Dear God...

You have blessed me with an amazing family. Not just my patient husband and beautiful sons, but an extended family that reaches far across this country and the reaches of time.

But lately it seems that it doesn't matter so much that a person is good, honest and God-fearing; so many people end up with cancers and other terminal diseases, leaving their families to wonder "why me?" "why Mama?" "why Joe?"

And there are wars on this planet constantly. Has there ever, in the history of humankind, been a moment of peace? Where there was no fighting anywhere? Where every gun was silenced?

Crimes against children - I can't begin to understand how child molesters can be part of your plan. How they can be allowed to exist. How our society can find reason to let them out of jail to find newer, younger victims.

Sometimes there's so much darkness its overwhelming.

But then today, driving home in the sideways sleet and wind, a small idea entered my brain and I'm wondering if it might have any validity.

Is this just a test? A test to see, if in the end, despite whatever violence may have come upon a person and his family, despite watching a grandparent waste away from ALS, despite the horrors we read about and see on the nightly news, despite even the overwhelming stress we may encounter in every day life, we will not let those hellish things overshadow all the good, beautiful, miraculous things you give us?

I am but a mere human. I don't believe we have the ability to understand the answers, even if they were given to us. But maybe this is what I'll chose to believe. Maybe, even, it will bring some solace to my Grandmother, who's enstilled in me and my husband and boys what it means to be a family. What it means to believe in you. What it means to understand how you are truly blessed.

Maybe, just maybe, she'll remember for a second that when her mother celebrated her 100th birthday that there were nearly 400 family members gathered in that park and that each of our lives was changed because that little old lady existed.

Maybe she'll find comfort knowing that she has five siblings with families of their own, and most of those children's children know each other, like each other, and are thankful for one another.

Hopefully she'll see she has six amazing kids herself, each of whom is grown, with grown children of his and her own. And each of those 30+ people are better because she made them that way.

And maybe this memory of happiness will last just for a day. But maybe, in those moments just before she follows you into the light on her final voyage, she'll learn what you meant to teach us in this life.

And if the rest of us are blessed enough, we will never forget her.