Well, here I am, writing about death.

I was supposed to write about it last week, but I chickened out.  I wrote about “should” instead.  It felt easier.

It all started when my beautiful Aunt Babs passed away a little over two weeks ago.  I have not had death touch me very often as far as people close to me, thankfully.  Grandparents, uncles, one dear friend.

Mostly I have been able to comfort myself with the usual platitudes – the person had lived a good long life; they are in a better place now; they’re no longer suffering; I will see them again.  The thought that “everything is happening exactly the way it’s supposed to” has always been an easy and comforting one to repeat to myself as a way to stave off feelings of fear and panic about death in general.

So when my mom texted me to let me know that her eldest sister had passed away, I went to my go-to thoughts, and Aunt Babs fit right in.  She was 82, had lived a remarkably good life, and had passed in her sleep, which everyone agreed was a mercy we would all like to have.  I prayed for my grieving cousins and made travel arrangements to attend the funeral feeling sad but peaceful.

Then a few days after I got the news about my aunt, my foundations got upended a bit.  My dear co-worker and friend lost her 6-mth-old granddaughter to a common infection that turned septic.  This beautiful little girl went from being a thriving toddler to deceased within days.  I can’t even imagine the pain and horror the family will be coming to terms with in the coming weeks, months and years.

At the viewing, my eyes continually filled with tears, and I felt something close to panic.  My platitudes didn’t work for this.  This cannot be how it was always supposed to happen.  Something went wrong here.  Yes, I believe in God’s sovereignty, in Jesus Christ as His Son and Savior, in Heaven and the hope of eternal life.  But in this tragedy I felt no peace.

I knew last week’s blog was supposed to be about my struggle with this, but I was scared to write it.  What could I possibly have to add to the conversation about death?  I’m certainly no expert and let’s not forget I’m supposed to be writing a blog about singleness.  Yes, I could’ve spun the theme to talk about enjoying every moment and taking nothing for granted, but the whole topic felt so…big.  I’ve read so many beautifully written essays about death that perfectly summed up the struggle it is for those of us left behind, and I didn’t feel like it was my place to comment further.

So I wrote about “should”.

Then, this past week, I found out from friends and local news that my 31-year-old next-door neighbor would not be returning from his Memorial Day trip to Ocean City, MD.  Ever.  He had been assaulted and died as a result of his injuries.  This was a nice guy, good neighbor, young professional who had bought the townhouse two doors down from mine last summer.  His big ol’ yellow lab, Louie, was a familiar sight out in the front yard every night when he got home from work.

What? How can this be how everything was supposed to happen? How do his family and loved ones find peace in that, no matter what or how strong their beliefs were?

My heart got blacker than ever.  I didn’t want to think I lived in a world where things like this could happen; where a beautiful baby could just suddenly die or a young man with a promising future could go to the beach for the weekend and come back in a body bag.

I’m not naïve; I know terrible things like this happen all the time because I watch the news.  But it always happens to someone else, strangers to me.  It’s on TV, it doesn’t touch me.  I am always able to go on thinking that my faith in a God that is in control and knows what He’s doing would always bring me peace in every tragic situation…that it would keep me from ever descending into panic and excruciating grief whenever someone close to me died.

I was wrong.

And I wasn’t only wrong about it concerning my coworker’s granddaughter or my neighbor, I was wrong about it concerning my Aunt Babs, too.

My beliefs haven’t changed.  But I realized that turning to my belief in God’s sovereignty, that everything happens for a reason, that nothing has gone wrong here…well, it doesn’t actually bring me much comfort when I’m grieving.

I realized I have to stop trying to get around the fact that death sucks. There’s no way I can make it pretty or okay.  Whether the person has lived a good long life or died tragically young, it SUCKS for the people left behind.  Watching my cousins grieve for my aunt, I realized her death didn’t necessarily feel any less tragic for them because she was 82.  I know they were trying to comfort themselves with the peaceful circumstances of her passing, but at the end of the day, they lost their mom and were never going to see her again this side of eternity.  Intellectually I can accept that everything happened exactly as it was supposed to, but this part SUCKS.

Trying to sanitize or shield myself from the experience by trying to find the “rightness” in the event of a person’s passing can no longer be my go-to strategy.

What ended up helping me the most with these deaths, whether they were somewhat anticipated or seemingly made no sense, was the part of my faith that holds the shortest verse in the Bible as my favorite: John 11:35.

“Jesus wept.”

I’m not going to turn this into an in-depth Bible lesson, because I know that not all of my readers share my beliefs, but I do want to explain why remembering this particular verse unlocked the peace and comfort I was trying access by turning to the God I believe in.

It’s because, in the context of the situation in which Jesus found Himself, you could make the argument that He had zero reason to cry.

The passage in question relates to the raising of a guy named Lazarus from the dead.  The bullet:  Mary and Martha have this brother Lazarus who is SUPER sick and they get word to Jesus that they need Him to come right away so that He could heal the dude.  Instead of rushing right over, Jesus delays his journey by a number of days, such that by the time He arrives, Lazarus has died and has already been buried for four days.

We know from the passage that Jesus purposely delayed his arrival so that He would be able to perform one of His greatest miracles – actually raising someone from the dead.  In other words, He knew there was nothing to weep about.  He was going to bring Lazarus back; death would be overturned; no need for grieving.  Jesus was there to save the day.

Yet Jesus weeps.  He is met by Mary and other mourners who are in the middle of a good cry, and instead of comforting them by telling them what He was about to do, He wept.  He entered into their grief and wept with them.

To me, this verse is one of the most surprising reveals of God’s character.  It tells me that the Person who I believe is in control of the universe and everything that happens in it is not some impersonal, un-relatable entity that sits in His director’s chair unfeelingly calling the shots.  It tells me that He knows that death SUCKS.

He weeps WITH us.  He totally gets it.

That thought brings me the peace and comfort I search for when bad shit happens.

That’s what I was supposed to write about last week.

There’s way more to this story, of course, but that’s not for this post.  And don’t worry, next week, we’ll return to our regularly-scheduled programming.