My dad is doing worse and the only way I've found peace with it is to stop asking God why it has to go this way. Because God has an answer: this part of our life - the end - is much less important than we think it is.
I went to the emergency room yesterday with Zoe. She's got pneumonia and an ear infection, and was feverish and dehydrated. And I cried the whole way down to the hospital, a pathetic cry because I just didn't want to go. I don't want to go to Children's Hospital any more and I don't want my little girl to die.
Zoe is so much more a daddy's girl than ever before. Right now she's whining because I'm ignoring her. And I don't want her to die when she's not even 2. Or 2. Or 3. She cried when I leave and she knows my voice. And I want a vote in how or when she dies. And I want it to be better than an infection at 22 months.
And I want my dad to get the Enoch treatment, not this.
But God wants me and you to know that whether you were in a Space Shuttle accident, climbing on to Normandy, shooting a 3 and telling people you were feeling great, or I guess just waking every day to fight until there is no more fight - whether you're 2 or 77, God has his eyes on it all -that moment and eternity. That pain and the unspeakable love. And one is a blink, and the other is forever. We are too easily pleased...we are too easily disappointed.
If we consider the unblushing promises of
reward and the staggering nature of the
rewards promised in the Gospels, it seem
that our Lord finds our desires not too
strong, but too more weak. We are
half-hearted creatures, fooling about with
drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy
is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants
to go on making mud pies in a slum because he
cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a
holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
