Weirdness

I had scheduled a post about weirdness to be published last night. I tend to write my posts in advance, and then allow them to sit in the queue for awhile, so that if I change my mind, I can pull them before they post to the blog.

I’ve only done it a few times. Last night was one of them.

In my post, I mentioned that there was something in the air. People seem to be on edge. Weird things keep happening. The weather has been odd. Bad things are happening across the world—volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, cholera. Although I wouldn’t consider us to be the paranoid or superstitious type, J and I both felt as if we were crazily mass hallucinating—just the two of us—or there was something coming. Something that we wouldn’t like.

In fact, it was multiple somethings. It all came to a head in the past two days.

So I pulled the post.

We have grandparents who are not faring well. This has been the most hectic semester I’ve had in the long time. And then we found out yesterday that a beautiful child that we had known lost her battle with cancer; a cancer caused by the anti-rejection medications given to her after her successful heart transplant over three years ago.

That was just too much.

As I tend to do every evening, after the kids are in bed, I sat outside on the back porch. I was snuggled up in a blanket and a fleece, amazed at the cold air and the blustery wind and the perfectly clear sky. I was asking all of the usual questions—why are we here? Why do we—any of us—have to suffer grief or pain or sadness? What was it that I was supposed to learn from this tragedy? I am on the periphery—I cannot even begin to comprehend what this child’s parents or loved ones are feeling right now, and yet, I feel as if I am supposed to be paying attention to something—something that this little girl brought to the face of the earth in her four brief years here.

I watched-- for the second time in three days no less-- as a large meteor hit the earth’s atmosphere and trailed lazily across the sky. A slow moving fiery ball, skipping across the sky parallel to the horizon, it looked more like a UFO or an omen of ill will. It did not look like your normal shooting star. I know it’s none of those things, but I wonder—why do I keep seeing this same thing?