God, Grief, and PTSD.
A blood-curdling scream tears from my body before I can stop it. The sound steals my breath, traps it somewhere deep in my chest, as I sit pinned inside what was supposed to be a car. Metal is folded and twisted around me. The air is thick with the smell of gasoline and destruction. Blood and flesh slide down my face, warm and unfamiliar, and my hands shake as I reach for my six-year-old. She does not respond. She is silent in a world that has suddenly become unbearably loud. I do not know how long I scream. I only know that the sound feels endless, like it will never stop, like it has attached itself to my soul.
Then my eyes open.
I am inside an MRI machine, the space is tight and suffocating, begging to be let out. The scream is still ringing in my ears, so real I am certain it followed me here. Even awake, my body cannot tell the difference between memory and now. Trauma does not stay in the past. It lives in the nervous system. It breathes with you. People assume I must be angry at God. They expect rage, blame, and accusations, but God was there that day. I believe that with every part of me. One moment, my daughter was singing, dancing, and eating ice cream, wrapped in the ordinary joy of being a child. Next, she was asleep. She never felt fear. She never knew her neck had snapped. She never knew her heart had stopped. She never knew strangers knelt on warm pavement, hands shaking, performing CPR, trying to pull her back. If mercy can exist inside devastation, then that mercy was hers. I know these details because I lived and because I remember, the images, the sounds, the weight of that day are engraved into me so deeply, they feel permanent. I replay them when I close my eyes. I wake up carrying them. I would do anything to carve those memories out of my body if it meant one moment of peace.
My daughter’s death did not turn me away from God. It brought me back to Him. In the raw aftermath, stripped of illusion and comfort, I saw clearly that I had done nothing to build a real relationship with Him before. Not a living, breathing one. Not the kind rooted in humility and surrender. Faith is not behavior. It is not meeting expectations or fitting into Christian culture. It is letting God into the parts of your heart you keep guarded, the places you do not want examined. I believe God showed me mercy by allowing me to live. I say that without drama and without exaggeration. The road I was on would have led me somewhere dark, and I know that truth intimately. Being spared forced me to confront myself, my choices, and my distance from Him. Losing my daughter shattered me, but it also stripped away the lies I was telling myself about who I was and who I wanted to be. I always thought being a good human would be good enough to get into Heaven, despite what the Bible… the Truth states. An Eternity in hell is no joke and quite terrifying.
Living without her feels cruel. Every day carries the weight of absence. Still, I believe God knew how desperately I wanted to be with my daughter, and He gave me one last chance instead. A chance to do better. To do right. To choose Him intentionally rather than accidentally. To live in a way that honors her life, not just mourns her death.
People imagine me screaming, “God, why did You let this happen?”… that has never been my question. The truth is heavier than that. We were given free will. That day, a drunk driver made his choices. God did not take my daughter from me. God showed her mercy in a swift passing, free from terror, pain, or awareness. When there is no alternative, that mercy is all a mother can cling to. I am consumed by grief. There is no poetic way to soften that. My faith trembles. Some days it barely stands, but I turn toward it anyway. I open my heart, even when it hurts, believing that God can meet me in the shaking. I do not pretend to understand His will. I only choose to walk alongside it, trusting that even in the deepest loss, it is still unfolding.
Somehow, even here, I believe there is purpose in my survival, and meaning waiting to be shaped from what remains.
-Nicole Louthain, The Mama With Faith