A child, loved by parents and friends, died the other night. I didn't know the child, but the parents were friends of ours from the church in Washington. Not close friends, but friends nonetheless. We had been praying for them.
It's a fearful thing to face death with one so young. This young family had fought it for several years, knowing that, in all likelihood, it was coming sooner rather than later. For a while, there was hope that it had gone away - but then it came back, and the family knew it would be harder the second time around. And it was.
It would be nice to say all the right things, to give comforting words, to speak of heaven and peace and joy and the end of pain, but those words will not come. If it had happened to us, I wouldn't want the words of comfort right now. I wouldn't want pity or apologies or anything that, in the end, won't be remembered.
To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I would just want my child back.
Every day of being a parent is, for me at least, a day of anxiety. Most people would tell me I obviously don't have enough faith or trust or understanding of God. Perhaps that is true. All I know is that every time my children are out of my sight, I worry about them. Nightmare scenarios arise unbidden in my brain, all the worst things that can happen. Even when they are with me, I worry as they walk that they might stumble; I worry that a driver might swerve into us and crush the side of the car where they sit; I worry that they might lose their balance and fall down the stairs. Every moment of potential danger, I am imagining what I might do to rescue them if something should happen.
I can't imagine what it would be like to watch a child slowly die over the course of weeks or months, knowing that there is nothing that I personally can do to save them. The doctors will give their medicines, the nurses will administer the painkiller, but there is nothing that I personally can do to save them or bring them comfort. My hugs and kisses will only do so much. And in the end, if one of my children did as this young girl did, slipping into a drug-induced sleep from painkillers until the brain finally shut down, I would sit by the bed and hold her hand and fall completely apart when it was all over and done. And even though life would go on and the sun would rise and the rest of the family would try to carry on, it would be a different world from that moment on because someone would be missing from it, denied her rightful place in it, cheated out of the joys and love that this life might have offered.
Knowing someone who undergoes this pain only makes it more real, this fact of life, this fact of death. If it could happen to them, it could happen to me. That's a thought that wakens me early in the morning, startled out of a dreadful dream filled with mortal terror. There are so many things in this world that bring pain and death, so many things to worry about; it's overwhelming. There is no way to get my arms around it all, no way to properly prepare for it - other than to place my trust in something that is far beyond my puny powers to even understand.
Perhaps that is the gut-level reason for my faith, the deep, hidden motive that lies at the secret heart of my mind. I can't deal with all the anxiety and worry that comes from trying to keep my loved ones alive and unhurt in this world of insanity; it is simply too much to bear. I need God because otherwise there is no hope, and if there is no hope, there can be no peace. Lord knows I need peace.
Lord knows we all need peace.
For the family of Jenna, I pray for peace.
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