What was lost in the fire was found in the ashes.
On April 15, 2008, my life was forever changed. I lost my only sister, Samantha, in a car accident.
A 28-foot steel pipe fell off a truck and rolled over the side of her vehicle. It weighed around 3,000 pounds and was traveling at around 70 mph. As you can imagine, her small, fragile human body could not survive a collision with such an object. For over 16 years, I have never written about this event or shared it publicly.
As the years passed, fewer people contacted me on her death day, and fewer and fewer people seemed to remember her. There is no Memorial Day, no song in her name, no place dedicated to her remembrance, yet almost daily, she is in the back of my mind. I remember the moment I saw the truck she was in, went to the location where she had died and sat in the funeral pew. That was my sister. Where did she go, and why did she have to go? I was 16 years old, and at that age, when the good die young, it doesn't compute. There is no box large enough to hold the pain of death. I was truly crushed, broken, and lost in ways only those who experience death understand.
I write all this to say that, looking back, I see the fruit that has grown from the pain. 16 years later, somehow, God has shown the beautiful side of loss. It's not that the loss doesn’t stay with you; it's how it stays with you. My sister stays with me because of the way I treat others with understanding and empathy. She stays with me in the ways I care for my co-workers. It’s why I love and hug my kids the way I do. There is a deeper purpose to my life and part of that purpose is in service of her memory. Although she can not go on, I can. I have a duty in life to live to the fullest, to love the deepest, and to choose this day to have joy in the midst of the darkness. Loss is never the end of the story but simply the thing that forces you to pick up the pen and write it. 16 years later, the loss still exists but is held in a perfect balance of God’s faithfulness and unwavering goodness.