33 Year Later… I found myself mourning in the Elvis Presley Memorial Chapel in Tupelo, Mississippi yesterday. No big sobs or big tears, but a big sense of loss. We stopped there (followed by a Graceland driveby!) on our way to Missions School in MO. We walked around the grounds learning about this legend, even took a family picture sitting in his swing on the front porch of the tiny house he was born in. Everything about his childhood was extraordinarily ordinary. On his 11th birthday, his mom took him down to the hardware store to buy his present. Elvis had his heart set on a 22 rifle or a bike. She concluded that both were just accidents waiting to happen! The clerk promptly unveiled a guitar. Reluctant at first, he & that guitar wrote history!
His-story really hit home when I stood before the Assembly of God church he attended as a boy. All of a sudden, I felt a soul connection to the ‘king” – like maybe I “knew” and understood the real Elvis. We were both just regular kids from regular little towns, attending regular little Assembly of God churches. That’s about where the comparisons end. I’m sure he loved God though and I know God loves him . It would appear that satan ‘stole’ one. Elvis was made to use that anointed voice to lead others to the one who gave it to him. I want to believe that somehow, he made peace with his Creator in those last tragic moments. Karley asked me how he died. That really deserves a much more complicated answer than what’s on his death certificate. As we left, I couldn’t help but to grieve, not for another celebrity victim of bad choices, but for that little boy with such big dreams.