Tonight's Thoughts

I just read a story about an 8th grader in South Missouri who died last Monday. He was leaning back in a metal chair, playing video games, when the chair slipped out from under him. His head his the tile floor, and knocked him unconscious, and he died later at the hospital.

I wonder what we are supposed to learn from that? I don't necessarily question how God has interwoven our lives, but decided that I have a blog, and I may as well tell some people about what I read. Who knew that innocent 8th grade boys playing video games, mixed with their notorious habit of leaning back in a chair could prove lethal? And maybe I should take back what I said the other day about wondering if a sudden death might be better than one that involved drawn out suffering. I also decided to write this because these types of things are what scare me the most about kids...not so much the normal, obvious things that can cause harm or kill...even though those are just as important, they seem different, in a sense of being able to show that things like this happen....but instead the freak accidents that no one would even begin to really know how to stop.

I am saddened by so many losses. I think these seem to be magnified in my life because I am also facing death. It is that empathy in me that has made me cry at movies and new babies and other things that don't even have anything to do with me. Like when the little boy died in My Girl, or when Julia Roberts died in Steel Magnolias...it is why I can't watch horror movies because there are so many horrors, all too real in our world. So when my eyes welled up tonight over this young boy, I first thought...this is silly! Then I thought...no, this is someone's kid, and this is their nightmare, and I should cry over this for any parent.

Someday, maybe my mind will wonder to brighter things. Right now it seems to be wrapped up in understanding life and death, love and loss, taking control of your life and realizing you were never in control.