My beautiful daughter sends me a text message from school early Friday morning to tell me that one of her classmates passed away suddenly. With stricken horror I reply with "OH NO!"
This young lady was not one of my daughter's close friends. She never came to our house or called her on the phone. But she had been in my daughter's classes. They'd passed in the halls and seen each other in the lunch room. We've all known people like that.
The facts surrounding her death, while unclear, point toward an aneurysm. Her mother went to her room and found her daughter on the floor. They called 911 and she was gone before they got her to the hospital. (All hearsay...I truly know no facts.)
Today my daughter and her classmates are attending the funeral of a teenager. I have to separate myself from the nightmare (that can't be a strong enough word) that child's parents are enduring.
It is not our place to question God and His plan. I know that. I am reminded in the face of a tragedy that the opportunities we are given are fleeting and all gifts.
Last night my daughter asks if I'd make her pizza as she didn't feel very well and was hungry. I was happy to do it. I sat down on the floor in front of the couch after the pizza went into the oven to watch the third quarter of the Cowboys game and there on the couch, her head on a pillow leaning against my husband's lap, is my sleeping teenager.
Thank you, God. For the opportunity to make pizza for a sleeping kid. I'm certain with every shred of my being the moms who have lost their babies would give ANYTHING to make pizza for their sleeping child.
I woke up this morning and my first thoughts were of work and what had to be done today and my plans for dinner this evening and...... my mind wandered to this mother who woke up this morning and thought, "I bury my daughter today."
Thank you, God. For the opportunity to think only of work and food this morning.
This is the hell of peace for sure.
