HOPE IN TRAGEDY

Growing up with siblings can be a lot sometimes — some days you really enjoy them and other days you don’t. I think I speak for most people when I say, when growing up with siblings you never really think of the day that they won’t be there to annoy you or talk to you which was true for me. In all of my years of life, there was never a day that I woke up without all of my eight siblings present. One day that all changed. Tuesday, March 08, 2011 will never be a normal day for me. It will always be the day I lost a sibling, my older brother;and my life was forever changed. For seventeen years of my life, I assumed he would always just be here. He was a typical big brother— He annoyed me, told me to stay out of his room, played like the tough guy, but had the warmest heart deep down. He was 18 when we lost him. He actively served in our church, hung out with friends all the time, and even won gaming tournaments in town pretty regularly. It’s because of him I know that some of the happiest people on the outside, can really be battling some real things on the inside. We lost my brother to suicide that year and this was the first time I had ever experienced such a deep and dark tragedy.

Without knowing it, I believe a part of me believed in what we now call progressive christianity. I believed the lie that just because I attended church every sunday (which really was only because my mom made me), sang the Jesus loves me song, and tithed my one or two dollars; that God could only keep blessing me with good things, I never wanted the bad. Little did a naive 17 year old me think. I’ll never forget the feeling of my mom rushing out of work to face the unbelievable. I’ll never forget replaying the last words my brother ever said to me in my head over and over again. I will never forget the moment my heart sank to the pits of my stomach when I heard the news. I will never forget the panic I felt when two cops showed up at our door with what was left of his belongings. I will never forget begging God to bring him back. Our whole world was crashing before our eyes and God didn’t stop it.

I had every “why God” moment anyone could ever have thought of. Why did you let this happen, why didn’t you have someone save him?Why didn’t you show us the signs? Why would you let this happen if you’re such a good God? What did we ever do to you? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? It took me a few years to understand that’s just not how God works. Nor should we say yes to God, in hopes of exchanging that for a trouble free life, Hakuna Matata sounds nice, but isn’t the reality for most believers. That night tragedy and devastation filled the walls of our house as me and my siblings all gathered for a sleepover in my moms room. We couldn’t stomach not being together as reality was beginning to set in. Throughout that night, I found myself tossing and turning, hoping I would wake up from a bad dream. I kept praying that this was all a mistake and my brother would creep upstairs and head to his bedroom like any normal night, but he didn’t. The next morning seemed to be the longest morning in record history. Endless calls and messages from people sending condolences, others wanting to know what was happening but how do you explain something you don’t even understand yourself? The next few days became an overwhelming whirlwind as we found ourselves trying to plan a funeral service. We all wanted to pitch in as much as possible from my mom doing everything , so we each had a task. Since I was the only one in the family with knowledge and background in video editing, I was tasked for the video we would play at the service and read a poem. Over the next few days I sat with my family picking out some of his best photos, and any video content I could find to create a beautiful video that would honor his life to family and friends. To me, this was the easy part. The hard part came on Sunday, when my mom told us we were going to church. My mind started racing as I tried to fathom why on earth she would mention the word “church” or even God, at a time like this. My heart became infuriated because I was so angry at any and everything to do with God. “My mom must be crazy, that’s what’s going on” I thought to myself, but even with tears in her eyes she mentioned something about Job, and something about Romans 8:28. . I tried my best to ignore her, but I think there was 1% of me that needed to believe she was right because none of this made sense.

Sunday was here. We sat in the same seat we had always sat in, on the right side closest to the exit door almost as if it were another sunday. Have you ever been present somewhere physically but mentally you were in another world? That was me. My world stopped moving and reality felt frozen. Every idea of who I thought God was, disappeared. Was He still good? Did He love me? Would things ever get better? The questions that I used to answer so confidently with a smile became broken fragments of uncertainty. I wanted answers from God and wanted them now.

The day of my brother's service, my mom, myself, and my siblings put on our brave face. We knew that this day would be the longest of them all as we laid my brother to rest. While most families chose to wear all black to funeral services, it was a family tradition that we always wore white. Although we were mourning and grieving, we were also celebrating a wonderful life lived, sure it was shorter than we expected, but still an incredible life lived. 2 Corinthians 5:8 tells us to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord and we knew my brother accepted Jesus and loved Him, so we could rejoice. There were so many familiar friends and family that gathered in the house of the Lord, so many new faces I had never seen that loved my brother as well as my family. I had never shaken so many hands before, cried so many tears, or even talked to so many people as we thanked them for coming, it was a new season for all of us. After the video played, I walked up the green steps to my church and took a deep breath, reading a poem i found on the internet about the love I had for my brother and how we would miss him. With teary eyes I held it together the best I could as I heard people clapping for me once I finished. Many people told me how great I did during my quote on quote speech. I didn’t find anything special about it, I was just doing what I needed to do to get by, but I never thought this would be the turning point in my story.

