miracles, death, and grieving

OK, so I know that the title of this, my second blog of the evening, may seem a little bit strange . . . but it's where my brain is going tonight.

It's been just over three months since my uncle passed away. I thought that I had mostly dealt with all the stuff that comes when a loved one dies. I mean, I seemed to be doing OK. But then, last weekend at the retreat I was at, one of the speakers started talking about how God does miracles and God answers prayers and God heals people. Well, at that point all of the emotions that came when I found out my uncle had died came rushing back.

There were many people praying for healing for my uncle before he died. And, yet, he still did die . . . and sooner than any of us thought. I started asking God all the same questions as I did initially: Why now? Why didn't You heal him? Was it because we didn't have enough faith that You could heal him when we prayed? Why did you let something that seems so unfair happen God? Why do You only miraculously heal some people?

I thought I had dealt with all those questions already, but apparently not. Then again, I keep being reminded that grieving the loss of someone is a process and it takes time. Which is something that I have always known in theory, but this is the first time I've experienced that.

I still wonder about miracles. And why it seems like sometimes you can pray so hard for a miracle and nothing changes . . . the illness doesn't go away . . . people still die. Yet, other times, people can seem to hardly pray for it at all and the person is healed. It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. And it doesn't always seem fair as to which person is healed and which person isn't. Maybe it's because I don't really understand miracles and the way that God works.

I also don't like this whole idea of death. I mean, I know that my uncle has gone to be with Jesus in heaven and that's where I'll go when my time comes. But, it's not a whole lot of fun being the one left behind on earth. Someone you love and care for is gone . . . forever!!! I mean, I'm not sure that I would want to live forever either, but death is hard.

As I've discovered in this last week, grieving is a long process and you can feel perfectly normal for long stretches of time. And then it catches you off guard and you're trying to put ont he normal face until you can get away and deal with things some more.

Well, I have no idea if this post made any sense to anyone, or really what my purpose was in writing this on my blog of all places. But, I guess we'll see . . .