EVEN IN GRIEF, HE IS LORD

Atuheire Olivia vivianah Newbold
3 min readFeb 11, 2021

We didn’t know. We couldn’t have known because the year 2017 started with such a bang! It promised to be a good year. All of us siblings, our spouses and our children were gathered at my parents’ home. And like we always do on New Year’s Day, we ate as though we were cows being fattened for market day. We drank, entertained visitors, praised, prayed and laughed loud enough to, in my father’s words “be heard ten kilometers away.”

We didn’t know that the devil was busy plotting and scheming to bring our family immeasurable grief as we celebrated together , set new goals as usual and travelled back to our marital homes.

Then August came. It was 11pm when I received a phone call from my older sister. Her husband had been knocked by a speeding vehicle. She sounded firm and so we assumed that everything would be fine.

The next day she called again and said that he was getting worse. As we were still gathering our thoughts, another call came informing us of his death. We were shocked and overcome with grief. This man had been very dear to us. He had been a loving husband to our sister and a great addition to our family.

We embarked on the sorrowful journey to kabale for burial. All I remember is that without God, we would not have sailed through. The lord was with us every step of the way.

In November, while we were still picking up our pieces, tragedy struck again. I was at a send-off party for my work colleague when my brother Dan called to say that our brother Kenneth was ill and was in dire need of assistance. Dan immediately travelled to Kasese to see Kenneth only to find him lying there helpless without medical attention. Medics were on strike at the time.

Kenneth died the next day after assuring Dan that he would be well. His death struck us hard! It felt as though someone had reached into our barely healed wound and cut it open with a sharp knife. It was the worst shock and heartache that our family had ever experienced.

My friend Kisha advised me to go for counselling but the pain just kept on increasing. I cried day and night.. I switched off my phone because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I lost appetite for food and zeal for life, I didn’t want to see my husband and our children. I later learnt that those were signs of depression.

I spent days wailing and asking God why he let something like that happen to my family. All the laughter, love, joy and peace we once experienced as a family diminished and was replaced by heaviness of the heart. I lost interest in praying and reading the word.

But one day as I was wailing from a place far away from home because I didn’t want my children and my husband to see me in that state, I had a voice telling me to call my cousin who always encouraged me with the word. I called her and she came to visit me the following morning.

After we prayed together, she told one statement that started my healing journey../She said, “Look Vivi, the devil snatched your brothers. Please don’t allow it to take you along.” Her message couldn’t have been more timely. By then I had completely fallen into depression and I was hallucinating. I had stopped seeing the good things in my life and I was focusing on the bad.

In the exact moment when she encouraged me, I got the revelation that even in my grief and sorrow, the Lord was still the same and he was still with me. Above all he had never forsaken me.

God has restored joy in our family and we continue to rejoice in him and we hold onto hope that we shall see our brothers in the next life.

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Atuheire Olivia vivianah Newbold

My life is precious and important, I value every minute of it. I intend to use those minutes properly to accomplish the most I can, in the time that I have.