Editor's Note: My only sister, the third of three children and the "baby" of our family, died suddenly and unexpectedly in late July. She was 38. She was not sick, not that we knew. One moment she was alive. The next moment she was gone. A parent losing a child -- at any age and under any circumstance -- has to be the most devastating, most painful experience imaginable. Losing one's child cuts so searingly deep that I cannot bear the thought of such, even after watching up close and holding near, attempting to console and begging to calm my parents as they lived through the wrenching realization that their daughter had gone, passed on, before them. Dimensions to a person's sadness and grief only expand when you are forced to live them. It is a stark contrast -- living in and through something rather than simply sensing it or even empathizing with it. Still, as we look on, awkwardly askance or eschew even toward those we love most when tragedy strikes them for we sense innately within ourselves an abiding fear rooted in self-preservation that speaks in monotones simply, "I really don't want to go there," we can't help but observe a strength and a power that is foreign to our nature. Of unknown origins, it emanates from inside, from inside. It moves in you, through you and around you It moves about you, overtaking and becoming pervasive. Yet, to call it you is simply not true. Death reminds us we are not alone. The death of your child, all the more so.

My mother, God bless her, knows this. And, God, as you can see from her profound expression below, has blessed her with a peace that surpasses all understanding; yet one that can only be definitively requited and fulfilled by God himself and His abiding love, which makes all things new. See now if you agree.

She came. She saw. She left - unrealized dreams wrapped in palm leaves waiting to be harvested. Dreams that could have grown bigger than life. Could have. Should have. She left, and her dreams left. That is why there are tears on earth.

You have moved on to a higher place, to hob-nob with the angels.

God often brings the most lasting and wonderful things out of the darkest moments in our lives. Sometimes, death preaches the gospel more powerfully than life ever could. Every time someone dies, it reminds those watching that God's work is not yet complete. For He must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. The one who weeps with me - His death was a cry and His resurrection is a promise.

God approves of my tears and welcomes me to look at death through the eyes of Christ. The comfort He provides does not remove my grief but it holds a promise that one day he'll take me to a place where I'll never cry again. Faith in God should never silence you in the dark hours of grief; rather, that is when we begin to understand how deep, rich and sturdy God's love really is. He will not turn away from questions or be surprised by the grief, or repulsed by anger or turn his back on my pain. He understands the darkest moments of human existence and enters them with boundless mercy, unending love and amazing grace.

Sometimes grief is so painful that it feels like you died also. But you live on because God has chosen for you to do so. There is a meaning and purpose still ahead. Your soul needs to be fed, your heart needs to be encouraged. The story that began in an eternity without death will end the same way. You grieve with one eye on your loss and one eye on the future. Pain is colored by hope. Leave room in your tears for little quiet moments of celebration. My child has gone to heaven, Lord, hear my humble plea: Until I get there, take care of her for me. You see, I've been doing that since you placed her in my arms and gladdened me with all her lovely charms. Now, on your arms she is leaning - and that gives love, hope, and faith such a deeper meaning.

Jesus' death on the cross gave life. The death of a seed gives new life. God's requirement for experiencing Him is death. When Jesus invites us to be saved from our sins and to accept him as Lord, it comes at a great cost to us. Jesus is asking us to give up our very lives. What we do not realize until we totally relinquish our lives, giving ourselves wholly and completely over to God, submitting everything that we are to him, is that we are not really living at all. Without this death we will continue to strive, manipulate, and fret over every detail of life. Only when we finally come to the end of ourselves and are able to say, "Yes, Lord, I am Yours completely," will we experience real freedom for the first time. Then, and only then, is Christ fully manifested in and through our lives. Then, and only then, can other people look at you and see Christ.

Christ describes our lives as vessels - vessels for Him to be revealed in and seen by others.

I imagine myself sucking wind and gasping for air. But instead of it being a bad experience, this is one I have been conditioned to love.

Push, push, push - keep going and do not quit. There is the finish line, it is in sight. Puke, yes. Quit? No way. I will not. Take it easy? Not a chance. Conserve energy? Absolutely not. No, I am going to give every bit of everything I am even though I am completely exhausted and the muscles in my legs and in my back are squealing at me over and over to shut it down. I will not.

There - in plain view - is my goal. There is my finish line.

Death is my prize. I run to death - the chance to collapse; to fold into a moment of utter powerlessness and breathless fulfillment. It is a synapse in time when you step outside of time, one of being absorbed into something that you cannot feel nor even touch with your physical senses until they have died - until they have been ignored to death.

Death is the end of a run. It is the moment when I know nothing but that I which I truly am because I have no energy for pretension, no room for containment and no strength for lifting up even the yoke of my own body.

Death is the prize. Death is the state of attainment.

I am full of joy; full of contentment. I am attracted to death because death calls to me and whispers gently how it wants to be my friend, my cohort, and show me how my end is really only another way to live except for my strident repulsiveness, a requirement of my previous mind, body and state, that it allows no more. It has been, or rather it is, deposed. By death.

In the end, for me, death is. . .

Death is real. It is conquered. It is sought. It is assured, and it is obtainable. And, I long to embrace it - both time and again, daily, and also once and for all.