Numb

My heart feels quiet and sad today. Shock and awe has taken over my otherwise very ordinary Monday. I just found out that Anna Wall, a mom to four very special people I went to Youth with back home (Anita, Eva, Johnny & Emily) lost her battle with pancreatic cancer on Saturday. I can't even explain to you my emotions. I'm numb with heaviness.

In 2002, my mom battled a year of breast cancer. Honestly, it was the worst year of my life...and yet strangely the most memorible. I remember those long days. I hated seeing my mom that way. She looked so small, so bald, so sick. The spunk and fiestiness that used to describe her personhood was rarely seen anymore and our house felt like a gloomy place. I really hated seeing my dad so distraught. He's a fix-it kind of guy, up for anything, but this was one area in his life that was out of his hands. I remember a multitude of feelings and emotions. I remember getting so angry with people when they'd give us a hug and say they were thinking of us and then get in their cars and drive home to hang out with their own moms who were happy and healthy. It didn't seem fair. Though that sounds so selfish, those feelings were so real to me. I had moved home from Saskatoon (where I had been living at the time) to live at home and be "mom" for a year. Anger clouded my life and I went through such a time of fury and hurt with God. It was a real transitional period for me and Him. I wanted my mom to be able to see me get married. I wanted to have her with me when I had my kids. The human imagination is a powerful thing and the "what if's" overwhelmed me.

I guess the walk down memory lane has brought me back to a very humble place. Why did my mom live on? God could have taken her home in an instant. How can I be of encouragement to these friends when the ending to my story looks so different from theirs?

In the end, I believe that God is in control and His plans are far greater and far deeper than we could ever grasp. I believe that God will meet us where we're at. Honestly, I have no idea or any real words of understanding regarding my mom's current cancer-free existence and the death of those who have fought for the same goal - to live on. I have no idea why some people suffer and others breeze through life with minor issues. But I am in awe at His power and the strength we can pull from that connection with Him. And I know that my mom's fate and her life will carry on as a testiment of God's grace and the fact that He is alive and here.

All we can do is hold on to what we know and that is that God is good and though we don't understand everything He does or the time in which He does it, God is still good. I long to be an encouragement to the Wall family today and the long days to come. My heart hurts today.*