Parents share heartbreak over death of child - CNN.com
Driving into work this AM I noticed that it was one of those days that the clouds were "just right" to reflect a beautiful golden-orange glow with the coming of the new day. As I did the daily news scan for the day, I noticed this article. My thought of the sunrise, along with the emotional response of "beauty" was: Why should we think it beautiful if we are randomly evolved creatures? What is "adaptive" about finding beauty in a sunrise? Now, I've read enough hard line evolution folks to know that there are ALWAYS "explanations". Maybe guys that found sunrises beautiful had more luck with the ladies (or vice versa). Maybe such artificial "feel good" made people that like sunrises more able to lead, gather food or just not get depressed so they slow down and get eaten by a saber-tooth. God is never going to make one admit that it seems a "gift from above" to be wired such that we can stand in awe of a "simple" sunrise. It is always possible (and even easy) to talk ones self out of faith, love, charity, hope and even beauty. To those so intent, maybe there is some solace in the fact that hate, anger, unbelief, hopelessness, despair and ugliness seem to be much easier states to maintain with little or no effort. In fact, life can make us think that those are the only emotions that are "reasonable".
How easy it is to understand the grief of losing a child from both the view of an ordered creation and a pure random genesis -- "right" and "adaptive" fit just perfectly. There is every reason for an extreme level of bonding with our kids, and every reason for the emotional part of that bond to be strongest and most urgent at the time when they are in the process of leaving the nest. Establishing a solid new identity separate from parents, figuring out how to relate to the opposite sex, figuring out what to do with your life and a host of other emotional, intellectual and physical changes make adolescents hard to get along with, but also very precious. They are no longer irresistibly cute like little kids, but the parental investment of a major portion of our lives and love in them make them dear enough to weather the difficulties of those tasks of separation. We are wired to want them to succeed on their own even while we also dread the day that they are no longer at home with us.
That day is supposed to come with us knowing where they are -- school, job, apartment, married, serving, living. The devastation of it coming with them gone to eternity and leaving us here is too great to really contemplate, and for those who have to bear it, a burden that doesn't leave. Much like the sunrise, the article ends with a hopeful thought of the grief maybe shifting to more a remembrance of the life lived rather than just the death and loss. The article is also completely secular, those with faith can still look forward and live for a better world in which they will be together with those they have lost. None of which is going to "solve" the loss of a child or many other less horrible pains.
Fortunately, that really isn't our task. Our task is to turn from the darkness to the light and meet each new day the best that we can given the lives that we have been dealt with faith that God has a purpose for our life.
Maybe that is why we find sunrise beautiful, it beckons us to look to the light.
Driving into work this AM I noticed that it was one of those days that the clouds were "just right" to reflect a beautiful golden-orange glow with the coming of the new day. As I did the daily news scan for the day, I noticed this article. My thought of the sunrise, along with the emotional response of "beauty" was: Why should we think it beautiful if we are randomly evolved creatures? What is "adaptive" about finding beauty in a sunrise? Now, I've read enough hard line evolution folks to know that there are ALWAYS "explanations". Maybe guys that found sunrises beautiful had more luck with the ladies (or vice versa). Maybe such artificial "feel good" made people that like sunrises more able to lead, gather food or just not get depressed so they slow down and get eaten by a saber-tooth. God is never going to make one admit that it seems a "gift from above" to be wired such that we can stand in awe of a "simple" sunrise. It is always possible (and even easy) to talk ones self out of faith, love, charity, hope and even beauty. To those so intent, maybe there is some solace in the fact that hate, anger, unbelief, hopelessness, despair and ugliness seem to be much easier states to maintain with little or no effort. In fact, life can make us think that those are the only emotions that are "reasonable".
How easy it is to understand the grief of losing a child from both the view of an ordered creation and a pure random genesis -- "right" and "adaptive" fit just perfectly. There is every reason for an extreme level of bonding with our kids, and every reason for the emotional part of that bond to be strongest and most urgent at the time when they are in the process of leaving the nest. Establishing a solid new identity separate from parents, figuring out how to relate to the opposite sex, figuring out what to do with your life and a host of other emotional, intellectual and physical changes make adolescents hard to get along with, but also very precious. They are no longer irresistibly cute like little kids, but the parental investment of a major portion of our lives and love in them make them dear enough to weather the difficulties of those tasks of separation. We are wired to want them to succeed on their own even while we also dread the day that they are no longer at home with us.
That day is supposed to come with us knowing where they are -- school, job, apartment, married, serving, living. The devastation of it coming with them gone to eternity and leaving us here is too great to really contemplate, and for those who have to bear it, a burden that doesn't leave. Much like the sunrise, the article ends with a hopeful thought of the grief maybe shifting to more a remembrance of the life lived rather than just the death and loss. The article is also completely secular, those with faith can still look forward and live for a better world in which they will be together with those they have lost. None of which is going to "solve" the loss of a child or many other less horrible pains.
Fortunately, that really isn't our task. Our task is to turn from the darkness to the light and meet each new day the best that we can given the lives that we have been dealt with faith that God has a purpose for our life.
Maybe that is why we find sunrise beautiful, it beckons us to look to the light.
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