Losing What You Love Really Hurts

There are days when I sit down to write and the words come and I can put some words and ideas out there. I'm blessed with a couple different outlets and enjoy my time communicating with you all. Then there are weeks like this one. I had surgery last Monday the 23rd. This was my second back surgery, a spine fusion. The Saturday before my fusion, my wife's best friend died, Elaine was hit hard, this was sudden, out of the blue. She was going to spend Monday in the hospital with Elaine while I was in surgery. She and Elaine had plans and ideas and stuff going on. Suddenly they were gone.

I had surgery Monday, still in recovery. Life has pretty much went on as normal, but it's not normal. You couldn't see a tangible change in my day to day life, but it's there. Life is a delicate ecosystem, and a disturbance in one part will effect the rest of the system. My wife talked to her friend multiple times a day. They knew everything about each other. She helped me wife process through things and they laughed together and talked about God together. It's gone now. I do many of those same things with my wife, but I can never be her best girlfriend. I'm her husband, it's a different role for a different purpose.

My wife's best friend leaves behind a son. His dad died a little over a year ago, and now his mom is gone. He's a college student, a little younger than I was when my parents died. I'm broken for him because I know what the next 20 years will look like for him. I am glad he has some family close by, because it gets old being the guy at everyone else's family gatherings.

Now I could write down the theology of suffering, why things like this happen. There are lots of good solid biblical reasons that life is like this. There are solid reasons why God allows things like orphans, cancer, heart disease and car accidents, but I'm not going to unpack that all right now. I will later, but for the most part, we need to recognize that although bad, terrible things happen, they are bad because they are contrasted with something great. My wife's best friend was great. Their friendship was great, what they shared and helped each other with was great. It's that greatness that makes it so bad now that she's gone. Lets be sure we enjoy the great while it's great and not gone