First, a health update…. finally turning a corner, a week of intestinal upset (I am being gentle with you) but so weak, physically and emotionally…

the emotional weakness I believe is in part from the illness and my guts spilling out of my body for 4 days (ooops, sorry, bordering on TMI) but also from some events at various degrees of separation.  A few weeks ago, a young boy, who some of our kids knew well, and whose brother was a camp counselor at our church’s camp died unexpectedly, found with a noose around his neck… there is speculation that it was a result of the " choking game " being experimented with by kids, the Steven Curtis Chapman Family tragedy, and this last week, a schoolmate of Emily’s  died unexpectedly, a suicide… kids from the school walking to school on Monday morning saw the ambulances outside the home… how does God do it? carry all of this sorrow of the world, I can scarcely  think of this… I have prayed much for these situations, not from some noble sense of what I ought to do, but because I am feeling such sorrow for these families,, a sorrow outside myself.

Katherine has some deep thoughts occupying her these days… and she can be a "shut it upside of her" kinda gal, and Wednesday morning we were touching on some of the issues when we heard the warning bells across the river from her school and she had to get to school, so I  told her to come home at lunch. Which she did, and we talked some more, with no conclusions, no resolutions. That afternoon, we talked about the girl from Emily’s school, and she said to me, I am glad you make us talk to you." She spoke of feeling separated from people who didn’t know what was going on inside of her, and that she was glad she had a place where people did.

Emily is, and always has been, a person who emotes in spurts, she gives deep honest pieces, and withholds others… and so this week has been alot of holding her and deciphering her… but last night she spoke with Melinda on the phone, and she beamed afterwards (i think from a sense of connectedness) , and I knew Melinda was telling her to go to the funeral and be ready to share the hope of heaven with people, and Emily said, "without heaven, there is no hope."

I keep thinking of a mother going over every minute of a child’s life, replaying  each minute, feeling the heaviness of meaning in each single nuance… I told Katherine, these parents can’t stop that… no matter how hard they try, they cannot stop the movie playing on an endless loop in their heads and hearts…

so I am talking here, spilling some of  my metaphorical guts… no neat and tidy conclusion…

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Family Life, Kids, Our glorious God. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.