Heavy Heart

My heart is heavy tonight. I think I've blogged about them on here and I know I've posted on Twitter and Facebook about the Apinis family. I work with the dad, Bryan, at church. He is our groups director. He and his wife, Kathryn, lost their son, Samuel this morning. Samuel was a month old and never knew life outside the hospital.
You can read their whole story here www.apinisfamily.blogspot.com. I greatly encourage you to read from the beginning. It is a powerful testimony to the grace and peace of God in a difficult time. It is not an easy read, so be sure to have Kleenex at your disposal.
It is unfathomable to me to even consider how they must be feeling right now. I think it must be an awful thing to lose a child, especially one that you never really got to know. All those hopes and dreams, all that wondering, all the times your heart will ache because there's always going to be someone missing. No one should have to endure this.
But tomorrow always comes. The sun always rises. God has placed an amazing capacity in us to perservere, even in the face of great trials. Isn't that always when we see Him? In the face of unspeakable grief. Last year a dear friend on staff with me at NP lost her son, Brooks. God took him to Heaven even before he left Ashly's womb. This was a terrible loss to our entire staff and we all grieved fiercely for this sweet family. Eventually, Ashly returned to work. Every day I would see her I remember thinking that I was just so impressed that she was bathed and dressed. I know that sounds silly, but to me, that would be the hardest part of my life to care about in the face of the death of my child. But every day, there she was, dressed in clean clothes, hair combed, makeup even!
It is no coincidence that in the middle of little Samuel's struggle for life, Ashly welcomed a healthy baby girl into the world on August 19th. (You can link to their story at the bottom of my blog).
It is also no coincidence that August hasn't been the best month for me personally, either. But to say that grieving over Samuel and rejoicing over Macy Brooks has helped keep it all in perspective for me is an understatement.
There's an Aaron Shust song that sums up perfectly how I've been feeling about all that has gone on in the past weeks.

"I am not skilled to understand,
what God has willed, what God has planned.
I only know at his right hand,
stands one who is my Savior"

I don't know why. I don't know why not. I don't know why me and I don't know why not me. Sometimes this lack of knowledge makes me angry. It almost always seems unfair.
But I have to remember that God knows. And that there is a reason why. We are not just rats running a maze down here. I have to trust Him and his plan. And I rest in his love for his children.

Tonight is hard though. There's a little boy who won't ever know his fantastic mom and dad and 2 big brothers. There's a mom who never got to nurse her son and a father who didn't get to hold his son until the last moments of his short life.

I am not skilled to understand. But tonight, I'm trusting that God is.