Fragile

This week seems to have bombarded me with horror stories of sickness and death. A two year child receiving chemo for the rarest form of Leukemia on the planet. The wife of a friend, the picture of health, a fitness instructor, suddenly passes and the doctors have yet to figure out why all of her internal organs just stopped working. Leaving behind a two year old child and a husband who recently returned from Afghanistan defending my right to sit here and post this.
When we packed our house to move here, certain things were carefully wrapped in newspaper and placed gently into a box that was quickly marked "FRAGILE". The boxes were marked over and over, on all sides to ensure that whomever was lifting and moving it would know that the contents were important, special and breakable. Even still, in spite of all my efforts to protect those items, some things got broken. They were lost and thrown away, but they were all easily replaced by a trip to Target. However, this heavy dose of reality that I have received makes it all to evident that life is just so fragile. Marked on all sides, carefully packaged and planned, and still very easily lost. Unfortunately, not replaceable.
I think of this little girl who will not ever know her mother. I wonder if there is any chance that the 18 months spent with her could leave a memory. I want to believe that things like this just don't happen. I think of her father and grandparents, aunts and uncles telling her about her own mother, showing her pictures and telling her, "look, this is your mommy. She is with Jesus now" and trying to explain why it is that God could allow this to happen. I wonder what people would tell Luke if something happened to me. I would hope that someone would show him my blog.
I am lost in this fragility right now. I want to live forever, but recognize that it could all change tomorrow. I am terrified of this. I am broken now in a very different way. I don't understand and I can't be one of those people that reasons things away by calling it "God's will". Mostly because I can't fathom God's will. I am praying for this family and many others, but I don't know how much comfort hearing about how I am praying, can give someone who is probably very angry with God. I can only continue to do so and can selfishly live in this fragile place, doing all I can to get out of the box in one piece.