No Such Thing As Goodbye

I've been sitting here for twenty minutes in the Morrow's living room watching The Avengers on TV and trying to figure out how to start this post. Excuse the disorganization-- my thoughts are frazzled, and my writing will probably reflect that.

We lost little Nicholas last night. Letting that little boy go is hands down the hardest thing I've ever done. He fought so very hard, but as Amy said, I guess Jesus needed him more than we did (although at the time I might have been willing to debate that point with the heavenly hosts). There is a feeling of such incredible helplessness and a little confusion as well. I am glad his fight is over, but I won't pretend joy was or even is my predominant emotion.  There is something incredibly nauseating about a world that obsesses over celebrities and sports cars and selfish gain while children lay dying. All that could have been done was done for him, but there is so much more in the way of medical care that should be available to these children. "Be neither a perpetrator nor a victim, but above all, be not a bystander."

Amy asked me if he was the first patient I lost, and my automatic response was no. He was, however, the shortest, cutest, and the only one I was sitting next to.  There's also a difference in a cancer patient whose "time has come" and a 6 month old baby whose life has barely begun. Let's just say I didn't handle it very well. And here I had just started to get rehydrated....

At the end of the day, God is still God. There is peace that surpasses understanding accompanying the death of those who pass away in Christ. We weep not because they were taken, but because we were left behind to figure out a world without them in it. I thank God that He held Nicholas when we could no longer, and I praise Him for the peace He has laid on my heart. Above all, I praise Him for the smiling faces of the other children who have captured my heart and tied it forever to Africa. Every laugh, ever tear, every tiny little hand in mine is reminder of Hope-- because in sweet Jesus, there is really no such thing as goodbye.