Three Month Anniversary

This weekend I attended my high school reunion. I had been looking forward to it since last year. I let my classmates from the Christian high school know about my sister via email and asked for their prayers when she was diagnosed with the cancer. When I arrived, they all had let me know how much they had prayed for and thought about Guen's plight. I talked to Natalie later in the evening. She lost her little daughter a couple of years ago due to an illness they did not know she had.

I really wanted to know what she had learned from it all. She spoke about having every foundation crumble. All things known about God were questioned and for the first time in her life she was angry with God. A grief support group via GriefShare.com and the book, "Heaven", by Randy Alcorn helped her a lot. She continued to cry daily and her husband got very busy. They eventually adopted a new 6 month baby girl. She struggles with knowing that God heals people everyday and knowing that He chose not to heal her daughter, Savannah.

While I talked with her, Sue was standing there with us. She had been a missionary to China for 13 years. After listening to everything we said, she told us about the suffering that she had witnessed on many levels and that the despair was, at times, overwhelming. Close friends are now in a Chinese jail being tortured for their Christian beliefs. The persecution is so great for believers there (the growing underground church) that she realized over time that these people would have a closeness to the Lord that she would probably never have. Many go through their entire lives with only expected challenges, like the death of an elderly parent. She reminded me about the "Fellowship of the Suffering" talked about in Philippians 3:10, and told Natalie and I, that we are a part of that. The night was wonderful and I had a great time, but talking to these women was really a divine appointment.

Three months have passed since Guen died on April 12th. That is a sentence I wish I never had to write.