Today I sit at my dining room table, watching snow fall and eating spicy Asian chicken and rice. Beside me is a tissue, elderberry syrup, and my faithful dog, watching me with her calm brown eyes. I am home, sick with everyone’s favorite little virus, contemplating, of all the things, the gentle workings of God.

This morning I savored a leisurely, un-timed voyage into a favorite book, drank two cups of coffee, played with my dog, and fielded a spam call. I have a short to-do list: empty dishwasher, do laundry, re-thread my serger and finish my Shutterfly photo album. While this kind of stay-at-home domestication and creativity are just what some women crave, it has not always been what I accepted this peacefully. Instead, I have been known for my ambition, drive, and productivity. However, Jesus has been changing that.

Last week, I was in Florida on vacation with my husband. We visited some of the places where my family has memories, as my family lived in Sarasota from 2000-2006. These sites included the church and school we used to attend, the Checkers establishment now turned Smoothie King, and the gravesite where my toddler sister was buried in 2004.

Many times when people ask how many siblings I have, I would say “Four, and I’m the middle child.” If I didn’t add the middle child comment, I was almost invariably asked, “And are you the oldest?” No one ever guesses me the baby of the family. We could go into a discussion on family placement and middle child syndrome, but we won’t. 🙂

The point being that many times I didn’t want to divulge that I lost a younger sister in a traumatic accident, and then watch this new person struggle to find the right words to say. Furthermore, I carried such deep emotions about it that I didn’t want to burst into tears in front of a stranger either. My best bet was to not mention the detail and perhaps in time, I might drop hints here and there to gauge the safety of the topic and the listener’s response.

Since I live in the Midwest and Florida is 22 hours away, I haven’t been back often. Three years ago, I brought Anthony with me to my sister’s memorial stone.The emotional pain and memories were so deep that we were both wracked with sobs and ended up driving away still ugly bawling. To me, the tombstone was a memorial site for grief and loss. There was no purpose to this pain, there was only pain.

I never knew when the grief would hit. I could go months without thinking of her, then something would trigger me and my chest would physically ache and I would enter the mental movie of being five years old, standing in the doorway and seeing my dad holding my baby sister with her skull cracked and blood profusely gushing out. Then I would either stuff the pain or feel it deeply. My response depended largely on my environment.

Last summer, I drove seven hours one way to attend a friend’s college graduation and to see my maternal grandma. On the way home, Sunday afternoon, a song popped up in my playlist, “Scars in Heaven”, by Casting Crowns. Side-lined by unexpected emotion and acknowledged grief, I sobbed for probably twenty minutes. Then I coughed on tears in my throat, tried to wash down the tears with my traveler’s coffee, coughed some more, and shot coffee all over the dash, speedometer, and steering wheel. I was a hazard on the interstate that day, just trying to stay in my lane through the deluge of tears and glare of the western sunset, but really, that exemplifies grief. It is a tangled knotty ball of yarn, wadded without order, and unpredictable as to how much it will unravel with one turn of the yarn.

At this last gravesite visit, things in my heart had shifted. I desired to worship God there, not as a spiritualized escape out of pain, but out of an acknowledgment that despite feeling the pain, He is good. He is still our Father, even though heartbreak has occurred.

I played a soundtrack that I’d compiled on Apple Music, with songs from Jason Grey, including “Love will have the final word,” Bethel Music’s “All my life you have been faithful”, and the Weaver Family’s version of “Is He worthy?” This was a time of closure, of worshiping while yet grieving, of being Mary at the tomb before the Resurrection. While I prayed aloud and croaked along to the songs, Anthony was quietly present, a hand on my back, being a witness and a partaker of the holy moments. “I’m glad she’s safely home,” I managed, even while the knife of loss still lay wedged in my heart, and Anthony patted my back.

Back in the car, I was regaining calm while tears were just beginning to fill Anthony’s eyes. “This is so hard for me.” Now was my turn to comfort him. “I hate to see you hurt, and I’m such a positive guy that…”

“I know, I know.” We shared the tissue box and the knowing looks of lovers who can finish one another’s thoughts and savor vulnerability together.

