When we married, we talked of how we would read books with our future children. We were so poor--we started with nothing. But every month we'd go to the book store and purchase a beautiful children's book. We made a whole shelf of them.

A childless couple in our ward fostered two beautiful children. They were to be adopted. My wife & I took care of them in the nursery. The children called these people mommy and daddy. And then, one day, they were gone. Taken back. I will never forget the wife crying as she spoke

It was almost worse than a death. This couple sold their home shortly afterward and moved far, far away. Left everything behind. There was no coming back from that

I think of my wife picking up that beautiful edition of Heidi, clutching it to her chest in the book store. "It's so beautiful I think I'm gonna cry," she said. It's the same volume sitting on the shelf now, covered in dust

I read these tired, wretched little comments and cynical "gotchas" flung at these, my fellow believers & sufferers in Christ, with a detached heartache that I can only consider sacred. We have descended the abyss of sorrow--what have you to offer? A lame joke about Jordan Peele?