Holding On to God - Emma Brandt

OK, so like you said, I'm a brand. If you don't know me, I guess you do now. So we're talking about the goodness of God this semester and or this year, I guess, but I really wanted to look at my life like it's on a roller coaster. So I wanted to look at it like as a child, I get on this roller coaster. And I'm all by myself. I didn't have anyone with me. But it looks exciting, it looks fun. So I get on here and it starts off slow. It's a steady pace. And that's in my life, that's where I start to learn about God. I go to church. I was always in VBS, always in the church with everything, with youth groups and all of that. And but I don't really know God. I know who he is, but I don't have that relationship with him. And so the years go on as the roller coaster starts to go up. And I start to form a deeper relationship with God. Really in middle school, I started to go to church camp. And that's where I started to feel everything go up. And just really my relationship with God started to expand and grow and everything started to get really good. And as it starts getting higher to the top, I feel excited because this is my first time here. And I never experienced this in life before. But getting close to the top, this is where the beginning of my senior year starts. And as this starts, I start going up and I start to feel nervous because I know it's going to drop soon. And I don't really know where that's going to go from there. So during this, as I get more nervous and nervous, during my senior year, my grandma gets sick. And she's not going to get any better. So it was a matter of days on whether she was going to make it or not. And as I finally hit the top of my roller coaster, everything stops. And I can see everything around me. All that can go bad. And then it starts to go down. And in January of 2024, she passed away. And that was really hard for me in my faith. And I started to let my worries in front of my faith. And that was a really hard thing for me. And six days later, my brother passed away in a car accident. And I felt the roller coaster drop. And instead of coming back up, it just took a curve and went all upside down and everything. And my faith just went right out the window. And I guess there's not windows on a roller coaster. And it got really tough. And my relationship with God just completely went away. And looking ahead, I didn't really know how it was going to get any easier because I couldn't just get off the ride right there. I still had to stick it out and keep going. And for the rest of this roller coaster, I was dizzy and I was nauseous. And I really didn't know who to hold on to. But I grabbed the hand of the person next to me, not knowing who it was. And then halfway through my senior year, I signed up to go on a mission trip. And I wasn't quite sure how things were going to go because this was before my brother passed away. And as the trip got closer and closer, I kept thinking, well, I can always not go because that's always an option. And it was the night before we were supposed to leave. I had nothing packed. My laundry wasn't even washed. And I remember sitting on my floor in my bedroom looking up and I was like, God, what do you want me to do? I have no clue what your plan is for me. And I got a text from one of the girls at the church and she said, Hey, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. I was like, OK, God, let me go do my laundry because I need to do something with my life. And went on this mission trip and still had no clue why I needed to be there. And as the first night we were there, we started singing in every song that night, just hit me right where I was. And I just, all of a sudden, knew that's where I needed to be. And so back to this roller coaster. So we pull in, the roller coaster is done. And I stopped grabbing the hand of the person next to me and I look over and I realize it's God sitting there. And it wasn't, I didn't know he was there for me. He wasn't sitting at the beginning, I guess. He wasn't sitting there waiting for me to get off. He was sitting right next to me the whole time waiting for me to reach over and grab his hand. And so I mean, I've had a lot of things that were rough going on throughout the years. But your roller coaster isn't over and you still have the ability to go get on another one. And God will be there with you. He'll be your roller coaster partner for life if you really need him to be. And he should be. But I found a lot of goodness in God throughout the years. And I think really just holding on to him is helpful. And yeah.