When my sister Jeannette called to tell me about what had happened to our friend Sidney Reynolds, I was deeply saddened. Sid was in Manhattan. As she stepped down off a curb, she fell flat on the street.

A man driving a large vehicle did not see her and drove over her. One can imagine the medical report after an accident like that! Sid is still alive, thank God, but the surgeries and fear for her life will go on for a long time.

The day after getting that heartbreaking news I learned that my friend Father Charlie McLaughlin who had already battled cancer was now back in the hospital, this time with brain cancer. Again I was deeply saddened.

When you get bad news, it brings back memories of when you've been shaken by personal tragedy. Very few people in this world are permanently spared pain from loss. In my own life I have had to deal with devastating loss too often.

It is only human in tragic times to question God and sometimes shake our fists at him. And yet, without God, what do we have and where can we go?

Tragically, I've learned that hurt comes in a way we never would have chosen. We're not in control. But we are in control of something crucially important --- our ability to be healed.

No one can "get on with life" alone. In the words of the late James A. Pike, "When we raise our hand to take God's hand, he does take our hand."

How? Faith shows me that God is there when a friend shares your pain with you and your loved ones the way Father Charlie did after my children and I had to bury two beloved siblings.

The Bible speaks of finding a place of refreshment, light and peace. For me that was never a place but always a person, and I rediscovered this truth when I became receptive again to all the people who reached out to me with love, that most precious balm of all.

Sidney is one friend who only recently reached out to me with love. She is a pastoral minister who works mostly in hospitals with people who need physical healing. She is the person who most helped me find the right hospital and doctors early this year when I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Now she is a patient in that same hospital.

We believe her faith will be her support and the basis of her healing. As for why we have all this pain, I repeat, that is a mystery. If I knew the answer, I would be pope, even if I am female.

Pain, I think, is built into our lives for good reason. It forces us to ask the really important questions about life --- why we are here, where we are going. Pain's pummeling is a teacher that helps us learn compassion and an important truth: We all take with us when we leave this earth what was given to us when we came --- God's love. As such, what our lives should be about is love.

I believe there are signs of God's love all around us. It certainly was when, with heartfelt anguish, I prayed with others for our good friends Sidney and Father Charlie.

Antoinette Bosco is a columnist with Catholic News Service.