It’s been 30 years today since my blood brother moved on ahead of us. 

The night of visitation at the funeral home was the night I became the Lonewolf that governed me for the next 22 years. Jesus has taken me through that wound in a profound and healing way. One in which in a vision, Brandon himself asked me if I was ready to live now. 

Last night I couldn’t sleep. Grief hit me hard. I just repeated over and over again, “30 years.”

I dug through old yearbooks. Tried to find my favorite picture of the two of us through boxes in storage to no avail. When I finally hit the pillow, I asked God to let Brandon here me talk to him like I did when he first died. 

All of the sudden I saw the 12 year old me laying in my top bunk talking to Brandon, and felt a different kind of pain. I had always felt the pain of Brandon’s loss as that 12 year old. Without the framework of holy grief and Jesus meeting me there that 12 year old response didn’t make sense as it manifested itself each year I grew older. 

This time when I began to pray I wasn’t the 12 year old...I was me now...healed and restored, but God let me grieve in a new way. I felt pain for that 12 year old. I felt for his heart as he sat alone in a truck, and said, “This hurts too bad! I’m never getting close to anyone again. I’m the Lonewolf now!” I grieved for all that he lost and for the person he became and the people he wounded along the way. 

The feeling of the Lonewolf has been ever increasing in my heart these last months. I suspect this is why. Coming up on the thirty year anniversary of Brandon’s death and on the edge of the Kingdom role to which God has called me. 

Satan wounds. Jesus heals. When Satan has a hard time inflicting new wounds, he comes for old wounds in new ways. 

Grief is a holy thing. Don’t dismiss it. Give yourself permission to go there...even if you already have. Maybe God has more for you in it.

Jesus always meets us in our grief. The choice to go there and look up at Him is ours. 

I love you Charles Brandon Wade, thank you for being the best friend one could ever have. And yes, I’m ready to live now!