The air continues to be heavy with the prayers of others but my heart is unable to respond any longer. We are borne, as though bodily, by those prayers…lifted…but in the center of that life raft, I am still curled in a blind ball of pain and confusion. Steve and Sarah are not ones to talk about their feelings as much, not out loud, but I know they are as dazed and in shock as I.

I’ve always been a doer, a mover, a shaker, full of energy… a reasonably positive person. A fixer – oh, especially that. I will always try to find a solution to a problem. But now…I am coming to realize that I cannot fix this. I cannot CHANGE THIS. I cannot pray it away, I cannot dream it away, I cannot drink it away, wish it away: there is NOTHING I CAN DO.  I will live out the rest of my days– oh my God, what could be several decades until I sleep — as someone permanently and irreparably damaged. I could say “changed” (in a chirpy, positive voice!) but today I feel damaged, harmed, scarred, twisted and deformed by grief.

I am also coming to realize that my picture of God is obviously skewed. He is not Santa Claus, nor is he the Director of some club that hands out favors to its members. He isn’t in the business, as my husband says, of sticking his hand down from the clouds and stopping cars that are about to hit kids on bikes. This is my perception, sitting here in the dark: He is aloof, uninvolved; and the pain of His disregard, His silence, hurts at the molecular level.  This world spins on, filled with incredible violence, cruelty, sadness and despair. People are constantly dying, hurting. How can I reconcile all of that — plus what I am seeing and feeling — with the God that Jesus claims knows the number of hairs on our heads?? The God of Love?

I see the choice in front of me – I can choose to continue to believe, to have faith and hope, or I can choose to be bitter and hopeless. But who is this God that I am supposed to believe in?  I mean…I see all the love and support that’s poured down on us and I know He’s in it. But what good is God if He only wades in AFTER allowing the unthinkable to occur?

“Clean-up on Aisle 5!”