Feeling Grace

I don't know how I should feel today.  I am surrounded by grieving, hurting people.  Cancer, disease, inexplicable death.  Even the sky is sad today.  We arrived home last night after 10 days driving over 2000 miles to sit in hospital rooms and waiting rooms with family who are suffering: an 18 year old nephew battling 2 types of cancer; a 42 year old brother recovering from open heart surgery; a mother who lives with no feeling in her fingers or toes and little hope of that getting better.

Today, we drive through patches of fog as we go to sit with our dear friends and just be.  There are no words.  No words to explain why their 25 year old son died suddenly.  No words to express our sorrow to his wife of less than a year.  No way to begin to answer their hearts cry, why God allowed it to happen.  I ache for them in ways I've not ached before.  And stop by to hug my own 24 year old son a little tighter than usual.

And yet, there's a real and uncommon peace.  A sense that this wrenching grief won't last forever. That someday we'll see the purpose in the pain.  Or maybe we won't, but it won't matter anymore. But that feeling seems wrong.  Seems not to honor the ones who are gone.  

So I don't know how I should feel today.

I'm simultaneously sick to my stomach but quiet in my mind; weeping over loss yet hopeful for the future.  Choosing to trust in the goodness of the Father when everything around me points to pain.  I have SO much to be thankful for.  And I feel unworthy.  But I'm wondering if this is exactly what grace feels like.  To be 'pressed on all sides but not crushed, hunted down but never abandoned by God.'  Is His grace best understood in tragedy?  Does He show His innate goodness not in cocooning us from the realities of our fallen life, but in His tangible presence with us in the mess? And in the promise of rescue one day soon?   That's where my hope lies on this dreary, grief-filled day. He is here.  And that is enough.