God's Perfect Aim

So, things had been going reasonably well lately.  My parents are visiting and I love my parents.  The kids were having a great time with them.  The boys are making slow but sure progress.  Bill keeps saying, “It's like watching the grass grow.  You stare and you stare and nothing happens, but if you look away and then turn back, you can see growth.”  He's pretty accurate.
 

Everyone is excited about summer.   We have about ten days left of school here.  The latest joke in the house was about Paul, who just turned twelve.  Last Thursday morning, I told him to go get a shower.  It went like this:

Paul, go get a shower.

Oooohhh! Can I skip it please?

No, you can't skip it.  You have to shower every day.  All humans wash!

OK but can I ....can I at least do my math lesson first? 

Paul is doing Saxxon Math, by the way.  It is among the most unimaginative, tedious, colorless, largest math texts ever published.   Nevertheless, better math than a shower. 

So, anyway, we were living in relative ease.  Then, about 6am on Saturday, I got an e-mail from my friend Maryann asking me to call her.  Maryann is the one I posted about back in November.  Her husband is a Navy chaplain and her family moved to a Marine Corp. base in Japan while we were in Ukraine.  Bruce and Maryann are among our dearest friends. We’ve known them for almost 20 years.  I came to the birth of their children, Bruce baptized our kids, they babysit for us when we take vacations….you know, the trust-you-with-my-kids-friends-for-life kind of friends. 

Bruce died on Saturday.  He was mountain biking with a friend.  He hit a rock at the bottom of a hill and fell over a 30 foot cliff.  He died instantly.  He was 41. 

I feel as though God glanced our way Saturday and said to His Angels, "Oh, right…Hang on a minute.  I just remembered something."   Then He grabbed that Saxxon Math text off our couch, hit everyone in my little circle full on in the face, HARD, checked to make sure everyone was bleeding, then threw the book back on the couch and left.

It's been three days now and I'm still flat on the floor, bloody and useless.  I look over and I see Maryann, barely able to lift her head and I can’t help her.   I can’t even hold her hand.  She’s in JAPAN.

Every time I have a quiet moment, I am sick with worry over Maryann and her kids.  I am distracted with grief.   I want desperately to fly to Japan and make everything all right.  This is the first time I have regretted adopting those boys because I think if I didn’t have them, I could fly over and DO something.   But, what can be done??