Why?

Oh, what a heavy heart I have today.

I just found out that a dear friend's great-grandson's family has decided to stop treatment and provide only palliative (comfort) care for the remainder of his life.  He has been in treatment trying to eradicate neuroblastoma for more than two years.  Today, ironically, is also his third birthday.

There have been multiple rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy since he was diagnosed at eleven months old.  He has gone into remission a couple of times, but the cancer has always come back.  This time it has come back so aggressively, there is no longer a viable treatment option.

His family have been amazing, and he has been a happy little guy, in spite of what he has endured in his short life.  There was a Facebook page set up to keep family and friends advised of his treatments and progress, and there were often videos posted showing him playing as he dragged his IV pole throughout Children's Hospital.

It is also the anniversary of the birth, and death of my cousin's baby.  He was born with a rare congenital disorder, and he only lived for a few hours after he was born.  But they got to hold him and love him while he was here.

This day has been sad since he was born and died in 2013.  Today's news layers on the sadness.

My regular readers know that I have a strong faith in God, and that I trust that there is a higher power in the universe.  When my heart is heavy, as it is today, I try to find comfort in turning to my God.

That doesn't mean I'm not questioning Him right now.  I don't understand why we have to have childhood cancers, and horrible congenital non-survivable birth defects.

I've come to accept that the horrific chemical warfare in Syria, and the bombing of hospitals, the rejection of refugees, the terrible toll of gun violence; those are all created by humans in spite of a loving God.

But when it comes to famine, or disease; I just don't understand why those things have to exist.  I don't understand why God made or allows those things.

And I draw comfort from what Sister Eustace told me in the first grade.  God is infinite.  You are finite.  Your finite mind can never understand the infinite, so you have to believe.  That is what faith is.

So today, I am trying to have faith that my cousin's baby is in a better place.  A place of love, surrounded by those family members who have also died.  I am trying to believe that my friend's great-grandson is going to that same better place, where he too will spend eternity surrounded by love, never to experience an IV or a chemotherapy treatment again.

There are those who will find my faith amusing, or misguided.  Believing in an afterlife where everything is beautiful is viewed by many as an opiate for the masses that allows the powerful to mistreat us and manipulate us.

I believe in a Higher Power.  I believe there is a great architect of the universe.  I believe that there are forces for good, and forces for evil that exist in spite of a Higher Power.  I believe prayer is as healing for the person offering prayer as it is for the person for whom prayer is offered.

Just the act of writing what I believe has strengthened my belief, and brought me comfort.

I will cry many times today.  My tears are not for me, but for the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and all those who have lost a child to disease or accident.

But I will also pray.  And I will believe that there is something more than that which I see.  I will believe that all those I love and all those you love who left this plane of existence will be reunited with us someday.

I have to believe that.  It is the only way to keep on going.