Silas

I began writing something about my journey as Silas' grandmother and soon realized the story is too big for this blog site. His life, his death and even his larger family legacy before him is a story I want to tell but not here, at least not in detail. What I will share here is just this:

His great-grandmother, my mother, lost her third-born child sixty years ago to a freak accident when he was two years old. Silas, my daughter's third child was only eight months when an eerily similar freak accident took his life this summer.

Why has the family been plagued to journey through such heart-wrenching tragedies? To say "plagued" seems right at first. It suggests some on-going scourge upon the family, like Job of the Old Testament. As though God somehow singled us out to torment us. Isn't that how Job felt? It's one of the feelings I have, I know that.

But what if we are not plagued? What if we just happened to experience a "luck of the draw" life? Just happenstance that such tragedies should happen to one family? I suppose that's possible although Job's Old Testament peers didn't seem to think that was a plausible explanation for his life. They preferred to think that Job had somehow fallen out of grace. But if it truly is "luck of the draw" I want to know why I don't have luck winning contests.

I think it's actually possible that we have been privileged or "loved" with these events. I know that sounds morbid. But what if, as I have read, we reincarnate to learn the fullness of God's Love through lifetime situations that help us "get it"? I'm not talking about punishments. I believe all things work together for good... (Romans 8:28) And I don't think God is about punitive life-lessons...at all. In fact, I think the book of Job addresses that, that it is human to believe in divine punishment but that that is not Who God is.

If this is true, or even if it isn't, going through as opposed to around is what I believe, without a doubt, brings us the fullness and richness of life. It is in going through the storm that we appreciate the rainbow for what it is: a promise of God's love and grace.

No matter how many tragedies me and my family or you and yours sustain, the Love of God has never left the scene. No matter what. I do truly believe that. And in order to continue to believe that, I embrace not only the tragedy for what it is, no more, no less, neither good nor bad, but I also embrace the lessons that come with such painful times, lessons in the compassion of those around us during this time, lessons of forgiveness needed moment to moment, over and over again, and the lesson of Grace enough to cover it all.

As Corrie Ten Boom,a Nazi concentration camp survivor, said: There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. Amen.