sadness

so its been a rough couple of weeks for me. i hesitate to even say that because none of the sadness is directly related to me...yet i'm really feeling the pain. last week baby beau passed away. i didn't know him well, but i did have the privilege of watching him a few times when he was in the step-down unit of the hospital. beau was born with congenital heart failure and has struggled throughout the 16 months of his life. however, he was able to overcome so many obstacles and survived 6 major surgeries. he recently began to show a lot of progress and was learning to sit up on his own. then he had a brain aneurysm on december 26th and was pronounced brain dead. on sunday, december 28th he passed away. it was his mom's birthday that day. i struggle to understand this tragic situation. i attended beau's memorial service this sunday and listened to my pastor talk about beau and his life. he talked about how god grieves with us when things like this happen and that it is NOT god's will when things like this happen. this really made me think because i always thought that god was able to control life and death. i was one of the people that use to say "it was god's will" or "god must need him in heaven more than he needs him on earth." but my pastor really challenged my thinking and said that because we have free will things like this happen. as i try to wrap my brain around all of this i get more sad news today. one of my best friends sister is in the final stages of cancer, she is only 28. my friend just has a baby 3 weeks ago and now she has to say goodbye to her sister. i'm not sure i can understand all of this. my heart is heavy. i know this is were my faith needs to take over...but my mind is just trying really hard to figure it all out. sigh.