Hope and Healing After Loss
I am both privileged and thankful to say that my childhood was mostly happy. Almost every day was graced with laughter, friendship, family, food, and fun. My best friend lived only a few doors down, and we recklessly chased adventures all over our neighborhood. Winters were truly wonderlands. Summers smelled of hot dogs, macaroni, and chlorine from our swimming pools. We had a trailer up on Big Star Lake and spent weekends on our pontoon boat, fishing, riding dirt bikes, and catching frogs. The days would end with card games and s’ mores, our neighbor singing to his guitar, and a fine of twenty-five cents if anyone let out a buster around the bonfire. Those were the glory days. What I had not come to realize quite yet was that life also involved trials and disappointments, that there was a road to hope and healing fraught with challenges. Little did I know that those things existed and that they could happen to me.
My younger brother, Eric, took my parents’ divorce a lot harder than I did. Feeling rebellious and misunderstood, he found a crowd of older friends who drank and smoked and skipped class. In contrast, God protected me from the world and guided me to some amazing girlfriends who loved church and school more than beers and bongs. Even through the divorce, my high school years seemed “normal.” While I felt bad for my brother, I couldn’t sympathize with him. He had chosen his path, and it made me angry. Instead of trying to help him see the destructive road he was on, I just sat back and watched as his life slowly unraveled. How I wish I could have told myself to keep loving him when I had the chance.
Fast-forward about thirteen years, to 6 a.m. on the Friday after my wedding, a full week of marriage under my belt. The wedding planning was over, the centerpieces packed into boxes, the cards opened and well-wishes read. My husband had gotten a phone call and was out of bed and into the hallway as I rolled back over and closed my eyes for a couple more minutes of sleep. What I wouldn’t know until a few moments later was that the phone call he had received was about to rock my very existence and shake my faith to its core. When he came back into our bedroom, I knew something was wrong. His grandma, perhaps? Did she fall, or maybe something worse? I had no way of knowing what lay ahead. I could only tell that whatever he needed to say was going to be painful.
He was only able to find one word. One name. And that’s all it took.
Eric.
Eric was not waking up. He wasn’t breathing. My mom had called 9-1-1, and they walked her through CPR until someone showed up at her door, but by then it was too late. He had breathed his last breath. There was nothing we could do. No matter how many times we closed our eyes, we would still open them to this new reality. Eric was gone. Everything that needed to be said, every memory we had wanted to make still, every family vacation and “I love you” that we wanted to share was all stripped from us. We were left with sore eyes, and broken hearts. Thus began my wrestling match with God.
I started reading books on grief and stopped watching movies in which family members died. I met with counselors and went through a mental health group therapy program. I tried pills for anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression. Nothing was bringing me closer to relief or answering my questions. Nothing, that is, until I walked into a church and signed up for their GriefShare program.
In one of the videos, I was told that God did not take Eric away from me; he simply took him back home. Eric was always God’s to begin with. God had loaned me a brother for twenty-six years. Now, that same brother had been set free. His life on earth was one of bondage to addiction, one of jail, fears, nightmares, guns, and gangs. Through his freedom, I have also become free. I am free to picture him running joyfully through fields of grass in a place where the sun always shines and the mountains are glorious. Before God brought me on this grief journey, I didn’t fully understand what the Bible means when it says that he is near to the brokenhearted. I never would have chosen this path for myself, but God knew that through the pain, there would also be hope and healing. Through the tears, there would be comfort. Through the heartache, there would be his tangible presence. Through loss, a beginning of life.
Life has new meaning and purpose for me now. I’ve come to realize that we don’t just leave behind our clothes and shoes and watches and unfinished tasks. No. We have a chance to leave behind our love, our encouragement, our faith, our joy, our hope. Because I do have hope that I will see Eric again someday. I have hope that in spite of his rebellious heart, God was able to reach him and bring him home. I have a kind of hope and healing I never had before. It keeps me going through sleepless nights, through the new journey of infertility that my husband and I are on, and through the days when I’m brought back into the deep pain of missing my brother.
Hope shines brighter than it would have if God had let me live the easy, carefree life I had as a child. While an easy life may seem like the better option, a pain-filled, hope-filled life is what awakens the soul. Hope and healing are the other sides of grief.
has been happily married for just over two years and currently works from home in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a technical writer for a pharmaceutical company. She loves quiet mornings sipping on decaf coffee and spending quality time with Jesus, family, and friends. She’s a lover of crafts and has a dream of opening a shop full of homemade wreaths, cards, blankets, canvas art, bracelets, and more! Though God has been closing the door to having biological children right now, Audrey and her hubby are excited to be pursuing foster care or adoption with a hope of bringing love to kiddos in need. “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Photograph © Elijah Henderson, used with permission
