Here's part of what AKMA writes in regard to my traumatic experience:

"The God with whom I have to deal does not jerk us around "for our own good," to get our attention or to wrest us from a fixation with mundane tasks or to withdraw from us a much-needed rest. God promises that there's a deep sense to the created order, involving even the horrific moments--a sense that (as Eric points out) defies reduction to "justice," but which captures a wild, boundless rhythm and harmony and draws them to completion. God's completion is not simply a happy ending (nor a tragic ending)--it's all *way* too complex for that, and that completion catches up tragedy and comedy into a breath-taking consummation, a climax I can't begin to anticipate. I can only trust that the God who promises that death is not our end will keep that promise, and that sadness and loss somehow come
together in the fulfillment of that promise with a kind of recognition, a kind of realization that addresses what cannot be justified."

And further on . . .

"God's utterly complex dealings with us, which we oversimplify by calling "God's will," involve us in ambiguous roles in shady scenes with heroes and villains and buffoons and dear, dearly beloved friends whose place in our lives no one will replace, which neither their death nor ours will eradicate. We and they will live.

That doesn't make things all right, or fair; it doesn't make God "good." It means that in a messy, uncertain, often cruel world, love can not be vanquished by death. Love suffers wrongs and bears grief--but love endures, where death will falter and fade away.

I don't think there's a lesson. I don't think there's a purpose, not the way we recognize purpose in a perishing world. There's ten years of love, and there's more love holding you and your wife together, and there's love you can't see wincing for you and for her and for your cat and for this world of mortal cares.

I believe in that love, in those promises."