I have spent the last few moments of time surfing the net, hopping from blog to blog, article to article, post to post. It feels a little bit like I have just crossed a raging river by leaping from wobbly stone to protruding stump to stone, to branch and then somehow find myself on the far side panting and exhausted.
Stories about the sea that ate entire families, devoured villages and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of untold thousands are swimming in my head. More than 55,000 dead, a number that will most assuredly grow as rescuers fail to reach some survivors in time and disease swallows others.
It seems like a short time ago I was shaking with anger as I read about the children who were murdered in Beslan and the decisions that some parents were forced to make.
And now I am trying to process mother nature's actions. Nature does not fight because of oil. Nature did not kill children because of a fight over land, but in some ways it is just as senseless and incomprehensible. How do you reconcile the deaths of so many. How do you maintain faith in G-d and especially if you lost someone important, someone special, someone dear, how do you accept this.
I don't have any profound insight or answers, but I have what I consider to be a lot of experience with death, especially the death of friends. The one thing that I have learned from all of this is that it is not hokey nor cliche to say that life is for living and that we need to live it now. Tonight I'll hug my children and whisper a silent prayer of thanks for what I have.
As I have recently blogged my son and I have been discussing death and his fears about his parent's mortality, his own and other loved ones. I think that some of the questions are rooted in concerns about who will take care of him if something happens to us. I have done my best to reassure him, but I am not so sure he is convinced.
In part I think that this is because of the recent events. In spite of our best efforts to minimize his exposure, there are pictures on the front page of the newspaper, radio/television news coverage and more. The most likely culprit is the one that I have the least control over, this is just the topic of conversation everywhere we go. I cannot stop people from talking about this and the little sponge absorbs everything around him.
So we'll keep speaking about this and I'll do my best to reassure him. It is a little frustrating because for now I would like him to continue to believe that abba is superman. He should have a little time in which he can have implicit faith that his parents will protect him from harm. Just time to be a kid, that is all I really want to see.
And for me, well as I mentioned before this puts my life in perspective. It is another message that my problems are relatively minor and that I can be thankful for what I have. I am not always great about remembering this, but I try.
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