In general I am not a fearful person. I don't tend to be a worrier. I tend to have the attitude that worrying can't really change anything or ensure that bad things won't happen. I also have a pretty strong inclination to respond to tough situations with "Well, can't do anything about what has happened so how do we move on from here?!" However sometimes, those times I've heard people's stories of their lives changing in an instant - an accident, an illness, a disaster - come to mind and I do find myself thinking about "What if..."What if I found myself with only a few months to live - what would I want my kids to know. What would I want to say to them about life and love and faith. What if an accident suddenly stripped me of one of my kids or my husband. How would I react? How could I ever move on? What if we lost our home in a fire, tornado, flood - What would I do differently as we started over. In all of this the one thing that I cling to is the fact that I have been given this great hope in my faith. I have this sense of "being 'okay' no matter what".
However, I have seen people actually face these situations it sometimes feels like they shouldn't be okay. That somehow when they appear to keep plugging away at life in spite of the massive tragedy that has inflicted them there is some denial they're adopting. What I often forget is that when your life is deeply rooted in something that is not of this life; when one has died to herself and taken on the hope of eternity, that these things - while horribly upsetting, indescribably difficult, and deeply painful - do not have to be the things that ruin and destroy. They do probably spur on the desire for the ever-after. They assuredly do make one ask questions and reinforce the fact that we are not our own life-architects. But the peace that may, and does often, ensue in the face of life altering circumstances for those with a hope and future, is something very mysterious, and beautiful.
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