Six years.

Something people often say about those we lose is that they would be proud of us. Proud for how we’ve overcome. Proud of the things we’ve accomplished. They give us a glimpse of the approval we so desperately desire. One that only the dead can offer. Because this approval, while it seems attainable, it truly is impossible to receive in full.

This last year has been wild. It has offered some amazing accomplishments as well as some complete and utter disappointments. I have found myself in moments I wish never had happened. While it has also offered some I wish to never forget. It has been a year of some of the biggest questions yet. Questions all directed at One.

And the most confusing in all of this is never having been more uncertain about my faith, all the while feeling so incredibly certain.

When I did my year in Redding, California I discovered the ‘something’ I had been searching for, for years. The environment, the people - the expectation. There were moments where I couldn’t help but think, This, this is faith. I’d found a community of believers so in love with Jesus, daily in the wonder of who He is. It was this place of deep spiritual mystery, but yet nothing had ever made more sense. I witnessed miracle after miracle first hand. Heard testimony upon testimony of God’s faithfulness. And man, by the end of it, was I pumped.

It was here, during my time in Redding when Mikael’s cancer was first discovered. And it was there, during a moment in corporate worship where I came to the conclusion that whatever this diagnosis meant for Mike, God was good, and nothing felt more certain than that. To the point it became a personal mission statement.

So when the final diagnosis came, and we were given the estimated time of how much longer my brother had to live I thought, this is the moment. I felt like God was smiling down on us. Here I had all this personal experience of witnessing the miraculous. I had literally been taught to expect the miraculous. Things like that just weren’t happening at home, only told as distant stories. Yet I had seen it first hand. I knew God could do this, God could heal Mikael.

And I was sure he was going to.

Here we are six years later and I still ask myself why. Why did God not do anything?

But then I think about how that loss has shaped the trajectory of my life. I am nowhere near where I ever expected to be at this new age of 30. And while I do have some pain which relates to dreams I’ve had for my life that now seem impossible or broken, I also can’t imagine my life any different. I can’t imagine my life without the people I’ve met over the last six years.

My mind then wonders to the thought of what would Mike say if he saw me now? What he would really think? I also imagine what I’d say to him as this new person - completely different from the sister he last saw in that hospital room.

My questions are deep. I’m becoming less and less afraid of how big they are. Not because I feel I’m any closer to finding the answer, but rather because I’ve never felt more free in just being honest with myself. Brutally honest. Maybe a little dangerously honest. In my experience it seems many Christians are afraid to ask the big questions. Or they do and simply just blanket it with an answer of, ‘you just have to trust God.’

But I can’t settle for that. I have my questions, and I will and do ask God why He didn’t heal my brother when it would have been so easy. Literally so easy. And it would have been such an amazing testimony of God’s goodness. I was smug at times imagining how those nurses on the palliative care unit would respond. We had asked them at one point if anyone went home after being a patient on this unit. They said they had never seen that. So can you just imagine the complete shock they would have experienced…

But here’s the thing - for the outsider, one look at my brother it was easy to come to the conclusion that this was the end for him. This is the realization that hit me the other day; my family and I literally watched my brother starve to death, all the while dealing with the excruciating pain from the cancer eating away at his body. It was awful. To watch him suffer like that. I tried to hide from that truth in order to protect myself. That reality was just too much. I was literally in survival mode.

And so maybe that’s why I dive head first into the big questions no one seems to want to ask. I lived in a state of too much for 43 days. Unable to fully even process what was happening. While I may never get a direct answer, not until my own graduation into eternity, I can still sit here in the uncomfortable heaviness of my big questions. Because then I won’t feel dismissed. I won’t feel the quickness in which people seem to forget about my brother and the trauma my family and I endured.

For some six years feels like a long time. For me, it feels like no time has passed, all the while an eternity has passed. And while it is important to grow through these awful things - we do just that. We don’t get over it. We don’t move on. We simply grow with this pain now embedded into our very being. And while at times I wish it wasn’t there, I also understand how it’s contributed to who I am today.

I can be honest in admitting there were moments over this last year where I was nearly ready to throw in the proverbial towel and walk away from my faith, from the church. I was angry at God and at anyone who spoke Christian to me. I was bitter. And there are still moments I feel these things and more.

But yet, at the core of who I am I know God is real and I know He is inherently good. That’s the crazy thing to me. And it’s here, in these quiet reminders of who He is where I find peace. Even amidst what feels like an existential crisis of sorts. Even amidst these crazy questions running through my mind. Even amidst the moments of doubt and unsurety.

And more than that, I can’t help but feel like Mike is proud of me, for diving deep and pressing on. For asking the big questions and making this faith my own - not just one I’ve learned about over the years.

So, from my heart to yours, here’s to the unknowns of this life. Here’s to not being intimidated by them, but rather willing to face them head on. Here’s to finding comfort in the uncomfortable.

Here’s to taking rest in knowing, that regardless of our questions, regardless of our doubts and misunderstandings - God is good. He will never leave nor forsake us. He will never stop loving us.

And I don’t know about you, but I really needed that reminder.