My Mourning Musings

I'm the kind of person, who after immersing myself in a good book or watching an interesting movie, I'll spend the next few days thinking about the end after the ending. It's like tying a ribbon around a package, a finishing point in my mind.

And I like lists. Sometimes I actually add something to my list, for the sheer joy of crossing it off! Check. Done.

I rarely move furniture around in my home. I like things to stay the same. I like schedules and routine.

I like when 2+2 always equals 4. I like life to unfold in neat little sequences, orderly and predictable.

The problem with the world I live in is that it doesn't fit me, it isn't tailor-made for my personality and bent. As the Book of Job says, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." No matter how much I wish it was different, life simply can't be put in a box. Few people reach middle age without having their hearts broken several times: I am no exception.

So what's a person like me to do with this reality? When things seem to spiral out of control in my personal world, I feel a need to write. Putting pen to paper (or tapping a computer keyboard) helps me process and work through the complexities that otherwise clutter my thoughts and keep me distracted and uptight. Writing allows me to put my thoughts and feelings into a box of sorts, to put words and sentences together until they say what I am feeling.

Right now I am in one of those seasons, wrestling with unanswered questions and the deep pain that life sometimes throws our way. It feels random,senseless,cruel.

I watch helplessly from the sidelines as a good friend fights a rare and aggressive type of brain cancer. The best doctors in the country can not perform an operation to cure her, or give her treatments that respond to this awful disease. I watch her courageous and committed husband, a gentle, private man of few words, whose very world is crumbling around him: he loves that woman so much! And her children struggle to walk a path that no one this young should have to face.

Where can I find some word of comfort, some consolation for my soul? How can a merciful and gracious God allow His children to experience unexplainable distress? The age-old question haunts me: Why do bad things happen to good people?

I am not naive enough to believe that I can expect answers to all my questions. Even theologians throughout the centuries who have given their lives to study the meaning of suffering have not been privy to a formula that completely addresses the myriad of unanswered questions.

Ironically, comfort comes to me from my own personal experience. Two years ago, when my husband was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, I felt my world crash along with his. So much uncertainty and fear, so much pain.

But looking back, the most difficult time of my life brought with it a deep-seated peace, an almost tangible presence of Jesus that simply can not be duplicated in "normal" life. God's hand was in the heartache.

If this is true for me in my experience, then I have every reason to believe that my friend and her family are being carried in the same way. Underneath them are the everlasting arms.

"This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness!"