update

Sophia died today. Her body just gave out. Thanks for the prayers, please continue to pray for her soul and for her family and friends. I don't know what I am going to do yet - flying to San Diego is not something I can do at the drop of a pin.
It has been a bad year for brain injuries. You may recall that my sister-in-law died earlier this year after suffering a blown brain aneurysm. The mom of one of the docs I work with is still suffering repeated setbacks after her aneurysm. My daughter just asked for prayer for a family friend of a good friend, whose aneurysm was diagnosed before it got to critical and who is going to surgery in a few hours.
My poor grandmother (Sophia's great-grandmother) is very angry about this whole thing. "I'm 90 years old - why doesn't God take me instead of her?" Gram has buried her husband, every other member of her generation, 2 nephews, one of her two sons, and now a great-grandchild. She's right, it doesn't seem fair.
Our God is a God of mercy and of justice. I have to believe there is a reason for this suffering - not only for my personal suffering, my family's suffering, but also for all those others who suffer now and every day. I am thinking about those schoolchildren and their families in Russia. My memory flashes back to even before 9/11 to the Branch Davidian massacre in Waco, to the Oklahoma City bombings, to all the senseless acts of violence that are part of the tapestry of life. The book of Job is scant consolation. Yet all our sufferings are as nothing before the sufferings of Christ - not only in the burden of the cross but even more so the burden of our sin.
Lord, help me to carry the burden you have given me. Help me to accept what I cannot understand nor change.