Ed and Lisa Young Share Insights About Grief From the Loss of Their Dear Daughter LeeBeth; “GOD DOES NOT WASTE PAIN”
As the longtime leaders of Fellowship Church in Texas, Ed and Lisa Young have extensive experience in guiding others through the challenges of loss, addiction and pain. For decades, they’ve consistently shared a clear message with others: God is present in suffering, there is a meaningful purpose even in the midst of pain and healing is always possible.
But in January 2021, the couple were forced to reflect on whether they genuinely believed the very message they had been preaching for years when they experienced every parent’s nightmare: the death of their eldest daughter, LeeBeth.
In an interview with The Christian Post, the Youngs remembered LeeBeth as a devoted daughter, sister and friend who actively served on church staff. Yet, she struggled with a dependency on alcohol and Adderall as a way to manage her battles with anxiety and depression.
“She was a wonderful person and a great Christ follower; she loved the church,” Lisa said. “She began self-medicating for the pain of anxiety and depression and some poor choices that she made.”
“She was binge drinking along with Adderall, and I went and picked her up,” Ed recalled. “We took her to a great Christian therapist, and the therapist recommended that she stay at our home that night to sober up and come down off of her high.”
Ed recounted the moment he laid LeeBeth down in a bed in their playroom, saying, “I love you” and kissing her on the forehead before retreating to his office. He was working on a message about Abraham and Isaac when tragedy struck.
“I was writing in cursive, and I wrote this line Genesis 22:9. It says, ‘And Abraham laid Isaac on the altar.’ I just finished the altar, put a period down, and heard a sound. I ran into the playroom yelling her name. And in essence, she was dead,” he said.
Amid their pain, it was Abraham’s tremendous act of faith, offering Isaac on the altar, that led the Youngs to metaphorically place their own story on the altar, saying, “God, however you want to use it, we will do what you want us to do.”
In their latest book, A Path through Pain: How Faith Deepens and Joy Grows through What You Would Never Choose, the Youngs candidly discuss their family’s journey from sorrow and anger to hope and healing following LeeBeth’s death. Sharing their story, they said, has been cathartic for them — but is also a way to honor their daughter and equip others to find healing amid pain.
“As a young father, I would have these nightmares and these horrible, fleeting thoughts: ‘What if something happened to my family? Could I go on? What if something happened to Lisa or the kids? Would I turn my back on everything?’ When this happened, I can’t describe to you the grace and the mercy and the love and the compassion of God,” Ed said.
Lisa added that throughout their ministry, they’ve always been open about their lives, both the good and the challenging moments. They wanted to honor LeeBeth’s memory and openly discuss her struggle with addiction, emphasizing that addiction is an illness.
“This is a messy death, it’s an out-of-order death,” she said. “It just seems so surreal that your child would die before you do. As pastors, we have a daughter who struggled with addiction. That’s a messy thing for anybody, but let alone someone who’s teaching and preaching on the goodness of God, parenting, all of those different things. But the day she passed away, we came to the conclusion, which was not a difficult conclusion to make, that God doesn’t waste pain. We didn’t want to sugarcoat it.”
Source: christian ost
To read more, click here: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/even-pastors-learn-marriage-isnt-easy-5-ways-help-make-work
