Sore Spot

I have to get this out because it's something that comes up occasionally that hurts that I don't quite know how to deal. Every once in a while I get emails from friends that have some "important" message about how to keep kids safe from some harm that nobody knew about before. Usually there's some tragic story of a family that had some horrible thing happen to one of their kids, and now they are trying to get the message out to others so the same thing doesn't happen to their kids. Honestly, I understand why they want to tell people, and on one hand I can see where letting people know about things really is important. But, on the other hand, I am a person that HAS been through a horrible incident that I never dreamed could happen, and sometimes I disagree with the way things are talked about or dealt with. I think part of the problem is that when I read about other people's experiences, it's too close to home and brings up emotions stronger than I am sometimes able to handle. I mean, I sympathise with the people completely, but there's nothing I can do from reading an email to help them or comfort them, so all it does in the end is make me sad. And, what's hard about just reading the sad story is that you don't see the people now and see that even though things are sooooo hard, life does go on and things happen for a reason! All you are left with is sadness for the family with no closure in it for you for them, and a new fear of some horrible thing that you now have to try to prevent from happening to your children and loved ones! One big thing I had to learn very quickly after loosing Caydin was to not fear life. I mean, Caydin died eating something that he'd eaten many times before, and that I never even thought was a choking hazard. He was eating! How many times in a day do we all eat food, most of it something that needs to be chewed, and it killed my son! All the time after he died, and still at least once a day, I think about how we are eating or have to eat, and how just by doing that simple and necessary act, we could all literally be a minute away from death!!! How intimidating is that!!! And, what do you do to prevent it? Make sure you and your family only ever eat puree for the rest of our lives?! Not very realistic, or appatizing! Unless I wanted to go insane with fear and panic, I had to figure out some way to not let it scare me. I had to turn to the Lord and ask for help and strength, and what it came down to for me was having enough faith to truely believe that those who are doing their best to live the best life they can will not be taken from this earth until it is their time. And then, if and when it is their time, it will happen, one way or the other. Children are innocent, so any child that dies, dies pure and only when it is their time. Heavenly Father can prevent anything for anybody, but sometimes it isn't His will, and when that happens, we just have to trust Him that he loves all of us unconditionally and that in the end, things will be all right. We might not know how He can fix them, but He can and will, and we just have to trust in His love for us, and our loved ones. People are imperfect, and this world is imperfect, so imperfect things will happen, but God knows all and will get us through anything if we turn to Him and trust in Him with all our hearts. Healing might not come completely till the next life, but we have that to look forward to at least! And, in the meantime, while we know we need to do our best and gain as much knowledge as possible, there does come a time when I think we need to just let it go and trust that Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost will let us know when we need to take extra precautions or go do something! I think another reason it can be hard for me to get advice emails is because I felt like I had the knowledge of how to save my son, but it was his time to go, so even though I had that knowledge, it wasn't enough to save him. I know that's not a reason to not seek or learn knowledge, but I learned that even having knowledge won't prevent or change something if it's not meant to. There are so many things that could happen every minute of every day that to pick out just a few things to fear more than others is only creating fear and worry and making it harder to just enjoy the minutes and days we do have with our children and loved ones because we never know how long we have with any of them! Anyway, I know that the friends and people that send the emails are only doing it because they love their children and wouldn't want anything to happen to them, and they feel a certain responsibility to share information once they learn of it, so I don't feel mad or angry at them. It's just hard because while I understand why they do it, it doesn't make it any easier for me to know exactly how to deal with it and the emotions it creates in me. I think some of it might be that when I read them, I do feel panic and fear, and have to remind myself and reteach myself what I learned with Caydin. It's like I go back to ground zero with my emotions of that incident, and like I said, because the emails only tell of the peoples sadness and rarely of how they are dealing with it and moving on, they are usually very depressing and sad. It's like watching a movie with a sad ending, you leave feeling sad an depressed and hopeless when in most cases, that's not even how the family ends up feeling! Yes it's emotional and sad, and you never really "get over" it, but the story doesn't end with the tragedy. It goes on, and I truely believe will have a happy ending, but not completely until the next life when we all get to be reunited again! I do feel very much for people that have been through tragedies that don't have the gospel, or even any kind of religion! That would be a situation where I think it would be very difficult to be able to find any kind of comfort, and where in an effort to find some kind of closure or purpose in what happened, they would feel like letting people know what happened to them to help prevent it from happening to somebody else would become a major goal and focus in life. If you believe that life is just random and that there isn't a loving God who you can trust, helping others to prevent a certain situation would seem like a huge deal! And, I know there are things that should be taught to people and knowledge is important! I just think, at least for me, there is a certain line where it goes from good prevention knowledge to just simply spreading more worry and fear.