Again

Once again, I am faced with the task of dealing with coping with the death of a peer.  Again the weapon was a pair of skis.  Tina was killed Saturday as she learned to ski.  My thoughts are not quite to the place where I can truly write cohesively about this but I am struck with one thing:  how very different it feels from last time.

With Benji, I felt as though my life was suddenly placed on a tilt-a-whirl.  I felt as though everything that I knew was upended and suddenly destroyed.  The way I thought about life and God did not fit in with what had happened.  Though I never would have admitted it before that moment, I quickly realized that I had been treating God as a genie, who simply existed to answer my prayers.  I believed that if my prayers were not answered it was because I somehow failed to word them right or failed to have enough passion in my heart or faith.  To find the magic words, if you will.  But I prayed every possible combination of words for Benji.  I prayed more passionately for him than I ever had prayed up until that point in my life.  And I truly, almost naively, believed that healing would come.  But it didn't.  And the realization that God was not who I thought he was nearly destroyed my faith.  In the words of C.S. Lewis, I learned that he was "not a tame lion."  Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to believe that this was a good thing and that God's plan for my life and humanity was way more complex and truly good than anything I could ever come up with.  We began to speak again.

Tina has only been gone for two days but my reaction is already so different.  I already believe in a God who has things under control no matter what happens.  While I am sad that I never got to know such a wonderful young lady better and my heart absolutely breaks for everyone whose pain is overwhelming today, I have more peace in my heart now than I did for months five years ago.  I think about her in heaven and how lucky she is to experience that.  A strange emotion has even surfaced that I never expected; jealousy.  All her questions are answered.  Every little thing that wasn't really an issue but bothered her anyways has disappeared.  She gets to see the Lord face to face.  I am struck by how much more heaven minded I am.  I believed Benji was with the Lord, but I found little comfort in it at the time.  Today I find so much comfort in that fact, for both Benji and Tina.

It is true that I was not as close to Tina as I was Benji but I think the reasons for my different reactions go deeper than that.  There has been a real change in my soul.  I still mourn, but I mourn with hope.  I look at the friends I have with gratefulness and not with fear that they too would be taken from me and I thank God for the change.

But still, if you ski, please wear a helmet.