A Heavy Heart. . .

Since I'm not sure how else to process right now, I'm going to write. Only a few minutes ago, I received an email from a very close friend of mine, Tracy. We became friends in college and our senior year we shared a house together with two other fun girls, Bri and Leah. Leah married Tom the same year I married Kevin. She's an amazingly intelligent, very fun, incredible girl. I remember sitting with her and Bri in a bar in Manhattan one night after we were both married. Kevin and I were visiting Manhattan, so I got together with the old roomies. I remember exactly where I was sitting (across the table from her) when she said she wanted to be a mom, and quickly! It was something like, "I just want to have his babies!!" I think that was the last time I saw Leah. A few months later I heard she was pregnant. She wasn't kidding about "quickly"!!
Sometime later, when I was living in Ottumwa, I somehow came across her blog and saw pictures of her beautiful little boy, Wyatt William, and pictures of her pregnant belly! Wyatt was only 15 months old when his little sister Cassidy was born!! She and Emma are about 3 months apart in age.
Just before we left last year, I read that Leah was pregnant again. With the transition here and other things on my mind, I didn't get around to checking her blog again until August. When I read it, my heart broke. She had delivered a baby boy on August 14th. Ten days later, after Ezekiel had become uncommonly fussy, they took him to the hospital. They found an infection that had spread throughout his body and hours later, he died. He was ten days old.
Only a few days ago, for some reason, I was looking at Leah's blog again, wondering how she was doing, knowing that the loss of any loved one changes a person. I had left the page up and Kevin sat down to look at it, asking who the kids were. I told him they were Leah's kids. "Cute kids," he said.
This morning, I opened my email to find Tracy's note. On Friday, Wyatt, Leah's 4 1/2 year old son, passed away. He's now in Heaven with his little brother Ezekiel. I don't know anymore than that, but my heart is breaking. What grief. What overwhelming, heart-wrenching, deep, deep grief. My mind isn't able to comprehend the depth of sorrow the family must be experiencing. There are so many questions, many of them unanswerable.
I wish I had answers. I wish I had comfort. I wish I could somehow lift the sorrow from their lives. I wish people didn't have to experience such grief. I'm reminded of a line from a recent book I read: "But accepting the mystery of what we cannot know will lead us to the heart of God where we trade our craving for explanation for a simple willingness to trust." I don't understand this. I don't get it. I don't know how the loss of a child brings glory to God. How can the human heart handle such grief?
I opened my Bible to Job. At one point, after losing so much, Job says, "If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas!" Job questions God and all that's happened to him and comes to the realization that although he might not understand everything, God is God. He is able to be trusted. How? Why? Because He's God. Because He loves us. Even when it doesn't feel like it.
Please pray for Tom and Leah and for their daughter Cassidy and for their families and friends.