It will always amaze me how quickly people shift after a funeral service is done or had. Leading up to it, you get a million cards and texts but once everyone goes back to their happy homes and normal lives, you’re left alone to still grieve trying to figure out a new normal. Everyone who said they were here for me, to help me through this season really wasn’t. I am sure they meant well and had the best intentions, but many times after services are said and done, the follow up from people can really be lacking. So here I was, a full time grieving college student, insecure from every angle, trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life and mad that God has yet to fix anything. Life truly sucked. My grades started slipping, and life got heavier and heavier. I had to be strong for everyone. I was the middle child so I had younger siblings and older ones and one of us had to keep it together for my mom, so I chose to not because I wanted to, but I needed to.

A week or so passed, when I noticed a call coming in from my church, it was my pastor, Tom Pickens. He wanted to check on my family and see how we were holding up, which was normal for him and his family to do with us. Even more so, he expressed to me how impressed he was with the composure and heart I had when I spoke at my brother’s funeral. It was because of this that he said he believed that I had a call of ministry in my life and wanted me to pursue it further. Our church had hired two new youth pastors, and Pastor Tom thought serving would help me grow in that. I immediately said no. One, at this time it had only been a few months since I lost my brother, I was still processing and mad at God for that. Two, my first thought of potentially serving in ministry equaled a perfect life, and that I did not have. My life as I knew it was in pieces, how could I serve other people? I refused to.

It was August of 2011 when these new pastors arrived for their first interest meeting. My pastor still hadn’t given up on wanting me to be a part of their team in this new season. I still couldn't fathom a “good God” ripping my family apart at the seams. That Sunday, I did everything I could to avoid the meeting. As soon as service was over I went to say my goodbye’s so I could get in my car and take that good ole post church nap. On my way out, I bumped into my pastor's daughter, Sheree who immediately asked me if I was attending the interest meeting her dad asked me to. I gave a gentle laugh and shrugged knowing the answer was no, but it’s safe to say, i'm a bad liar. She immediately called my bluff, and decided ever so kindly to walk me to the room where this meeting was “just to see” and if my answer was still no, they’d leave it at that. So I sat in the back, completely disengaged the whole time not getting the hype everyone had for what was coming. However, after meeting with these pastors, it’s like everything changed. I decided to give it a shot, not because it’s what I wanted, but because I needed a distraction of sorts and maybe I would be able to get answers from God. This was the defining moment that everything began to change.

I had no prior background in serving. I knew what the Bible was, my mom bought us all one many years ago but that doesn’t mean I read it on my own time. I knew I was unfit to lead, I was way too broken but I said yes because in my mind, I demanded answers from God and maybe these people were the key to help me get there so i silently began to carry grief.

After a month of “serving’— which is keycode for showing up every Sunday and Wednesday to say hi to people and help kids play games my family experienced another horrific loss. It became so devastating that till this day, I hardly speak about it. How can someone truly believe in God when they experience one hit after another? How is a life claiming to believe in and know Jesus, any different from those who don’t? If anything, I felt it would have been better to not know him because maybe these things that were happening would make more sense. Our family was hanging on by a thread and I didn’t know what to do. Besides the excessive grief that had to take place, I still kept pondering why God kept letting things happen. If losing my brother wasn't already enough, surely watching death invade our family would be the icing on the cake. I couldn’t take it anymore, yet through this all again, my mom would say “it’s just like the story of Job.” So I decided to sit down and meet this Job guy. For one of the first times in my life, I sat down intentionally and figure out why my mom still continued to trust God through this process. I read, and read, and read some more and let me be honest and say I was not impressed. A guy who is a decent human being ( the bible says he was blameless and had integrity) experiences excruciating grief losing everything. He lost his children, his livestock, his health rapidly began declining and yet he remained faithful to God. I still didn’t get it. Why should anyone remain faithful to God like this? I thought it was stupid. I wish I could say that reading through Job changed the way I saw things, but I didn’t feel like it did yet I still showed up to serve in youth week after week

One day everything changed.

It had been just about a year since I lost my brother and we decided to have a youth worship night. I can't recall if it was planned or if things just happened like that— but God knew.I still hadn’t dealt with my bottled up grief, so just as I always did, stood in the back with my eyes closed and my arms crossed refusing any kind of worship posture. The night was getting longer, and I was getting more and more over it so I sat on the floor, ready to go home. I was oddly close to my then youth pastor at the time, and I’ll never forget her seeing me in this moment and coming to pray for me. I can’t tell you what she said when she prayed, all I know is she knelt down with me and simply prayed. The next thing I know, all of the bottled up emotions that I had been carrying for the last year exploded and I began screaming out loud while everyone else was worshiping. All of the anger I had was released in the broken screams that left my hurting body. She kept praying and walls started breaking. I felt the Holy Spirit like never before and all I could do was ugly cry (you know snot and tears) and scream started shaking. I remember sitting on this floor tangibly feeling the Lord hug me, and at that moment for the first time in a year, I had hope that everything was going to be okay.