Wendy

No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I know better, something deep within me still believes that bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. She was the kind of person I can only dream of being. She never judged anyone. She not only greeted everyone she met with kindness, but also genuine interest. I’m sure, like us all, she had her flaws, but I knew none of them. She was one of those people who made the world a better place, and the fact that cancer came and caused her to suffer before finally taking her seems cruel and utterly unfair.

I went to church today seeking solace, but the words sounded like empty platitudes, the music random chords. I tried to imagine what the early followers thought and felt when they looked at the tomb. Like me, they must have thought Christ’s death was cruel and utterly unfair. Of all the people, EVER, you would think God would have protected Jesus from all he went through, and yet there he was, behind the stone, with scars on his back and holes in his arms and legs. I just don’t get it. Neither did they.

I am wise enough to know the story did not end at the tomb, but sometimes that’s not enough. I want to stand up and scream, “Make the world fair, will you????” I believe God hears such cries, but doesn’t listen to them. A fair world is the last thing a person like me should desire. Instead, I should give thanks that God makes people like Wendy, that I was blessed to cross her path for an all-too-short period of time. I should use the example of her life as an inspiration for my own.

But, most of all, I need to close my eyes and see beyond the tomb and watch as Wendy is welcomed by the great cloud of witnesses, the saints beside whom she if fully qualified to stand. Such is the “deeper magic” of which C. S. Lewis wrote, and in which I so desperately believe.