I’m not sure what’s wrong with me that when I hear the word Alive, I instantly think of the dead.

Maybe it’s because a young person asked me recently if life is really worth the struggle.

When you’re young and uncertain, sometimes you only see pain in this world and so many risks. Sometimes when you’re trying to find your place in this world, the world doesn’t make nice. It leaves you out. It tears you apart. It flings reckless words, and those words pierce. Sometimes it leaves you wondering if it’s worth it.

I remember walking in those shoes. I was that young wonderer once, the one who doubted her place. But so many years later, I sing a redemption song, and it sounds like peace, and it sounds like purpose. It grew up strong and real in me, especially in the face of loss.

I have loved a number of people who have died young. They disappeared like vapors, and we choked in the smoke. I see the faces of a handful of friends who are not alive, not here, not anymore. How do we ever make sense of it?

I was 14 when a close friend died suddenly. There was no warning, except that my sister and I had a feeling on our way home that night. We couldn’t shake it, and we couldn’t figure it out, so we returned home and lay down to sleep. I woke after midnight, hearing my parents and their tears on the telephone in the kitchen.

He was only 17 when we dropped red February roses over his casket.

But only after Mom and I crept down to sister’s basement bedroom to explain her best friend wasn’t breathing. Those are the moments that never will leave you. The moments when alive becomes lost, and there’s no going back.

I read Psalm 23 on the funeral bulletin and a poem about how God never promised the skies would always be blue.

It was cold and Michigan skies were gray, and we stayed home from school the next week. I didn’t want to ever go back. I wanted to drop out of everything I knew and recreate my life, and recreate myself.

I wanted to hole up in my bedroom and sing with Wilson Phillips, “I don’t wanna think about it, Don’t wanna think clear, Don’t analyze What I’m doing here.” I “Wanna be impulsive, Reckless, And lose myself In your kiss.” (Lyrics from “Impulsive” by Wilson Philips)

It wasn’t like me at all, and that’s what I loved about those words. They said follow your heart, be spontaneous. But I only heard that someone I cared about was forever gone. Someone I cared about more, was still near, but only in part.

Those words were about people dying young and how I could never make sense of it.

I tell my young friend that I’ve lived, while too many others have been lost these last two decades. Some we’ve laid to rest, with dirt and ceremony and roses. Others, still breathing, we’ve lost to long seasons of heartache and abuse. Some have just been hammered so long, they’re barely in there anymore, and we miss them. I miss them. I wonder where their losses began. In a cold basement in the night?

But I also tell my friend that the words from the funeral program remain when it all comes crashing down. When we’re startled and scrambling, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.”

Even if the only thing we understand then is the desire to lose ourselves in something else. Even if we don’t want to think and we want to go make something new, something other. Even if we want to escape.

Life can be terrible, I say. That doesn’t sound much like a redemption song, but I continue. Life is also a gift, a beautiful gift. All those years ago, one Life was given in exchange for the rest. A great and terrible loss occurred, so that you and I might receive real life, life that never ends.

There will always be sadness on this side, and fear and disappointment and chaos. But all the way through the piercing and the terror and the pain, even in the valley—especially in the valley–my song remains.

Because no matter what, the truth is still–“When I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”

God is with us. Even in the valley He is faithful. And yes, my friend, life is worth the struggle. This too shall pass. It will be well.

Your life will sing a song to the world. Live, and let it be your own redemption song.

“Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”