Thursday, April 29, 2010

The Fragility of Life

This week has been so difficult for me. So many reminders of how fragile life is. Reminders that my life is rarely touched by tragedy or disaster. I forget how blessed and protected I am from how life works for so many people. Even with Miguel working the job that he does, dealing with what some call the dregs of society in our county's jail, I forget that the world is not as sunshiny and cheerful as it is on my little acre here in South Florida.

In the last few weeks, I have had friends whose five year old daughter with down syndrome has been diagnosed with leukemia. A well respected family in our homeschool world whose grandchild was born at 22 weeks and went home to be with the Lord after a 10 day fight for life. A lovely missionary who've I've come to know through online chats and forums whose surprise, but most welcome, pregnancy was lost while traveling on furlough to raise money for their life's work in Mexico. And a respected college professor who I'd love to teach at the college my children would attend(whenever that happens) whose family member has been diagnosed with what will most likely be end stage cancer. Life is not all sunshine and roses, no matter how much we'd like it to be. Sometimes, I forget that.

As a Christian, it's so easy to throw out a pat answer of "God is in control", "We can't know His purposes" or "He'll get you through this." I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were the one hearing these things. All I can say is, "I'm so sorry. I'll be right here if you need me."

Friday, April 23, 2010

Tiaras and Tommy Guns

So, the other day, my youngest was terribly funny. The latest craze for my girls is to create a mess, er, a masterpiece with the art supplies. My youngest discovered that if she cut out shapes from the cereal boxes and wrapped them with aluminum foil, she could make tiaras. It was such a wonderful girly way to play and she was having such fun, I just left her to it. Admittedly, I was dreading the clean up fight.

About an hour later, she started bugging me about something as I was on my computer playing, er, doing massively important research and I tried to ignore her. Apparently, she was not fond of my ignoring her, but left. About 5 or 10 minutes later she was back. "MOM, look!" she demanded. So I turned my head to look and as I did so, she said, "you need to listen to me now or I'll shoot." Sigh...she had "built" a huge double barrel, um, GUN? out of two milk jugs taped together and decorated. Not so girly, huh?