At age 14, I was a socially-awkward, horse-crazy, hockey-obsessed 8th grader. Not much has changed since then, in that sense. I lived a pretty normal life. I was never the girl that “oh my gosh I haaaaated middle school”—I had a few good friends, I stayed at my extra-curriculars until 9 pm every night, and I gushed over Zac Efron in High School Musical. Life was good, and aside from my parents divorce six years prior, it had been pretty free of emotional hardships.
Every Wednesday night, I was made to go to Confirmation at the Lutheran church a few blocks from our house. I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious family, but for some reason my parents still forced me to attend this one and a half hour class once a week for 3 years, because I think that’s just “what you did.” I hated it—I didn’t have any friends there, I didn’t learn anything, and the room was always thick with boredom. I usually tried to swing it so that I stayed with my dad on Wednesday nights—he was far more likely to let me skip confirmation than my mom was. At this point, I believed in God but I didn’t know or understand how this Jesus character fit into the story. I still didn’t know the gospel.
I met Darian a few years prior at the camp I attended regularly. I spent weeks and weeks there, camping on the Baptism River, canoeing chains of Minnesota lakes, and spending days on end kayaking through the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior. Darian was incredibly smart, driven, funny, and kind. I saw him year after year, week after week, always ready with a hug and a new constellation or two to teach me. I admired him and looked up to him like an older brother—he even told me once that if he had a younger sister, he’d want her to be just like me.
February 28, 2006. Darian had arrived in Peru a week or two prior, and had partnered with an organization in Cusco where he was going to teach english and learn spanish. It didn’t surprise me when I found out he was going—he was the type to always want to do more. And then things changed in the blink of an eye, as they usually do. It was dark, and the bus he was riding collided with another vehicle and careened off the edge of the steep cliff on the side of that narrow, winding road. The accident injured 50 and killed 12 people—including Darian. He was 24.
I found out about the tragedy a week or two later, on a Sunday afternoon. My friend told me. My dad came inside from working in the garden to find me a sobbing mess on the floor, unable to comprehend the how’s and why’s of such a thing and feeling my heart suffocating under its first weight of death. I didn’t sleep that night, and my math teacher had to gently nudge my puffy eyes awake in class the next day.
Suddenly, I was furious at the God that I knew-of-but-didn’t-know. I was plagued with the question that plagues so many people—why? Why would a loving and just God take away someone who was so…good? So young? Every time I went to church for Confirmation, I sobbed silently as I struggled under heaviness and anger, as the people around me sang songs to the One who took this man out of the world. It went this way for weeks, and then months—the tears dried, but peace never came.
The following winter, I sat yet again in that stuffy church on a Wednesday night—finally in my last year before being confirmed. I was still clueless. I half-listened as the Youth Director started on the train of announcements, in one ear and out the other. That is, until she started talking about the upcoming mission trip to Juarez, Mexico that spring. As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I knew I had to go. At the time, it didn’t make sense—I hated going to church for any reason, but here I was about to sign up to travel with a group of high schoolers I didn’t really know (mostly older than me, all already friends with each other), and travel to Mexico to build a house and pretend like I had ever opened a bible.
The real reason I decided to go (aside from what I now know is the Holy Spirit), was that I was tired of being mad at God. It had been months, I was exhausted by it, and it was time to do something. Plus, maybe it was time to do something a little bigger with the time on earth I was given—the way Darian was doing.
Those ten days in Juarez changed everything for me. My whole world was opened up—literally and figuratively. I laughed and cried and loved the people around me fiercely. I talked to God for the first time ever and my heart softened, day by day. I made some really good friends. I worked hard under the hot sun, laying a house brick by brick and taking breaks to kick a soccer ball relentlessly in the dusty streets. I felt my crumpled heart heal as I sang to Casting Crowns under a cotton candy sky. I was filled, body, mind, and soul.
It’s been ten years since then. Deciding to give my life to the Lord wasn’t a decision I made that week (a decision I wouldn’t make for another six years), but it was what started the long, sometimes painful, wild ride that led me back here: to Peru, in month 11 of the World Race, just one week before returning to US soil after 324 days of living my kingdom journey.
A couple weeks ago, I found myself on a 24 hour bus that took me on the exact same narrow, winding road that took Darian’s life, gazing out the window in the middle of the night at the milky way that he always taught me about. It is not lost on me that I am ending my grand adventure—of a different kind—in the same place that he ended his.
I don’t know why young, good people are taken out of this world too soon. It’s a question I still struggle to answer. However, what I do know is that God works all things for good. If Darian hadn’t died, I likely wouldn’t have gotten on a plane to Mexico and fallen in love with another part of the world, I wouldn’t have gotten involved with my church when I did (or maybe ever.) Maybe if he hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have sought out bible studies or being a member of the worship team in college. Maybe if it weren’t for these things, I would’ve continued down some paths that I can’t bear to think about now. Maybe if Darian hadn’t died serving in Peru, I wouldn’t be here serving in Peru now. Maybe my life would look much, much different.
I am overwhelmed and thankful that God brought me here, eleven years later, to see and experience and fall in love just a little bit with the same country that led my friend here so long ago. I am overwhelmed and thankful that the Lord pursued me way back then in a time of grief and gave me a purpose that would last a lifetime.
It is a journey that has brought me full circle, and will bring me back to the United States in just one short week. I can’t wait to see you all.
