Today was the meeting at church called, "MOMS" (Mothers of Many Seasons), and once again, Nathan did not make it in nursery. This was his first graduation, to the crawler room, and maybe all the mobile kids were just too much. Or maybe he was just pitifully tired. Or maybe he missed his security blanket (a.k.a. Mommy). In any case, when they came and got me, I found him and another girl feeding off each other, wailing, and doing the shaky sobs when I picked him up. After he calmed down, he sat in my lap in the Bible study room with the ladies just fine. He even started to sing, his version anyway, which amused the tables around us. He crashed on the 5 minute ride home, and hardly stirred when I took off his coat and hat and put him into bed. Yesss!
So that leaves me some time to ponder. I've found another blog recently, http://patriceandmattwilliams.blogspot.com/2010/02/please-help-us-get-word-out.html. I cried and cried over their story and their son's disease. They are having an auction, and I think in a few days this website will post the items. http://jonahsebauction.blogspot.com/2010/01/about-jonah.html
After I read about Jonah, and EB, I snuck upstairs and stood over Nathan's crib and watched him sleep. He is so healthy, and so easily he could have not been born healthy. While I stood there, he suddenly popped his head up and looked at the door where Mommy always "appears." He didn't see me right there, out of his line of sight, watching him. He looked for a bit, but didn't cry. He just put his head back down and fell asleep. I waited a few minutes before I felt safe to sneak back out.
There is a question I've been avoiding revisiting lately. "God is good" - what does that mean anyway? If being good means allowing young brothers to die, or babies getting incurable diseases, then good doesn't mean what I think of is good. Ditto for "love." But it is still all I have to cling to. I'm reading a book by Randy Alcorn called, "If God Is Good." I've only read the first two chapters, so I don't have the answer, and may never be satisfied with one. A quote that is sticking with me is,
"If my suffering would one day justify denying God, then I should deny him now in light of other people's suffering."Until that year when tragedy struck, I just believed that God was good, love and sovereign, but I did this without any life experience to test that. And when it happened, I sure DID NOT want to look back and say, "Wow, I hated it at the time,but I see what God did, and now I wouldn't change it." I did not want to learn anything, be better for the death of my brothers. So now what?
At MOMS one verse jumped out at me that I feel like I've never read before. "Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints." Ps 116:15. Is that the answer? What I think of as heartbreaking and tragic God finds wonderful?
A big part of my brain is asking me to just believe it, accept this, and not deal with it anymore. Someone told me recently, "Don't question why."
He has hemmed me in behind and before, and thrown what appears to be crap at me while I'm in there, and I'm not sure what to do with it, but I'm not really going anywhere. Not sure if it is comforting yet.
Meanwhile, these pictures will bring a smile back to your face after reading such a depressing blog post. :-)
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