A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die...
For little Landis, the time to be born was followed too closely by a time to die. I never saw him, but I went to his funeral and stared through watery eyes at a white casket not much bigger than a shoebox. I can't quite wrap my mind around how small six ounces is, but I do know that it's too small to survive on this earth. So I stood there in the biting cold, a lump in my throat and tears that never quite made it past my eyes, watching my friend sob over the baby that she never got to cuddle or feed or bathe. But she did get to love him. Those eighteen weeks she carried her child inside her she loved him with the fierce love of a mother. A love that I marvel at.

And I grappled with the questions. Why was her time to rejoice cut short by a time to grieve? Why was a piece of her heart bound up with that grave in the frozen ground? Why did it happen this way?

But my questions were cut short by the words of our pastor, who said that Landis's life, as brief as it was, touched the lives of that small group huddled together in the cold. And it would touch other's through the lives of his parents, his grandparents, his aunts and uncles. I still don't understand it, but once again I must find comfort in God's perfection. And I have to believe that Landis's parents will get to hold him one day. Until then, these frozen tears will serve as a reminder of the one we lost.

Every day I realize a little more how little I understand about life. This latest realization began about a month ago when I went to visit a friend in the hospital who had just had her first child. I remember sitting in a rocking chair in her room and holding this tiny little baby, just a few hours old, and thinking what a miracle it was. He wrapped his tiny hand around my finger, he tried to focus his eyes on my face, and he let out lusty cries. And it was all amazing.

Then four weeks later I was standing in another hospital, looking down at another baby. A baby whose tiny body should have still been sheltered inside his mother. A tube down his throat breathed for him, and wires snaked out from his body in such a manner that his own mother couldn't even hold him, but could only stroke his cheek. His body, no bigger than my hand, shuddered with silent cries that he couldn't force around the respirator. I couldn't see it, but I knew that his tiny brain was bleeding and his heart was damaged. As I look at his mother, I know that she hasn't slept in days, and the fear is evident in her eyes. Just 18 months ago her body brought forth another child, a little girl who only lived a few hours. I can see the pleading in her face: Please don't let this happen again.

And finally, just today, I found out that a woman from my church, only 18-weeks pregnant, is in the hospital, fighting desperately to keep her child from a world where he can't survive.

And I just can't understand why.

Prepare yourselves people...I'm about to become a blogging fool. Contain your excitement, please!