Ache (Five Minute Friday)

Red and black ribbons loop around mailboxes, pillars, doors, trees. Flags wave at half mast. Church signs spell condolences and a promise to keep praying. We hear it in the halls of the YMCA, the school, the library, the post office. There is always a connection, some way the lives taken have touched ours.

On the way to ballet, I drive by the cars gathering at the church for the funeral, every antennae tied with red. I ache in this unsettling realization that I am not in control. Not at all. We can choose our next home from the list of Forbes best towns to raise a family and still wind up burying a child.

A grieving mother speaks of grace and forgiveness, and I think: Yes, this is the lunacy we call the gospel; this is the grace we call amazing.

May this amazing grace find us here. And may it lead us home.