Yes it’s been a while since I posted here, sorry reader friends! My other blog hogs most of my time (that’s the one that pays the bills…well, it pays a one here and there anyway), but I hope you’ll still stick around even if I’m sporadic about posting.
Today I’m just going to share what has occupied my thoughts and prayers lately, and filled me with plenty of “whys” for my God…
We’re going to our first graduation open house of the season tomorrow. It feels indescribably odd that this year our son is also one of those graduating. (How can that be when we’re only in our 20’s? Or so we feel!) He chose not to have a party though, and took the “buy out” instead. In case you don’t know what that is, it just means we’re paying him the chunk of cash we would have spent on his party, and that’s around the amount he would have received in graduation gifts. He’s always been a little shy, so he’s perfectly content with his choice, and as long as that’s how he really wants it, we are too. I clearly remember when Kal went to kindergarten and somewhere I saw the year that he’d graduate: 2010. It seemed like forever away and here we are.
As you may have read in one of my tweets, a boy in his senior class took his own life last week and our little town has been filled with grief and pain for what this beautiful family is going through. To give you an idea of how involved in our community and how loved they are, our Catholic Church is bigger than the one they belong to so the funeral was held there; it seats 1000 people and was still standing room only–possibly between 1200 and 1500 people came. We didn’t know them personally, but a couple friends of ours knew them well. I can’t get them out of my mind. When I was in Kal’s closet today and saw his cap and gown, I felt a stab in my heart for when the parents first come across their son’s cap and gown in a closet somewhere. This Sunday on Mother’s Day my heart will ache for his Mom again. And on the day Kal graduates, I’ll cry for his family then too.
Some things just shouldn’t happen in this world. I get it that God gives us free will, sometimes to our own or maybe even to another person’s detriment, but since He’s God and all, and He hears our prayers pleading for His protection over our children, why oh why?
It really stinks, but I suppose we just have to accept that on this side of heaven we won’t know every answer to every question we have for God. He never promised that we wouldn’t suffer, but He promised to be there with us in our suffering. Even in our times of doubting will we still love Him? Even when we have a heavy cross to carry, will we ask Him to help us suffer well?
When it’s my turn, I pray I can walk the talk. For now, I will ask you to pray with me for all those in this world who are hurting, that they feel the peace of Jesus in the depths of their souls.
I am so sorry about this family’s loss. One reason I’m a Christian is because it’s the only faith/religion I know of that can take something horrible and make it into good. It’s too soon to know what good will come of this, but I trust that in God’s time, good will come….so sad…I will pray for this family today.