Tough and honest questions

June 6, 2011

This weekend was filled with questions and conversation about Daniel.

On Friday evening, some neighborhood friends hosted a party that featured a rock band made of several middle-age male friends of ours (who are actually fairly talented!) and a bunch of us gathering at an art education place run by one of the neighbors.  Our friend Barb says she only agreed to host the event if it would become a fundraiser for Daniel’s scholarship at Whitworth, so it did and it raised almost $2,000 more for that effort which was very gratifying and humbling for us to witness.

We saw some old friends and several folks we don’t see that often including some of Daniel’s high school classmates who have recently graduated from college and are home either for the summer or as they transition into the next activity of their lives.  As always, it was a bittersweet joy to see these beautiful young adults and catch up a bit on their lives, all the while yearning to see our boy among them.  More heartwarming for our broken hearts.

I also had several conversations that evening and another today with adults who asked me “how are you doing”, or, “have you found any peace since Daniel’s death?” 

These questions always trip me up initially since I often start trying to answer them without really knowing what to say or how to describe the complexity of this emotional ride. The common theme that emerged somehow in these conversations was faith and my answers included some rhetorical questions of my own – where would we be without our Christian hope, our belief in God’s ultimate goodness and Daniel’s ultimate home?  How do folks who have no hope cope with this type of loss? 

I often struggle with how to articulate these thoughts very clearly and in my mind don’t do so well.  But eventually I usually blurt something out along these lines – I can’t imagine walking through this valley without my faith in Christ and without the community of people who have loved us every step of the way.  For me that thought is impossible to comprehend.  It is treacherous now and is even more unimaginable to me without this thing called faith and the community that it has brought into our lives.