Sorrow

A friend of mine was driving to school yesterday to drop off her kids like she did every day. It has snowed but oh so lightly and on the bridge over the Nooksack river, her car slipped on some ice and veered into traffic. Her 7 year old daughter, Rachel, was killed in that accident. Just like that, nothing will ever be the same and she will carry this grief for the rest of her life. I was told yesterday, that when you loose your parents ,you loose your past, when you loose your spouse you loose your present and when you loose your child, you loose your future. I have lost my mother and my first husband, but I can not imagine the grief of loosing my child.
I am numbed by her pain, remembering.
For me, grief was jumping into a vat of bleach. Coming out I was stripped of color; life, joy, perspective,context, details, outlines. Time and love began to color me in..but not in the same way nor in the same colors. Grief changes everything...I remember with her the bleakness of the day after, the moments of shard like pain...the glimpses of relief. Please pray with me for her, her husband, her other daughter, her parents, the Aunts and Uncles. Pray that they can sleep, that they feel God presence through the hands of His people. Pray that in their anger, they will not be lured by bitterness. Pray that their marriage will survive and endure. Pray that guilt will never find a resting place. Pray that in the bleached reality of sorrow, God will begin to color them in. Tim and Nancy Vekved are their names.