A Season of Sadness

It's not been a great year. Last August, my friends Tom and Leah lost their ten-day old son, Zeke. In May, scarcely nine months later, their four-year old son, Wyatt, died. In my grieving process I found myself asking God, "Why, why, why?" knowing full well that the answers would be slow (if ever) in coming. My heart aches for this family, who are good and faithful people. Why should they experience such unbearable pain and heartache? Not once, but twice?

"We live in a fallen world" seems like such a flippant explanation. So does "Bad things happen to good people." Both statements are true, but I've found myself needing (wanting) something more specific.

In searching for peace I've read Oswald Chambers. I've read the Bible. I've prayed. I've listened to music. I've slept less. I've been more given to retrospective thinking. And here's what my tiny brain has been able to grasp. There is little - if any - order in this earthly existence. It's mainly chaos and mayhem. Hence the great suffering and devastation. BUT. In God's heavenly kingdom there's an order to things that we can only imagine. There's peace. There's love. And there's joy. I take comfort that Zeke and Wyatt are living in that place. The sadness is still with me, but it's tempered with hope.

Just as I was beginning to feel like my head was an inch or two above the water, my Uncle Bob died. On Father's Day. At first I was bereft at the thought of him dying of Father's Day. But he was a great father and had just spent the weekend with his three sons and their families. And so perhaps it was fitting that he joined his heavenly Father on Father's Day. Even though he had eighty-five full and faithful years, the loss is still keenly felt by those who love him.

So this season of sadness. I'm ready for it to be over. But I realize that it might go on for awhile. Dying is a part of living. Sadness is part of the human experience. It's how we choose to respond and act that determines whether we survive or not. I'm so grateful (such a small word for the magnitude of feeling it holds) that I have faith in God. Seriously.