Death Never Calls Ahead
I don’t consider myself a writer or someone who journals, yet here I am again sitting down to process my thoughts through my fingers.
Christmas 2015 and the 10 days that followed have been on my mind today; I remember it like it was yesterday. Brittany busted into the room we were staying in at my brother’s house in St. Louis, waking me up from my deep sleep to tell me she was pregnant. Immense joy! We had been praying and trying to have a baby for quite some time and God had done it; He gave us a baby.
The Lord gives good gifts!
As Christmas festivities ended, we made our way back to Hazel Green, Alabama, home at the time. New Year’s Eve was coming in two days and Brittany and I would be hosting a party with some of our students and young adults to bring in 2016. That was when the pain and bleeding started. Concerned and scared we got in to the see the doctor as soon as possible, December 30, 2015. Doctors did an ultrasound and took some blood to send off to the lab for testing. Go home and rest and we will call you with results within 24 hours. New Year’s Eve came, and we got the call, “your levels are too low, this is not going to be a viable pregnancy.”
The Lord takes good gifts.
Needless to say, the party to bring in 2016 was canceled. However, Passion Conference on January 2-4 was coming quickly, and Brittany and I were leading our Young Adults there for the second year in a row. We went, trusting the Lord was holding us.
I was numb. It was hard to focus, hard to lead, difficult to sing…I had never experienced pain like this personally. On day two, during our lunch hour, Louie Giglio brought a guy on stage to interview that I had never heard of, Levi Lusko. A trendy looking dude who was apparently a guy who had planted a church in Montana that had exploded with growth. Levi wasn’t there for that though; he was there to tell the story of his daughter Lenya. Lenya had an asthma attack on December 20, 2012, and died. She was 5 years old. Levi shared this story of pain and loss by lifting glory to the Lord in a way that will forever stick with me. As I wept listening to this Father talk about losing his kindergarten daughter, I knew that my heavenly Father was holding me in the painful loss of a baby I had never known but already loved so deeply.
The next day, January 4, 2016 (also Brittany and I’s two-year anniversary), the conference came to a close. Before we left, I wanted to grab a copy of Levi’s book, Through the Eyes of a Lion, that he wrote about his journey through the loss of his daughter Lenya and what God had taught him. I approached one of the probably 50 places to buy merch and books set up around the stadium at Passion, “I’d like to buy Levi Lusko’s book, do you have one?” The lady working the kiosk locked eyes with me and paused, as if she was almost in shock and said, “Uh, well, we have been sold out in the whole arena since he spoke yesterday, but I just had someone hand me this copy less than two minutes ago to sell…I guess it was meant for you sir.” With tears rolling down my cheeks I paid the lady and mustered the courage to tell her why it was “meant for me” by sharing what Brittany and I were going through at the time.
I tell you that story because God used Levi and his book to minister to my heart and soul deeply in a very dark time for me over the next several weeks and months. It is because of the healing words and perspective gleaned from him in that season that I turned to that book again today, November 14, 2023.
Levi writes about not having to go through the pain of losing his daughter alone. He says this about two couples who were there for him and his family, “They have been with us since the beginning at Fresh Life. More than friends, we are thick as thieves. They were there for us on our worst day and have been there every day since. There are very few things more defining than the people you choose to do life with.”
I can relate with what Levi says here. For Brittany and I, this is Kristin and Charlie Masterski. There from the beginning. Opened their home for us to live in their basement while we figured things out. Kristin there to bust in the house and get Brittany out of a deep depression. There to laugh with us in the best times and there to cry with us when we lost our first baby. There at the birth of Selah Grace and we were there when Seth Allen was born. Choosing to do life with them has most definitely been defining in our lives.
That is why today, and the last year, has been so hard.
Today marks one year since the Lord took Kristin home to be with him in glory. As I was rereading some of Levi’s words a few stuck out to me, “death doesn’t call ahead.” This couldn’t be truer. Not many things are for sure in life, death is one of them, yet when it arrives, unexpected and unannounced, the pain of those left in its shadow cuts quick and deep.
David writes in Psalm 23 about the valley of the shadow of death. Death casts a shadow that keeps the lowest of valleys dark. I feel it. I think all those that knew and loved Kristin have felt the despair of this shadow. What we sometimes don’t feel or see is what is all around that valley of death in Psalm 23.
In the valley, verse 4 says, “You are with me.” The Lord, the shepherd, is with me in the valley of the shadow of death. This must mean that he has led me to this valley. While it is true that our shepherd will leave the 99 to go get the 1, this is not the context we find here in Psalm 23:4. Verse 3 says, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.” Could it be that his path of righteousness he is leading me in, that is for the glory of his name, takes me through a valley of death?
I believe that is exactly what he is saying. The great shepherd leads us through the valley of the shadow death to get us to something that must be so much greater, so much greener of a pasture on the other side. This pasture is not physical and emotional comfort, but one of satisfaction, joy, peace, and contentment in the shepherd alone. He is the one with me. He is the one who restores me. He is the one who comforts me. Ultimately, He is the one whose house I will live in forever.
This is why James writes to “count it joy, when we face trials of various kinds,” because it is producing within us a perseverance and endurance reliant fully on the Lord Jesus.
Does this truth make the pain of losing a best friend just go away? No, but it does make it more bearable.
Does it make the weight of loss lighter? No, but it puts it in perspective that it is momentary.
I think what I have been reminded of walking this journey over the last year is, like Levi says, “pain is a microphone.” God so often whispers in our everyday lives, until pain and suffering hit. It is in those moments that we can hear God loud and clear. We may not know the whys to the circumstance, but God clearly teaches us things through the pain.
It is in this pain that there is such opportunity to be used by Him. It is when we look in the rearview mirror that we can see the fingerprints of our Savior that haven’t been visible to us while going through the pain. I believe that God will not waste a moment of our pain and suffering. Not only does he use it to make us into the image of his son Jesus, but he also takes that pain and can turn it into a platform. He takes our mess and gives us a message. He will take that trial and turn it into a testimony.
The message I’d love for all my friends and family that are grieving today and have been hurting for 365 days to hear is this,
One of the worst days of our lives was the best day of Kristin’s.
That house our good shepherd has, is the house she is living in forever. She is home. The best home. Her forever home. A home with no more pain. No more suffering. No more tears. No more sin. No more brokenness. No more death. A home worshipping her King, as close to the front as she can get waving her hands jumping and shouting like only she can, for the rest of eternity.
I believe the message she would want you to hear is the same one I spoke at her funeral. Words she wrote in her Bible less than 24 hours before going home to be with Jesus, “God wants me to be in alignment with Him. Purify Me, Redeem Me! Jesus you can change everything.”
Turn to Jesus. In your loneliness, anxiety, despair, pain, grief, depression, anger, doubt, and brokenness, run to Jesus. Align your life with His. Allow Him to redeem you and purify you! Trust in Him with your life. He can change everything!
“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” -John 16:33