Later however, I asked God, “Why does it still hurt so bad? I believe that You are the Resurrection and the Life, I believe that she’s in heaven with You, and that if I knew the full story, I wouldn’t wish her back. I believe that You do all things well. I’ve been grieving for years. My heart has even changed to want to worship You through this loss. So why is the pain so fresh?“

---

He answered only a couple days later, in an unexpected way.

Anthony and I were attending a Christian conference, and we got to the part about the Father’s love for His children. I felt His love in my heart, warm and accepting, and the image that nudged its way into my mind was of me as a five year old, with my hand on a brass doorknob, standing in the doorway between our house and attached garage. Across the garage stood my dad, holding my youngest sister in his arms. He stood at the merging of light and darkness. She wore a small purple dress, her little toddler feet dangled in my direction. There were her dark little pigtails, and her cracked skull, with gushes of dark clotting blood slapping the pavement, slapping, and then sliding off the concrete and into the darkness.

I said simply, “Jesus, where were You?”

For what seemed like minutes, but probably wasn’t, I waited to see what He would say. In the mental picture, as if the older me was looking down on a slow motion picture, I looked all around the little girl, but I didn’t see Him. Finally I looked back across the garage and realized my dad looked different. In fact, I had a hard time distinguishing if it was my dad or not. One moment it was my dad, and the next moment, it was Jesus holding my sister. But it wasn’t a merciful Jesus. It was a Jesus that to my young five year old eyes, was not in control of the situation. Life events had overtaken us, and He had been as surprised and unprepared as we were.

I began to weep as the Great Comforter began to speak to me. He showed me that for years, starting as a child, I had believed that God could not take care of us. I had believed that in that instance, God had abandoned us and let her be killed, but that He was passive and out of control. God gently, gently showed me that the root of all my independent strivings and desire for self-made security was that since God couldn’t take care of us, and my earthly father/authority figure couldn’t take care of me, I must be the only one left that can take care of me.

Oofda. Right there, I repented of believing that lie, and Scripture came to mind to replace the lie with truth. “I will be with you in trouble. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He shall lead His flock like a shepherd, he shall gather the lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom.” And again and again, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Realization began to settle in that it was not solely grief that had me in its unpredictable grip. It was emotions stemming from a belief that God abandoned us. It was havoc from believing a lie. It was not true grief. It was an imposter in mourning clothes who snuck in next to the true grief. They occupied the same pew at the funeral but they were not both my comforters.

And of course, when one believes that no one else can take care of her, she will be fiercely independent. She will try hard to keep herself at the helm of her life, and overcome all obstacles to reach some illusion of security. Oh the sweet peace, when I found Jesus to be true to His word and believed that He was with us in trouble, as He says, and I could rest in His plan being greater than my understanding of it.

Only four days later, we stopped in at the gravesite again before beginning our long drive home. When we pulled up to the cemetery, a squirrel perched jauntily on the tombstone. I had never seen wildlife by Krystal’s grave before, except insects. I laughed. “It’s like God is saying there’s new life here, Tony.” The deep pain in my heart was gone. There was only peace. The emotional torment had dissolved. We approached her tombstone and I thanked God for the journey, the healing, and the plan I don’t yet understand. Then I said, “Let’s go hun, she’s not here anyway.” And we walked hand in hand back out the cemetery, no bitterness, only peace.

If you are looking for an identity in victimization, you will not find it here. As Kristen LaValley says,

“I am not the church hurt girl or the miscarriage girl or the witnesses a murder girl or the crisis pregnancy girl or the twin mom NICU girl. I *am* all those things and I carry all those things and I will never ever dismiss the intensity, grief, and trauma of those things. Ever. Those are things that life handed me but they are not my life. They aren’t who I am.”

Kristen LaValley

My experiences have not made me a victim. In fact, they haven’t even made me a victor. It is Jesus who made me a victor! Scripture declares, “We are more than overcomers through Him Who loved us.” My identity doesn’t come from my earthly identity, whether from our experiences or positions. Our identity comes from who Jesus says we are.

I am also not downplaying one bit the need for grieving after loss and processing emotions. However, for me, there was a snake in the cemetery that stood between me and peace from effective grieving. Until that snake was killed, I could have grieved for years and never found closure.

This is a small glimpse into my story, and I know that each one of you has a story too, that if we all took time to listen and understand, we would all be amazed at how God has worked through the circumstances of our lives. Praying peace on your story. May you find Him as good as He says that He is.