The Goodbye That Broke My Heart: When Grief and Loss Shake Your Faith

We always say a year was a doozy – don’t we? Well, I definitely had some doozies in 2018. In late March last year, my sister-friend died. She had just deployed as a civilian to Africa for the second time. The last time I saw her was in February. We spent 3 or so days organizing her closets, packing her bags and running errands that she needed help with. We’d also gone to see Black Panther and talked about life and love. I cooked us a pizza. We almost ate all of it. After I went home, I had called her a few times after that until she left and then texted her over WhatsApp. So when her sister responded to the last WhatsApp text asking me to call her, my heart sank. When I hung up the phone, I was trying to process the fact that my friend was fighting for her life in a hospital so far away from home. There was still hope that she’d make it, but little did I know that I was about to face the goodbye that broke my heart.

Within a week, my friend’s condition deteriorated and she was in a critical state. When I talked to her sister the second or third time, I couldn’t hide the tears I was choking on as she told me the details of what had happened. I was trying to be strong because I knew the last thing her sister needed was for me to start sobbing. Yes, Sonja was my friend, but she was her sister. I couldn’t hold it in. My voice cracked. Tears dropped. And I felt like I couldn’t breathe while I told her sister that I was going to stand in prayer with them for Sonja’s healing. There was still hope, so I went home and prayed to God for a miracle. I pleaded with him for my friend’s life. But I thought to myself – all these evil people walking this earth, and this happens to Sonja?

You see, Sonja had spent the majority of the time that I knew her waking up in the early hours of the morning praying to the Lord. She wasn’t perfect, but she was one of the most godly women I’d ever met. She loved people and she loved God. She was an overcomer. She was a fighter – and she did most of her fighting in prayer. She left an example that I still reference in my walk with the Lord and in my career. She gave me feedback about my flaws in a way that was loving but honest. And she was always in my corner, encouraging me and not letting me give up. And she did that for every friend she had. And so if Sonja had died because she had finally lost to a long bout of cancer, I think I could have stomached her death better. But that’s not what happened. My friend deployed with her job, got sick and never recovered. At a time in her life when she was believing God for some things to happen. It was all so sudden. And it was unfair.

What really touched my heart was that one of her oldest friends and one of her other sisters reached out to me to make sure that I knew what happened. Sonja treated me like family. Her death was worse than any break up I’ve ever had. And it stung deeper than any other loss I’d experienced. And even in her death I was reminded why this loss stung so bad. Sonja was a special woman who touched the hearts and lives of people she met.

After the funeral, one day I sat in my garage…windows up, door down, car off. In May – so it was HOT! I let God have it. All the anger, the grief, the sadness. “How could you? Of all people – her!” But once I got it all out He asked me to trust Him. He said that she left behind an example, and that if I followed it I would see her one day again. If I continued to read the Word and live it out I would see her again. The grief was still there, but I was able to deal with it because I knew it was true that I would see my friend again. God sat with me and still sits with me through that pain, but He also gave me the joy of knowing that while she’s no longer with us, she’s with Him. And that THAT was the point of it all – even if we feel our time together wasn’t long enough.

God’s comfort doesn’t change the fact that I still miss my friend. It doesn’t change the fact that I still haven’t deleted her last 2 voicemails to me. It doesn’t change the fact that I sometimes still want to pick up the phone to tell her what’s been going on. But it does change what I do going forward. And I choose to trust God and follow the blueprint my friend left behind. The only thing worse than losing her would have been to never have known her. So I’m going to carry the torch. I’m going to fight my battles in prayer. And when I see my friend again one day, we’ll talk about it all.