by Jennifer Martin

"When you're a celebrity, it's adios reality…" sings Brad Paisley in one of the few country songs I actually like. I generally avoid celebrity news… at least, that's what I tell everyone… but I don't like to dwell on it!

Lately, however, with all the celebrity deaths and the Jon and Kate fiasco, my mind has been drawn to celebrity news.

We've lost Billy Mays, the top TV pitchman, Michael Jackson, the number one selling recording pop artist of all time, Farrah Fawcett, whose beautiful image was on the most posters ever sold, Ed McMahon, the most charitable celebrity of all time, and David Carradine, the best white kung-fu actor of all time.

All of their deaths are different - it's still a lot to take in one month for the celebrity news conscious person.

Before all the deaths, I had been following along fanatically with the Jon and Kate drama - praying that they would cancel their own show and get marriage counseling and stay together. I thought Kate was a horrible person! An uptight, mean, aggressive woman!

And then my mother says to me one day, "Wow, you remind me a lot of that Kate Gosselin!" Suddenly, I saw things from Kate's point of view - Jon was a passive person, and he turned into a passive-aggressive person instead of getting counseling. Jon chose to run off with women - "just friends" or not - ten years his junior to relive some supposed lost memory rather than try to work things out with his wife like an adult.

Then, as Farrah Fawcett is dying, her own son refuses to get help for his heroin problems and gets thrown in jail. How stupid, Redmond O'Neil! How terrible - your mom is dying of cancer, and all you want to do is shoot up with some lame friends.

Michael Jackson, weird as he was, also left behind three children whose mother gave up their parental rights (or in the case of Blanket, conceived through IVF with donor eggs and carried by a surrogate, has no other parent) and basically were raised by nannies as their father went through terrible court cases, bouts of depression, strange behavior, and as we are learning, severe addictions to prescription drugs.

David Carradine left behind children and grandchildren as he died in a bizarre, accidental way that is supposedly related to his strange sexual practices.

Billy Mays' death is yet to be determined - but it might relate to a piece of luggage hitting his head the day before as a tire blew out on a plane that he had boarded. The same thing happened with Liam Neeson's wife, Natasha Richardson - hit on the head while skiing, seemed fine, died a few hours later.

In the middle of the deaths and divorces (which is just a death of a marriage, and oftentimes just as painful) we have to remind ourselves to treat people well, so we can leave a legacy, not just unanswered questions and painful memories.

God is telling us something with these famous deaths. Yes, the news reports on it too much. Yes, it's not like we actually know these people. But we can live and learn from it.

Get help for your addictions. Treat your spouse more nicely. Love on your kids as much as you can. Get right with God. Please remember your life affects everyone around you, and each decision can hurt or help someone.


.