Notes from the last few days

Devin died last weekend.

The next day, an email told me that a woman in our co-op had died of cancer the night before.

Then I got a phone call telling me that the in-laws of another co-op family were killed in a car accident in the town next to ours, leaving behind two kids.

Yesterday, I met a family I know from the Internet for the first time. I became friends with the husband (Tim) through a theology group we're both a part of. I met his wife through email. They have a daughter who was brain injured by the pertussis vaccine. She now has seizures every day. She had one in the swimming pool while I sat with them drinking coffee. I watched in awe as they moved into competent, kind action on her behalf. Their once ordinary daughter has been forever altered by the insidious side effects of a vaccination designed to "protect" her from harm.

Missy (the mom) and I talked about heaven and whether or not it exists. "I need this all to make sense some day. It just isn't fair to Lydia."

As she spoke, I could hear how important it is to her that heaven is real, that there will be restoration and healing, another chance at life.

In my middle class, good health, white comfort, I realized I don't require life to make sense. I don't need the other side of death to give up its secrets in order to get through my days. My days are pretty good as they are.

But I'll bet the kids of these families whose moms and dad died last week need that comfort, that assurance. Missy needs it when she looks at a daughter whose normal life was robbed from her.

James Cone talks about the hope of heaven being an anchor for those who suffer in this life. He talks about how knowing that heaven exists and that freedom from oppression is the eventual, right end to injustice gives a hurting person, a hurting community, an identity to fall back on, to lean on in hard times. That's how the blacks in America have held on.

I wonder if I'm the anomoly then... Rich Mullins has a line in one of his songs that is whispering to me: "We're not as strong as we think we are."

Life is fragile and short. I don't know if there's a heaven. But I hope there is for my friends. They deserve one.