People live and people die, this is life

People live and people die, this is life.

So says S, a 15-year-old boy I know. He called me at 7.45am today to tell me that his father had died suddenly of a heart attack. That level-headed statement made me cry, because it held so much truth, yet it was just too adult a remark to be made.

Right at that same time he called, I was holding my bible in my hands, trying to craft an sms reply with a bible verse to a sweet friend, who'd texted me while I was sleeping through the night. In short, she told me she was going mad.

Just a few days ago, I was at ethan mummy's home on a Monday night, visiting four-year-old ethan who was recovering from four stitches to a cut on his forehead. He had fallen and hit his head on the table. But the brave boy was so good, "enthralling" me with his description of what happened that fateful night, telling me that the stitching was "Aunty D, you know, it's like a mouse nibbling....tzi tzi tzi tzi...like a mouse nibbling on cheese you know..." Oh I haven't said how I got the news in the first place - when I saw his daddy's sms after a dizzying Mosaic Festival performance.

And then in the midst of all this, a dear friend's beloved grandmother undergoes an operation for ovarian cancer. And around the same time, my big boss' brother dies from cancer of the muscles, on top of a 30-year battle with kidney disease. Cancer of the muscles, whoever heard of that.

The weirdest part for me, is that while I'm hearing all these news, I know of three pregnancies of good friends. That is life, a celebration well-deserved, for sure.

But I feel totally overwhelmed. And I'm thinking, S is uncannily right - people live and people die, this is life.

***

I didn't know what to make of all this, until a sister-in-Christ texted me her prayer for me - "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you..." (John 14:27)

Later in the evening as I sat on the sofa with a load on my chest, I thought about God's peace, and it welled up within me.