For those of you that don’t know, Anthony and I, along with our church and community, lost a great friend last Thursday. The executive pastor at Crossroads Church, Kenny Comstock and his wife Melissa, were killed in a car accident. For the last few days we’ve all been trying to wrap our brains around this because everyone else involved, including their three children, survived. When I say that I was rocked by hearing this, it’s not an exaggeration. My best friend had gotten word before this even started to make its way through the church community so she text me and I remember praying “God don’t let this be true, please let this be a mistake.” I started internet searching for anything I could find. Any sort of accident report hoping maybe they were just critically injured. Nothing. I couldn’t find anything. My next course of action was deciding how to tell Anthony because this was a man that he cared for dearly. Kenny had been mentoring Anthony on pursuing seminary and I think Kenny was the first man that had actually reached Anthony on a spiritual level. He was someone Anthony had actually been honest with and he didn’t hide anything from. I think Kenny was someone that saw the real Anthony and accepted and loved him without any hesitation. So to deliver the news to him that Kenny was no longer with us was the most heart breaking and gut wrenching thing I’ve done in a long time.

Fast forward to Sunday morning. We were well aware that this was not going to be an easy day. I had to meet with the other children’s ministry leaders, like we do every Sunday, before church started and you could feel the heaviness in the air. We went through our usual housekeeping issues and the Sean moved on to the harder topic. He said for the last couple of days he had struggled to find the words to speak to us, but he and his wife and decided that Kenny had the best words for us. They showed us a clip from one of Kenny’s sermons and Kenny was talking about how the question is not “why is God allowing this tragedy to happen?” The question we need to ask is “will you still believe in God even when you don’t understand him?” Then we go to service and Jeremiah, the lead pastor, talks about how when he was laying face down, crying out to God over this tragedy, all God said to him was “Jeremiah, will you still believe what you preach?” I’m not gonna lie, my emotions have been all over the place on this. I’ve been angry, sad, apathetic, heartbroken, and comforted. I had my moments of “God why did you do this to us, to their children, to our church, etc.,?” I’m thinking to myself, “the God I know is all good, so why did something so bad happen?” That’s our natural instinct isn’t it? We want someone/something to blame and when we don’t have someone God is the first one we blame. “God did this. God wants to hurt us. God is evil.”

Believe me this isn’t a soapbox to preach to anyone about how God is this big benevolent grandpa in the sky because I can tell you from reading the Bible that God is not benevolent. However, I do believe that God is not evil. He may not be benevolent but he’s not malevolent either. I believe he is just and I feel like evil in our world is man made. Unfortunately, sometimes that means that we suffer the consequences of others actions. Even the most innocent in our world suffer because of someone else’s choices. Disease, death, war, violence, etc., are all results of our choices as human beings. Human beings chose to turn against God and for every action there is an equal opposite reaction. Now the complicated part comes in that a lot of people like to question during times like this. “Why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people?” Why did Kenny and Melissa die, but the guy that crossed over the median get to live? Why did my grandmother, who was one of the most faithful women I know, get ALS and die a slow agonizing death? Why didn’t God save all those people in 9/11? Where was God during all those terrible things? These are the questions we ask when we feel like we cant see or feel God in our world. And if you dont have any type of faith or a secure faith, those questions are overwhelming and easily become permanent dark marks on your heart. As human beings we dont handle uncertainty well. We like like concrete and factual. We may never understand the why and I’ve learned to come to terms with that. One thing I’ve learned to hold fast to, is even though we may not understand, even though we may not feel God or see his hand, he never forsakes us.

So after that intensely emotional weekend, I started the piece below and finally worked it out to where I like it for now. I don’t quite have a title yet, but I usually come up with the title several weeks after I’ve actually written a piece. Believe me, this blog post was not a ploy to convert anyone, but more of a way for me to explain my grief and my healing process. Please know that I love you all and that I’m always here if any of you need anything.

Its easy to question your existence when the sun is no longer illuminating my world. I am quick to jerk back my hand of faith when the darkness becomes a down hill slide because for some reason I think I can stop the slide myself. Why is it, when I need to hold your hand the most, my first instinct is to recoil and let the emptiness consume me? I’ve learned to live so comfortably in the cold of grief and loneliness that I would rather close my eyes to the light at the top of the tunnel than begin the uphill climb towards it. I search for answers in the dark, on my knees, fumbling around as if I will magically stumble upon it like lost keys that maybe open a secret door underneath all of this pain. But the one door is already open, no key needed. The sentence as already been served so why am I still sitting in the dark asking “God, where are you?” or “Why is this happening to me?” when I am the one that let go in the first place. God does not move. He is constant and central. I am inconsistent. I am free to move towards him or pretentiously pretend that I am stuck and God has abandoned me. Free will seems to only fit my narrative when things are going well, but God forbid I lose my footing based on where I chose to step because then is it no longer my actions that caused my misfortunes. I scramble to grab on to anything around me instead of trusting in the grip of God’s hand. The Bible mentions again and again how I cannot be snatched from God’s hand, but time and time again, I choose to leave it. I am flawed and maybe one day I will begin to learn from my mistakes and stop looking for a more secure place to stay when I cant see where we are going.