I Don’t Know
I find myself saying this a lot to the Lord recently. Luke, my little brother, having passed away two weeks ago today by suicide, I continue to say this very sentence over and over again. Lord, I don’t know. I don’t know how to think of the situation that I have been placed in. I don’t know what this means next for me and my family. I don’t know why it is that I didn’t see things sooner. I don’t know if I could have done anything differently. I don’t know what Luke is doing at the moment. I don’t know what he was feeling when he made the decision. I don’t know what he was thinking when I said how proud of him I was and that I loved him at our last meeting. I don’t know what was going through his head when we departed and saw each other for the last time driving side by side and that goofy grin. I don’t know why he decided to serve with me in Kairos. I don’t know why he made the decision he did. I don’t know the weight that he bore. I don’t know. I simply don’t know. I listened, but I did not understand. I saw, but I did not comprehend. I assumed all was well and he was in a season, but I lacked the compassion to see that it could be his last. I saw strength, when he was weak. I saw grit when he was was considering the last mile. I saw a future, when he had left it behind.
This ache that I feel, does not go away. It gets covered. This grief that I feel flows in and out with the tide. I believe he is with the Lord, and in that I am comforted. But so many emotions run through that I don’t know what is is that I even feel anymore. Memories upon memories that I’ve shared with him that I’m now grasping onto like a life raft in a hurricane, terrified they will depart from me. So young we both are. So many years that I may go without hearing his voice, talking on the couch, or seeing that goofy smile. How long is it that I must wait to know what I don’t? How long is this wait that I am on? When is the physician coming into the waiting room to see me to tell me the good news? Time feels like an enemy to living in life everlasting.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” - 1 Corinthians 13:12