Proverbs 2:8 “... for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.”
My daughter passed away from an aneurysm 18 ago. It was something we had no knowledge of and we found out after it had taken her life. She was only seventeen years old and had just graduated from high school. She lived such a short time, but she managed to pack a full life in those seventeen years. When we have lost a loved one, we find ourselves reliving our days to see what we missed or what we could have done to prevent the tragedy. What I discovered about her condition is that often altitude can cause an aneurysm to rear its ugly head. My daughter suffered her aneurysm while she was in one of her favorite places in the world, Kings Canyon, located in the Sierra Mountains in California. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
In the beginning of my grief I often felt if only I had known, maybe we could have done something. I know as a mother, I would have watched over her like a hawk. My will for my life and my daughter’s would have been of constant worry and me trying to control all of the coming and goings of her young life. I can tell you if I had known what was going on in her head, I probably would have had her locked in an operating room attached to an x-ray machine, with doctors on standby. That would not have been the life either one of us would have wanted for her.
I now see how God’s will for both of our lives was a much better plan for both of us. I had the normal concerns any mom has for her child as she was growing up. If I had known she had this ticking time bomb in her head, she and I both would have missed out on those days of living our lives to the fullest especially because I had not experienced the peace of the Savior. She would have never encountered the people, places and events that helped create the fullness of her seventeen year life. The most tragic loss for her would have been the absence of experiencing the majestic Sierra Mountains that came to mean so much to her. It was in this place where she came to know Jesus as her personal Savior. She met Him in this high place, the very same place where this aneurysm took her from us. This high place is the place where she came to meet her Savior face to face. As far as I am concerned, it was His perfect plan and one that has brought me such comfort. I now see sometimes ignorance is bliss. The Lord knew the number of her days and she lived each day to the fullest.
Are you reliving all the things you wish you would have known? We question Him and question ourselves. We eventually need to close the gate on all of those thoughts. God allowed us to know what He wanted us to know when He wanted us to know it. We must believe that He was protecting us. Our life and our child’s life played out the way it did. We might not ever understand it, but eventually, to move forward, we have to accept His plan. Why? He knows the plans for your life. It is a plan not to harm you but give you a future and a hope. We might not believe this when we are in deep grief, but, my dear sister in loss, His word is true.
Lord, our lives are in Your hands as was the life of our precious child.
– Michele
