Having Faith in an Abundance of Sorrow

It may only be Wednesday, but, honestly, these last few days have felt like a month. These past few days have been rather heavy emotionally, so it hasn't been the happiest week.

This past weekend, a fellow University of Illinois journalism student passed away. Even though the College of Media is rather small, and it's easy to know a lot of the other students in the college and major of journalism, I didn't know him personally. But my sister did, so it affected her. And my sister is my best friend, so it affected me. They weren't close, but it still hurt to see my sister and other people I know saddened by his passing.

Later in the weekend, the news of Flip Saunders' death was all over the internet. Saunders was the head coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He passed away after a battle with cancer. Obviously, I didn't personally know the late basketball coach and Minnesota basketball star, but I do follow basketball a bit, so it was sad to hear that news, especially since it seemed liked upsetting news was piling on. Plus, my sister is a huge basketball fan, so she just seemed even more sad than she already was, and I hated seeing that, knowing that.

But the news I got today hurt the most. A few minutes after I got back from class, my mom called. It wasn't peculiar that she seemed to randomly be calling. She's my mom; moms worry about their children and call them, and that seems to be more true when the kid is away at college, away from home.



I don't know what I was expecting her to say, but I wasn't expecting to hear her say what she did. After wondering where I was like my mom always does, she proceeded to tell me that my tito (Filipino for uncle) recently passed away earlier today in the Philippines. I could definitely tell that she was grief-stricken, and of course she would be. Her brother just died. She told me to pray for him and for his family members -- our family members.

Now, my mom will be traveling to the Philippines with my tita (aunt in Filipino) to be there for the rest of their family. I didn't know my tito that well. I'd only seen him a couple of times when he visited us here in Illinois, but he was someone I knew, someone I cared about. He was family. But most of all, it hurts so much because of my mom. It pains me to hear sadness in my mom's voice. She very rarely sounds like that. The only time I can think of is when my lola (grandma in Filipino) passed away in 2007. It's not easy to see (or hear, in my case) someone's sadness when they always present themselves as a strong person emotionally.


I wish I wasn't 120 miles from home. My family's not one to show much affection, but I wish I was right there with my mom to give her a hug. I wish my mom had the chance to get there before my tito passed. I wish she got to say goodbye while he was still here. I wish all of this sorrow and passing wasn't happening, but I know that everything can't be sunshine and rainbows.


What I usually do in hard times like this is turn to His word. I'll look up related Bible verses. After all, my mom did tell my to pray, so pray I will.

These are some verses I turned to:

• Lamentations 3:31-33
• Revelation 21:4-5
• Romans 8:38-39
• Matthew 5:4
• Psalm 18:28

I also have a Pinterest board full of Bible verses and related stuff, so that was also very helpful.

 If there's one thing this week has taught me, it's to cherish every moment you have with the people you love. Once that moment passes, it's gone. Time is precious. It's not something that you can get back.

As I write this, only two hours or so have passed since I received the news of my tito's death, so it's still processing. It still hasn't really sunk in. And that's the news that's affected me the most, so I'm not sure how this is all going to play out.

The only other person in my life that I've lost is my lola, and that was several years ago. I'm not the same person I was back then, so this all feels relatively new to me. Not to mention my mother has never been in a foreign country without me since my birth. It's a little scary to think that she'll be millions of miles away from me for a little while. So as I continue to deal with this, I will try to have faith and just do what my mom told me to: pray.