Maybe its the weather. Maybe its just me. Maybe its the combination of a drizzle rainy day and it being early in the week but I have the strong tendency to slip into a reflective or contemplative mood. Whenever I get into one of ‘those moods’ I love sitting inside a coffee shop, next to a window, with a good cup of coffee, my favorite pen, molskine journal (a.k.a. my sanity) and/or my laptop. Reading, writing, and reflecting. I love it.

Holidays also have this effect on me and this Thanksgiving break wasn’t necessarily any different. As I talked to family and friends I couldn’t help but think of the ways in which the Lord has changed me. The way He has changed my family.

When I first came to Covenant, Fall of 2006, I was young and naive of all that the world had yet to teach me. 6 months into my time here I quickly learned how much I didn’t know and how badly I needed God.  After walking through my own personal ‘hell and back,’ the Lord was gracious. Not only in bringing me back to Himself but the way He would continue to refine, shape, and mold me in the coming years of being at Covenant.

It was during my Sophomore year, right in the beginning of finals, that my handicapped brother, Stephen, suddenly passed away.  I remember not being able to feel anything. Unsure of what I thought about that moment and thinking it was all a dream. I can still, 2 years later, vividly remember standing in the second row at Christ Presbyterian Church as Tim Tinsley preached about the hope that we have, as Christians, in matters of death and how Stephen was in a ‘better place’ even though his physical body laid in a casket only a few feet away from me.

I was never angry with God for taking Stephen away. It didn’t drive a wedge between my relationship with God and I. For some of my siblings, it did. It shattered their conception of who they thought God was. How, they thought, He should act. When things like this happen in our lives they are typically unexpected, untimely for sure. They have that tendency to make you question everything and to leave you with the dreaded feeling of…nothing. numbness.

On Dec 1, 2007 two of my friends drove me down the mountain to grab lunch, away from people and away from campus. I talked to my dad for the first time that day and I remember him telling me, “Olivia, God is still good. He didn’t do this to our family because He doesn’t love us. God is sovereign and God loves us despite the fact that He saw it best to take Stephen away from us…” Seriously? The faith that the Lord gave my dad that day still blows me away…

Being 2 years outside of Stephen’s death and funeral I can honestly say that it has been one of the most challenging and beautiful experiences that my family has had to walk through. As hard as it was to see my parents weeping and to see the ways that it tore up my family emotionally as well as in the way that we lived our daily lives, God has been gracious. He has forced us to walk down a path that we would never have walked down, otherwise. He has created an awareness in me of my humanness, of my mortality. That death is imminent but God is real.

While I wouldn’t wish this experience upon anyone I do wish, for all of us, that God would place different events or situations in our lives that force us not only to rely on Him but force us down a path that we would never willingly choose ourselves. Those roads, as I have walked on a few, are the ones that bring life, healing, and hope.

It has been my experience, thus far, that we have to be broken before we can be restored.

Because He Lives,

-Olivia