Why?

I woke my little boy up this morning, and I had to tell him the news.

How do you tell a child something like this? How do you explain it? How do you even understand it?

My son walked out of the same camp building on Monday, at the same time as Leiby. Maybe he even walked in the same direction. My son came home. Someone else's little boy did not.

I'm a mother. I can't possibly feel the indescribable pain his parents must be suffering. But I can't stop crying. He's our child. We're one family, and their pain is our pain.

I want an explanation. I need to understand. Why, Hashem...why?

Perhaps there is a reason. Maybe I'm just too spiritually weak to understand. Maybe I don't want to understand. Maybe I don't want to hear that there can be something positive in this kind of horror - that I am merely seeing things from my small perspective, and I am unaware of a larger picture, of why this might be necessary.

I drove my son to camp this morning. As I will do every morning for the rest of the summer. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. He's old enough to walk. He's ready for that little bit of independence. I don't want to hover. I want to raise a secure child. I want to prepare him for adulthood, and keeping him tied to me is probably not the best way to achieve that. But I'm going to be selfish now. I'm scared. It could have been him. It could have been anyone.

I just have to believe that ultimately what Hashem does is good. Even if my small mind can't comprehend it. 

So I wait. I wait for the day, some day in the future, when my questions will be answered. When my human mind will understand and appreciate. And meanwhile...I struggle.