Backpacks of Lemonade

Life can sometimes deal us the most unimaginable circumstances. The kind of things that many in the world could never imagine anything good coming from it.

One such day occurred on the night of June 11, 2010 when a peaceful, lazy river at Albert Pike in Arkansas went from its usual three feet deep to a destructive 23 feet in a very short time and claimed the lives of 20 people camped alongside its banks.

Three of those lost were Lynn, Wilene and little Nick Shumake from DeKalb.

Looking back now at that day, 16 years later, there is simply no way to imagine how those few hours changed lives. Families lost their moms, dads, grandparents, brothers and sisters, in what we would learn later was a tragedy that should have never happened. The 20 that left this world that night did so at a campground that should never have been there and at no fault of their own.

We can ask, how could you ever make lemonade out of those ingredients. But, as we know now, the Shumake family has, and they have made so much lemonade from it that they have blessed children and families all over the area with it.

That lemonade is poured out from the pitcher called Nick’s Mission Backpack Program.

Since 2012, the Shumake family and a host of volunteers have worked tirelessly to send area children who need it home from school or daycare with a backpack full of nutritious food every weekend of the school year. The mission started out small with children from James Bowie, but has since grown to provide meals for as many as 175 children every week at school districts and daycares all around the area.

It is a mission born out of remembrance and it is lemonade poured out from a pitcher filled with love. The Shumake family saw the need, and they took their loss and turned it into something that keeps kids from going hungry.

I simply cannot think of another situation that I have seen with my eyes up close that portrays every day human beings taking the worst day of their lives, and allowing God to use them to make something beautiful out of it.

We can all learn something from the Shumake family. I know I did, and still do. Even in the days following the tragic events of 2010, when I made it my mission as a journalist to make someone be responsible for the loss, it was the Shumake family that told me to let it go.

I look at this family today and I am awestruck. Nick has a sister that molds young lives as a teacher, a sister that works for the Lord at First Baptist DeKalb, a mother that has devoted her life to feeding other people’s children, and an entire family that has taken his loss and well…made lemonade with it.

It is a story that reminds us daily that in all things God is there for us. He feeds the birds of the air, clothes the flowers in the field…and He stands beside us, and carries us, when the weight of life seems so heavy that we cannot stand.

It reminds me every year in the first days of June, and so many other days in between, that our Lord is truly an awesome God, and He makes the sweetest lemonade ever poured out on a soul.