"A voice ...in Ramah...weeping..."

I've been pondering this story from Matthew 2 (NIrV) as a scripture about children.

I wonder:

~ You're asked to go in the opposite direction from your home, family, work into another country. I wonder how Joseph and Mary felt traveling with a new baby and all these riches. What challenges worried them most? And I wonder how the Egyptians felt about Jews settling in Egypt?

~This is the part that gets me. When Mary and Joseph heard about this massacre how did they feel thinking that all these children were slaughtered because of their son? How did they feel about going back to Nazareth? How did Joseph and Mary face their relatives? When Jesus later heard about this - as a boy or as a man (flesh and blood) how did He feel? Were there boys his age to play with?

~Were they just grateful to be alive? Did they carry this incredible guilt? Did they say, "Oh well, it was God's will"? All those boys Jesus' age weren't alive to be men when he was 33 but their parents and families were. How did they feel about Herod? How did they feel about Jesus? How did they feel about God? And the children who lived through the ordeal or heard the stories? How did those children feel about Jesus?

The scriputures tell us that after Herod died, Joseph had a dream while he was still in Egypt. In the dream an angel of the Lord appeared to him. The angel said, "Get up! Take the child and his mother. Go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to kill the child are dead."

-but surely the memories lingered among those who journeyed to Bethlehem for the censes, and those who lived in Bethlehem and around Jerusalem.