Clouds

I don't really know how to structure this post.  I started an inner-musing about Twitter-stories contained in the limited characters, and how those short snapshots open doors to wider stories.  Mine starts with a few simple words.  Deepest sympathies to . . . and Send good thoughts to . . . so I click on those and read through posts that may be important or mundane, until one stands out, like far from my sick child.  So I go to the poster's webpage.  And my heart simply breaks.  Shatters.  Two families, both burying young children, little Maddie and little Thalon.  I did not 'know' either family before these tradegies.  And the world is steeped in sadness.  I  ache for their losses. 

For awhile, the blogs were haunting.  A silence that I knew was false because posts on the social networks shared terrible news.  Instead, the blog shared a hospital entry.  Pray for our baby.  Then, a picture from a few days before, a week before, where a baby is smiling or playing or pensive and it all crashes down.  Our incredible fragile sense of security.

Perhaps the stories woven through these blogs, these journals online, even the social communities, are bigger than we ever realized.  Perhaps by the white lights of these monitors we will reach one another in ways we never dreamed possible.  Our compassion will wrap around the world and the walls will fall.  We will share our stories.  Our grief.  And a family that we never 'knew' becomes our own.   

Today I look to the clouds and I see new angels.