Oklahoma

I got through December 14^th, 2012 fairly intact.  School children were attacked by a gunman, and I had found out four days earlier that our twins were expected to be mono-mono with a 50% survival rate (which thankfully proved to be false a month later).  It was awful, but some sort of bubble went around my brain and heart.  I prayed for the tragedy, but I didn’t dwell.  Without constant television coverage, I would have had to put forth effort to seek out the details, and I didn’t.  I tried to stay insulated. 

That approach continued to work through natural disasters, bombings, explosions, and all the other catastrophic events that seemed to splatter the news regularly.  I care about others, I pray, but I needed to shield and build the unrealistic so-sorry-those-things-happen-to-other- people mindset. 

For some reason, the tornadoes that hit Oklahoma shattered that illusion.  I finally turned the computer off at 8:30 last night and attempted to sleep, but I was up by 10 with the excuse of needing a snack, sifting through the news pages on the computer again.  I tried to absorb it, to make sense of it.  I couldn’t. 

This morning an acquaintance from a mono-di twin online group I’m a part of asked to be lifted up in prayer on Friday as she has her twins.  One is alive; one is not.  She will say hello and goodbye the same day and then try to pick up the pieces.  I will be on a NST monitor at 7:30 Friday morning for half an hour with all that time committed to prayer for her family. 

Sometimes I feel my faith is so strong.  I cling to the belief that God is good all the time, that I don’t  live for this world, that I should glorify God in all things.  Sometimes things that happen make me feel so far removed, spinning and weak.  But I remembered something as I cried tears for children and people I’ve never met this week:  Jesus wept.  My God who came down to this earth and exposed Himself to every trial, temptation, and pain of this world wept, and He did it over people.  Lazarus’ death, Lazarus' family's reaction to the death, caused Him tears; seeing those who loved Lazarus suffer hurt Him.  He willingly exposed Himself to that kind of anguish so He could then willingly die on a cross for me.  Why would God, who could have skipped this kind of pain, do this?  It was the only way, and He accepted it.  I follow that God.  And I know that God was in Oklahoma just like He will be in Arkansas on Friday when a mother delivers her stillborn son.  He is there when we hurt; He subjected Himself to pain.  He is not silent or indifferent to anything that happens.  And He is always with me.