Some Not-So-Great News

     I found out yesterday at dinner that my confirmation/youth group leader was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is getting a mastectomy soon, so if you're of the religious/praying type, it would be great if you could keep her in your prayers. I also found out that another lady who goes to my church, the one who gave the speech at the retreat that made me cry, her son has to have another heart surgery in June. So if you could pray for their family too, that would be nice. Even if you don't pray, nice thoughts help too. So yeah. That's the not-so-great news I have to share with you today. It's pretty crappy. My grandma talks about this one movie that she heard about on the news called "Unstoppable", which she says is about the whole Why do bad things happen to good people? question. She talks about that movie a lot. I've never seen it (I don't even know if it's out yet), but I do think that that's a question that most people ask at some point in their lives. I've wondered about that before, and I'm wondering about it now. I don't know the answer, and if I ever get a chance to see God, that's one of the many things I'm going to be asking him, because I want to know. Why do little babies get horrible illnesses like cancer or congenital heart disease? You can argue about whether adults are good people or not, but it's very, very hard to argue that a baby is anything but good. And yet babies aren't immune to bad things. I don't know why. The easy answer is "Because life isn't fair", or "Hardships are given to people who can handle them", or the loathsome "Without pain, how could we know joy?" (as Augustus Water's parents would say). But I don't think those are the right answers. Yeah, life's not fair, but I don't think that's why bad things happen to good people. And I don't think that hardships are given to people who can handle them and grow stronger because of them. That's crap. Hardships are like tics- they don't care whose blood they're sucking, as long as they're sucking blood. And as for "Without pain, how could we know joy?", "Suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate." (courtesy Hazel Grace Lancaster)
     I mean, the other question is, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" I don't know the answer to that question either. Things just happen. We could sit around all day musing over why this or that happened to us, or why so-and-so got dealt such a crappy hand, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened, and it's happening. All we can do is try to help the good people who get the bad things.

Day 182 Song Recommendation: "Take Our Turn" by The J Band. This song makes me happy and sad at the same time.
-SE Wagner