one week down

kathy has blogged all week. maybe i should've done that. i'm sitting at my keyboard now just kind of staring at the screen or out the window, wondering where to start and what to say. i'm behind on blogging the day to day at the creasy house. i did post an entry down a few from here about the track meet evening that i'd saved as a draft last week. but i just can't move on to talking about all of our "normal", i guess, until i have something on here about this week we've all just been through. nathan and greg and i were talking the other afternoon that every day has seemed like a year. maybe that's because of the numbness - the fog you walk around in as part of grieving? maybe it's because of the weight of it all. in any case, it's been long. i think that until i think this- this evening will be a week since greg and i got those simultaneous calls from nathan and kathy. how does time drag and fly at the same time?

there have been so many things that needed to be done this week that i never dreamed i would be called upon to do. walked through situations i never thought i'd need to go with a friend. but i would have been nowhere else, done nothing else, but be and do what these precious friends have needed me to be and do. i've been stuck like glue. greg too, that goes without saying. he has been there for them every moment. sometimes it's hard to find that fine line between hovering and just being there. i hope we found it, i think we did. and so did so many of the others who love this smith family so. God continues to prove himself - his majesty, his glory, his faithfulness, his constant presence, his never failing love, his ability to calm and to soothe, his willingness and desire to use people like us to do what he needs done. to use our frail human selves as his very hands and feet. it has been overwhelming at times this week to watch Jesus motivate his people (and maybe even people who don't belong to him yet) to provide for every detail in taking care of our friends. and i mean every detail. Jesus has been busy this week carrying in food, giving little cousins a place to play and sleep away from the "hub" of the grief, speaking words to comfort, giving a look that shares the pain even if the words aren't there, fixing air conditioners, flying home with a grieving mother, kidnapping (legally of course) for emergency caffeine therapy, arranging photographs, fixing slide shows, drawing pictures, singing songs, saying prayers, fixing sound systems just in time, filling hundreds of helium balloons, calling in prescriptions, choosing lockets and little girl clothes so a mommy can see her girls looking like themselves, making phone calls, sloppin' up little naked dogs with sunscreen...walking little naked dogs, swinging on swings and making the glorious noise only children can make so that grandparents are somehow comforted by the hustle and bustle. and somehow, in the midst of palpable grief, God sends moments to lighten hearts - ease the burden. i know because i saw it for myself. experienced it even. (see kathy and her lasagna mishap?) and laughter came at what would seem the strangest of times, really. even in one of the most difficult tasks of the week there seemed to be the most moments of laughter. (nathan, think rubber snake...kathy, think "wonder if this is breakable?"..."alright, you girls keep it down in there") things sprinkled in and throughout that make at least a few moments bearable. the Lord really does provide for our every need. and right on time.

no one can make sense of what has happened to haley and zoey. what has happened to their family and friends. you can look at it from any angle you want, but it will never make sense in our human thought processes. how could it? my comfort is in knowing that God knows how it fits into the eternal scheme of things. He can use even this for good. and i'm wondering if the good he makes of it will be proportional to the tragedy of it - wouldn't that be amazing? please please continue in prayer for maggie, kathy, nathan, jim, jane, aly and andrew. God is using it for their good.

praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. (psalm 68:19)