Melancholy

Well, today is my dad's birthday. He would be 67 years old, if he had lived through his battle with cancer ten years ago. (It's hard to believe he's been gone that long.) Anyway, it's got me feeling a bit melancholy today. Cancer is a nasty little booger. It has taken many members of my family, and attacked many others. My mother twice; but thankfully, she is a survivor!

I wrote a couple of days ago about a friend of mine that just lost her 15 day old granddaughter to a bacterial infection. That was the second granddaughter she has lost. She wrote a post on a social network yesterday that her "heart is broken and her faith is diminishing." While I know that her pain must be tremendous right now, I also know that she isn't ready to hear any response to that statement. She just needs time to hurt. When we have someone taken from us, a baby or a father - even if it's a father we had a complicated relationship with - we need time to hurt.

What I want to tell her is this: "God is a loving God. He gave you 15 wonderful days to get to know your granddaughter. Unfortunately, nature is cruel and harsh, and she developed an illness. We (humans) do what we can through science and medicine to help situations like this... to offer the best chance for survival, but in this particular case they just couldn't save her." I want to tell her this, but right now is not the time. She doesn't want to hear logic, she is hurting too much.

When the time is right, I pray that I find the right words to give her comfort. I know that God will be with me.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 (NIV)
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.