Why

On January 12th of this year our family drove to Swedish for Chris to have the first surgery in a plan that would have him on maintenance chemo and cancer free by the end of April. Obviously it didn't work out according to our or our doctors' plan.

On January 12th of this year 200,000 Haitians died in a 7.0 earthquake that ravaged their country. 2,000,000 were left homeless.

On January 12th God was holding a family in Seattle. On January 12th God was holding families in Haiti. God holds, loves and carries every day and every single day someone is having a January 12th or, in our case, a March 4th. One of the consistent questions I get emailed, asked in the store, on the phone, even at church...is this..."How can you still have faith that God is there, that God is good, that God really does love you?"

My trite answer when I am tired is "bad things happen to good people." My theologically thought out answer is that scripture is filled with examples of people whose lives were ripped apart from the human viewpoint and God rebuilt them and is invested in who we all are as people. The answer that resounds loudly in my heart is simply that I feel Him. I feel Him when I sing hymns, when I work in my garden, when I sit up late at night with sick kids. I feel Him. It's really that simple. And yes I have those same questions..."but why do You let this happen or that happen?" I get frustrated with Him, I don't understand Him, I can think of no other way to describe this God than He is a Great Mysterious Lover of my soul. And yet I feel Him.

I see through a mirror dimly, but I am in good company. St. Paul saw through that same mirror, as did Moses and Jeremiah and my own Aunt Dorothy and Grandmother Bowles and Grandmother Sell and now they all see clearly and I will too one day. Chris was an encourager to me, he was that person who always was in my ear saying I could do it and to try. I feel that even more so now, he sees clearly. Scripture is filled with examples of God at work, of lives forever changed, of a people who see dimly and then SEE and I firmly believe we are not only readers of that story but a part of it.

I don't know why Chris died at 46. I don't know why the surgery plan blew up in our faces so badly. I don't know why there are hundreds of thousands of children orphaned in Haiti. I don't know why things have happened in Darfur. All I know is that God is God and I am not. And I FEEL Him.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh