Five years is a decent chunk of time. Enough to not know what season or where I’ll be five years from now. I have no idea where my life will be in 2022. And at this point my five-year plan is non-existent.
Five years ago I was a freshman in college—continuing my dream of pursing volleyball and living in one of the single most beautiful places I’ve been able to call home, Ventura, California.
Five years ago I stood at my brother’s bedside holding his hand as he took his last breath. He had been hospitalized for three months following an improvised explosive device (IED) bombing—leaving him to be the sole survivor, while serving as a combat medic in Kabul, Afghanistan with the U.S. Army.
The survival of my brother, Edward, was a major cause for me and the other 50 people in his company to hold hope. My hope was in the Lord—that after coming insanely close to losing my 21-year old brother while deployed in Afghanistan, I held hope that God would heal and restore Edward. My brother’s battle buddies held hope that while they had just lost three brothers in this accident—SFC Clark Corley, SPC Ryan Lumley, & SPC Thomas Mayberry—that Edward would survive.
While I grew up attending church, until I was in secondary school I didn’t have an understanding of what it truly meant to follow Jesus. And up until I joined a church in college and made that understanding a reality—I didn’t know what faith or hope looked like. I held on to faith. I had faith that the Lord would heal my brother. I had faith that he would be able to be a father to his daughter born just 3 weeks before his accident. I had hope. I had hoped that not only would my brother survive, but he would thrive. I had hope that the Lord would heal his body and the once stated paralysis would be a testament that the Lord reins higher than a doctor’s diagnosis. I hoped I’d see my brother walk again.
March 5, 2012 I lost my only brother.
And now here I am five years later halfway across the world from my home. Residing as I have been for the past 13/18 months in the continent where my brother was injured.
My brother has been absent of almost 1/5 of my life now. Edward died a week after my 19th birthday and was the last time I got to hear his voice. The words “Happy Birthday Sissy, I love you” will never leave my heart.
Time is such a strange concept. It feels close in the context of I feel that I just lost him, yet at the same time I feel like my life is strides away from where I was in 2012.
Time hasn’t healed wounds, but the Lord has changed my perspective. I no longer mourn that Ed won’t attend my wedding or meet my future children, but rejoice that at 17 I was able to stand at the front a church next to my sister-in-law celebrating their marriage. I rejoice in the 5 year old niece that brings the most joyful reminder of my brother—in the way she makes faces and how stinky her feet are.
Most importantly I am thankful that the story of my brother was where I saw the Lord’s faithfulness. I’m thankful that I’ve learned many things from my brother including reliance on Jesus.
This year on the 5th I wrote out some of the words I associate my brother with; warrior, hero, generous, loving, valor, brave, victor, fighter, strong, joy, approachable, and sharp shooter. I am thankful that although I’ve had to live the past 5 years of my life without my brother—the Lord blessed me with the first 19 years of my life with him in it. I got to live my childhood with him beating me up and beating me down the mountain—and I can honestly say I learned so much from him in those 19 years and will never take for granted the years I go with him physically in my life.
There will always be a part of me that doesn’t want March 5th to hold any meaning to me. I will always want my brother here. I would trade anything to hear that voice again and to hug that giant. But I know that the Lord will continue to be faithful in this journey He has placed me on.
Always missing you, sausage toes. Until I see you again!
