Beau's Secret

Exactly a year ago today, I was doing something I would have never expected. I was holding and rocking my niece's tiny baby while she was mourning the death of her brother, Beau, in the other room. 

We had gone to Colorado, like we did every year over Memorial Day Weekend, only this time was different. As soon as we pulled into our old familiar hotel parking lot, we got a frantic call from Liz, Mike's Sister, saying that Beau, her 16 year old son, had been in a terrible ATV accident and was being life flighted to the nearest hospital. After making sure which hospital he was being taken to, we headed there also. We entered the room in the ER, still not believing that Beau could really be that badly injured.  When we saw Beau laying there, Liz softly crying and stroking his hair back, we felt that he was gone. It wasn't him. His body was laying there but his spirit was gone. I took Ashley's baby and went to the waiting area to try and give her time to grieve and to be there for her mom and family. It was in that waiting room that I started to learn more about Beau and the kind of person he was. 

We waited for several hours in that waiting room and every hour that passed, we would hear an alarm of some type go off. Another cousin, Chelsea, and I were both tending little children and we finally found the phone that was going off.  It was Beau's phone and it had a message in it. It was then that I realized what Beau knew. 

Honestly, I didn't really have a relationship with Beau. I only saw him a few times a month and when we saw each other, there was a quick hug, a few pleasantries were exchanged and that was about it. I loved him and thought he was a "good kid" but at family gatherings, he would go hang out with the teenagers and I would stay with the adults so there really wasn't much interaction. Everything I knew about Beau, came mostly from talking to his mom, Liz, and from Grandma Bennett. I did know that

Beau wasn't perfect. He was a regular 16-year-old teenage boy who sometimes talked back to his parents and broke curfew. He had a really messy bedroom and he loved to do crazy, silly things with his friends and he always had a smile on his face. He was pretty normal. But not really. Beau had learned something that a lot of people don't figure out for a really long time. Some people never figure it out. Beau learned the secret for being truly happy. 

Growing up Beau had done what all the boys his age and in his social circle were pushed to do, he played sports. He played football and baseball mostly and he played golf whenever he could. It was probably expected because he came from athletic families. Grandpas on both sides of the family had truly excelled in sports. But somewhere along the way, Beau started to see what some of his friends that he played sports with were doing and he didn't like the choices they were making and maybe some of the choices he was making when he was with them. He made a big decision to stop playing those sports and to stop hanging around those friends. That was hard. Anyone who has experienced changing friend groups, and probably everyone has, knows how hard that is. There was probably a little bullying going on and making life miserable for him for a while from those old friends but Beau found new friends and before long he was filling his time with other things instead of playing sports. 

One of his new found activities was going to the temple every week and Beau was finding that he was happier than ever before. He tried to serve others by volunteering at places and also by doing family history and he used that big smile of his to make friends wherever he went. He really liked to find new people at school and be a friend to them. They said that he even deleted his social media accounts because he felt that he needed to concentrate on living his own life and not watch other people live theirs. He wanted to live life to the fullest and not waste a minute of time being unhappy or comparing himself with others. 

At the funeral for Beau, Beau's bishop told how he had come to him several months before he passed away and said he wanted to think about the Savior more. That's when he had come up with his plan. He set an alarm to go off every hour on his phone that would say, "Make Christ the Center of Your Life." Every time he saw it flash on his screen, he would try to serve someone, recite a song or scripture or say a prayer. He was working hard to try and live as Christlike as possible. He wanted his thoughts through out the day, to be centered on Christ, our true source of happiness and joy. Beau wasn't perfect. No one is. But Beau had found out a great truth at the young age of 16, a truth that many people don't figure out their whole lives. CHRIST is the CENTER of everything. If we center our lives on HIM, then we find a power and an inner peace that comes only in and through HIM. 

Everyone is sad that Beau had to leave this life at such a young age. But the beauty of Beau leaving this earth is that his secret is being told everywhere now. There's a big movement of people who are sick of being unhappy and insecure. When they see Beau's story and learn his secret, then they can be "happi" too! (Beau's license plate said happy with an "i") Make CHRIST the CENTER of your life. That's the key. That's the secret. Beau knew how to be happy and his message is spreading to the world. 

-Cathy