, but they aren’t the Gospel. The Gospel is that death is real because sin is real, but Jesus Christ entered this broken world, died for our sins, and rose from the grave. And everyone who places their faith in Him receives eternal life. Michael knew that.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus said plainly, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

Thirty-one years ago today, I watched one of the happiest weeks of my childhood turn into one of the darkest nights of my life. But darkness didn’t get the final word. Neither did that lake. Neither did that grave.

I still think about that hot Kentucky summer. I think about the houseboat. The go-kart. The water fights. The homemade music videos. The fishing. The skiing. The pranks. The laughter. I think about an almost 16-year-old kid who seemed to love everybody he met and couldn’t stop singing a song about his Father’s house. And someday, because of Jesus Christ, I’ll see Michael again. Until then, his headstone says it well: Here Lies A Christian Young Man, but because of Christ, I know that’s not really where Michael is.