When I called my friend Rachel today, she said, “I am staying with your friends the Maddexes.” You might (or might not depending on how well you know me) be surprised to hear that at that simple statement I burst into tears. Rachel doesn’t really know the Maddex family. She was picked up from the airport in Chicago and brought to their home to spend the night en route to the funeral for her niece, Celia.

But she is staying just a few miles from Paige, with Adrian’s grandparents. In my heart, Celia LaRocco and Adrian Maddex  are intimately connected. They both entered and left the world on Sunday. When talking to Paige and writing about Adrian, I did not know how or if I should mention Celia. But in my heart, Adrian and Celia are woven together, and they always will be, because although they did not meet in this world, they are companions on the journey.

Rachel has landed in Chesterton via Minneapolis, where she and her parents have been keeping around-the-clock vigil with her other sister, Resa, who is in intensive care with H1N1 and pneumonia, intubated, sedated, struggling to keep her oxygen levels normal.

Today, on the phone, I told Rachel that I’ve been reflecting on the statement, “God never gives you more than you can handle.” I know the statement has a biblical basis, but I don’t really like to hear it. Because sometimes, it seems like life gives us more than we think we can, or should, have to bear. And sometimes it all comes at the same time. To this, Rachel replied, “I think that we are often given more than we can bear, because God  wants us to discover that he is all that we have.”

So now life takes another surprising twist: these two families are together, not just in my heart, but it real life. They are together physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Rachel couldn’t talk long.  Tonya was preparing a meal for them to share. A little bread for a stranger passing through, strength for the journey through this valley of tears.

I hope Adrian and Celia have found each other by now. I hope they’re holding hands.