Please note: This post has some religious thought in it, if that isn't your bag please go your way, no hard feelings. If you act a fool I will nuke your comments.

Things have been quite round here lately, and while this is in large part due to my work schedule, it is also due to a tragedy my wife and I suffered last weekend.

Most people don't know this but on Christmas Day 2009 my wife gave me the greatest present I have ever received on that day. A positive pregnancy test. We were going to have another baby. I was stunned, overjoyed and nervous all at once. It was a great day.

From that point on priorities were changed, plans were made and life felt like it was on fast forward. It was wonderful. Last week things as they say, took a turn for the worse. By Saturday my wife was in a great deal of pain and bleeding heavily. We rushed to the emergency room and later that day we lost a child.

There are no words to describe how horrific it was for me to see my wife in the worst pain of her life, unable to help in anyway while knowing at the same time that this new life we were given was ending before it had a chance to really begin.

When I was finally able to take our little family home, we were numb to the bone. It would take days for us to process what we had just undergone, and begin the process of mourning and healing. That process is just beginning, and will take the rest of our lives to finish.

What strikes me as truly amazing is the timing of this event. We are Orthodox Christians and the Saturday we lost our little one was the Saturday before Forgiveness Sunday, the beginning of Lent. Lent is a time that is given to us each year to contemplate death, sin and our absolute need for God. It is a time of mourning for ones own sin, and realigning ourselves on the path that we ought to follow.

But it is not a time without hope. While we are contemplating these things, we are reminded that we are rushing headlong to Pacha, or Easter as it is more commonly known. We are hurtling toward that moment that redefined reality and our place in it. That moment when death was overcome by death.

That day when the only truth that really matters was made manifest: Death is not the end, but the beginning. Don't get me wrong I still keenly feel the loss of this miracle we had for a short time, but I am comforted to know that there is love of a reality shaking kind in this universe. Love that is firmly and irrevocably set on me.

At times like this I can feel it showering me like a gentle summer rain, warm and completely penetrating. Leaving no part of me untouched by it, mixing with my tears and making of them something Holy... something healing.

It is funny, but I have found having this website to be part of my healing from some tragedy, or coming to terms with some new stage of my life, more than once. Being able to write down my thoughts and then have others come by and share in the joy, sadness, fear or wonder is more powerful than people think.

Questions often arise in regards to blogging:

• Is it still vital?
• Has its time come and gone?
• Has it been ruined as many other things have by greed?

My answer to these, especially today, is that the answer is up to us. Will we allow this medium that can bring so much good, help and healing to people to be destroyed by greed, opportunism and selfishness, or will we fight to keep it vital, meaningful and a help to the world?

In the end it is our choice. The power is, as always, in our hands. Today I feel more keenly than ever that we should be saying "yes we will defend this new medium we have created". Since I for one am better for it.

Thanks for reading today, and over the past 7 years, 9 months and 1 day. I hope we have 8 more years of sharing life together internet.