Nearly a decade into my own journey, it's both a joy and a sorrow to see the loss support community expanding by such leaps and bounds. Still Standing is a most remarkable resource, and what a blessing to have stumbled across them.

It's joyful to have such a wealth of common writers so that I know that I'm not alone, and that my departed daughters' voices are being heard. But it's also sorrowful because what a stark reminder of the vast multitudes who are on this path with me. So many more have joined the cause since I first embarked. The little silent voices of anguished grief have increased by incredible decibels--and that's very sad indeed.

Nevertheless, coming across Still Standing has given some refreshment to my own silent voice. When I first began this blog, I did so as an outlet to keep the memory of my daughters active, and to give voice to my journey thru the plights of child loss. But it lost its lustre once the pickle jar of critics felt it their obligation to tell me what was wrong with my grief, wrong with my faith, wrong with me...

I mean, who wants to go into the depths of expounding over experiences so vastly precious and so deeply introspective when some chucklehead from the peanut gallery then comes along seeking to rub the wounds with salt and vinegar? One chortlehead even had the nerve to threaten me if I should dare to edit his comments before I published them, and issued insult of my weakness of character for daring to not publish his comments at all.

Yes, Mr. SuperiorJackass, I admit that I'm a coward when it comes to sharing the likes of your commentaries; and no, I don't care to litter my blog with your particular flavor of chastisement over how the universe apparently knew best in rendering me barren and bereaved. I swear if I have one more person seek to tell me how the world is a better place because I couldn't reproduce, or that my children died as a result of karma biting my ass where it should...argh!

Seriously! what a mean, loathsome thing to tell loss parents: that their children died because somehow "karma" chose the better path for their children because we weren't supposed to be parents to them. Tell that to the thousands upon thousands who take solace from sites like Still Standing (and the plethora of other resources noted on my sidebar).

I suppose it's a very good thing that I don't believe in "karma" but rather in the supreme justice of the Lord God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. The likes of His justice gets handed out to every single soul He creates when they die and go to meet Him face to face. My daughters did not die because I was destined to be a bad parent; that somehow they would be better off without me or we them--yet, if such logic were true then many many more are the parents who would be barren, and far far fewer children would ever be conceived!

To say that my children died to spare them from some conjectured abuse implies that other children who aren't spared abuse somehow deserve their plight, because if my children died to spare them from some future horror, then why don't all children die in order to spare them as well? Such "karmatic" thinking erroneously places blame and conjecture where it's not deserved or warranted, and it fails to take into account the multitudes for whom the "logic" is meted out inconsistently.

No, my children died because the sin nature of this world is alive and very active, and that allowed for death and doctors to rob us of them, and they of us.

Ultimately, there will be an Accounting when all is said and done. The Scriptures tell us that the Lord God Almighty keeps a Ledger of everything. Thus, they who hastened their deaths through malpractice, negligence and indifference will be held accountable by the measure of His supreme justice. They may get away with their actions here, but in eternity they will not. I believe emphatically that everyone meets their Maker--no one is exempt from death and no one escapes meeting God face to face; no one! And so it is Written that everyone will have to account for themselves when they die; everyone.

And so it is that I may get lectures and beratement by the likes of they who have no worldly clue; faithless nay-sayers who care not a single jot about me, my children, other loss parents, or even their own eternal fates; but come hell or high water, I'm Still Standing!