Years ago, my husband and I were on a vacation with my husband’s best friend in the mountain of California. One morning while on a hike, I watched as my husband’s best friend fell to his death right before my eyes. It truly was one of the most devastating moments of my life. The pain was deafening! I felt as if my faith were unraveling around me. I ached for answers from the Lord Jesus. I could not understand why He had chosen to take a life so young. I was angry that He would do something so terribly cruel to those of us that loved him. The details of our friend’s death, I will not linger on. I will just state that they were gruesome. Due to the nature of these details, and all that I saw, I was riddled with nightmares and daily memories haunting my thoughts. My heart seemed as if it could bleed pain. At the memorial service that they had for our friend, I sat with my head in my hands, utterly broken. I just couldn’t believe what we were living through. Minutes before the tragedy, we had been sharing such laughter and plans of new trips we would take. Now, we sat in a service trying to say a “forever goodbye” to our friend. Human reasoning failed to provide any answers to me. Human encouragement offered was nice, but were empty words to my soul. Beautiful on the outside, but once unwrapped, their meaning did nothing to heal my pain. Nothing offered me was going to cause me to “agree” with God that we were better off without our friend. To agree with Him would have been to lie to Him, and I wasn’t going to do that. In order to agree with God, it would require “God sized understanding” and that I didn’t have!!!!!! I only had a broken, desperate, angry, confused human spirit to offer. I still remember coming home from the memorial service falling to the floor and saying, “All I have to offer you is a broken spirit full of confusion, anger towards what you have allowed to happen, and my very frail, unraveled faith. I know you are good, but it doesn’t look like it right now.” An enormous weight was lifted off of me. WHY??? Let me explain. The weight being lifted was this, I began to understand that God wasn’t asking for my agreement, He was asking me to offer Him my brokenness. It was during this event that I realized for the first time that God NEVER expects that we put on a pretense with Him. He wants nothing less than our true emotions, our real fears, our actual worries each of these being offered are music to Him. Not because He wants to see us suffer, but because He knows that a relationship is built on REAL trust and if you cannot trust Him with the reality of your thoughts, your relationship with Him will always be prohibited. It is now some 20 years since the passing of our friend and although I have no human explanation for our loss, I made a commitment on that day of prayer that I would forever be REAL with my Lord. I would no longer feel that I had to “dress my thoughts up for the Lord”. Instead…I come to Him raw every day and wait for Him to fill me. Personal note: human pain such as this event provided in mine and my husband’s life are never going to be explained in this life time. Death is one of the most difficult events we face in life. If you are going through such an event right now in your life, I offer you my deepest respect. May you be blessed even if by one word of this blog. Daniella.