I’ve talked before about anticipatory grief and how sometimes my mind jumps straight to the what-if in a frightening situation. I also vented recently about the many folks I know who are fighting (or have fought) cancer. Since that post, the neighbor has died, and the friend has exhausted treatment options.

Personally, I think it’s a dangerous thing to say, “I could never handle [insert major life catastrophe here].” I’m not saying that we ought to invite calamity into our lives, but if we negate our ability to survive disastrous circumstances, then I believe we discount God by inadvertently saying that he’s not able to get us through whatever the what-if scenario is. Consider the book of Job in the Bible. He lost everything that we hold dear — his wealth, his health and even his children. He was targeted because he was strong in his faith, not because he was a rebel who made a spectacle of himself and had to lie in the bed he made.

I also advise against saying things like, “If I were in their shoes, I would [insert definitive statement about how you would handle their problem].” How do we really know how we would respond until/if we are faced with that situation? I don’t personally believe that suicide or euthanasia is ever the answer, and yet I think of elderly or injured people who are sustained by feeding tubes. When we turn off that level of support, aren’t we letting them die? Isn’t that what many people want — to not be kept alive by machines? Where is the line? How do we decide where to draw it?

What do we say to the person who is out of treatment options for cancer? What about the person who quits treatment that doesn’t show promise? What about the one who chooses not to pursue treatment at all, but lets the disease run its course for however long it takes?

How do we know when it’s ok to let go and say goodbye?

I was thinking about Elijah today, because he had to figure out the answer to that question. 2 Kings 2 tells about his mysterious disappearance/rapture into heaven. Somehow, God had revealed to him that he was about to leave, so his apprentice Elisha stayed on his heels the whole day, not wanting to miss a moment. I wonder who else he may have left behind. I am not a Bible scholar, but I imagine he probably wasn’t married, given the nature of his role as a prophet. However, I wonder if he had parents or siblings.

We think it’s so awesome (and don’t get me wrong – it is!) that Elijah was delivered to heaven in such an amazing fashion, and yet there were those (like Elisha) who were left to grieve his loss. Elisha knew it was coming, and he was better prepared for the farewell. Others thought that Elijah might reappear somewhere else, but Elisha knew that he was gone.

God’s miracles occur in bizarre ways, sometimes. They may not always result in physical healing, and that’s a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around, especially when prayers have been offered in faith. Sometimes, I think, God moves like he did for Elijah and escorts people home, rather than leaving them to roam the Earth.

The ones left to pick up their cloaks, figuratively speaking, have to try to figure out what the new “normal” is supposed to look like without them.