(note: i like to node my angst - it makes me feel better. so please don't flame me. it's everything as therapy)
As I grow older, I naturally have come to question things more and more... but one of the things I never really got around to questioning was my faith. It was there, and that was that. At least, I hadn't gotten around to questioning it until a few summers ago, when a very dear friend of mine died. And I was angry, as you can certainly understand - I was angry at the world, angry at everything...
But I had faith to fall back upon. And it's a powerful tool, you must understand - makes it much, much easier to deal with life when you can chalk it all up to someone's big ol' plan. And I questioned a bit, but it was still there, and I took comfort in believing that she was in heaven, and that I'd see her when I would see her.
Fast forward to a few months ago - another friend of mine, whom I had known as long as i have known anybody, gets in a terrible car accident the week before she was to head back to school for her sophomore year. There's a rather dangerous intersection in my hometown, where you can't really see the oncoming traffic. And she pulled out to turn left, and she was hit in the side by a tractor-trailer. She hit her head on the driver's side window, hard.
Too hard.
She was unconscious for weeks... heavily sedated, to keep her brain from swelling. The doctors said she probably wouldn't live - and if she did, she'd probably never be self-sufficient again. Well, she did live... but she's not the same. She'll probably never go back to school - she can't concentrate anymore, her short-term memory is unreliable as can be. And we have spent the last month praying for her, praying for a savior... and now, at last, I can't possibly fathom what good can have come from this, why God would let such a thing happen. And while I am certainly thankful that she's still alive, it pains me to no end to see her life most likely altered forever for the worse, all on a whim of fate.
But all I can do now is to hope, and to pray, and to believe that somehow all the hoping and praying and wishing won't have been for nothing.