Death has a dark, deep and sometimes surprising affect on us all. Today is a surprising day near the end of the week, a week in which I’ve mourned the death of my son Jedadiah February a year ago. Usually I focus on the meaning of the word Jedadiah– beloved of God – instead of on the death and strive to remember God’s love for me and that Jesus is holding my son. But this week’s been the disappointment of not having my own baby to hold, of trying yet again – with no success- of wondering if we will ever have another, and of being amazed at how expensive adoption can be!

Then there has been inner hurt, the wondering if things will be okay again, the desire to just lie in the pain for a bit, an almost a sadistic need to feel pain instead of God’s love enveloping me.

Then I remember back to before I knew Jesus and to the daily pain that over time I have given up and of the healing it has been replaced with. How was it that my daily pain, then, was greater than all but the worst days of pain now? Part of it is knowing that there is hope and that this world is not an impersonal ball of wax, destined to slowly melt away into nothingness and to therefore take me to greater and greater depths of nothingness.

How is it that one can have a baby- and still not know what color his hair was, that the color of hair seemed to be a dark red/brown that was unlikely to stay dark colored for long? How can I know my son’s eyes were blue – but only be sure because my and his father’s were both blue? How is it that I’ve learned to trust God with these things? How is it that sometimes I want to take them all back? How can love be such a source of joy and of sorrow? How is it that God would create a world where so often he would feel sorrow? I guess that somehow God knew we, and himself, needed the “minor keys” of life. How does one learn to balance the focus on sadness with happiness, or death and life?