We snapped this photo at Christmas in Nashville in 2019. Six years later, I’m the only one in it still breathing.

Tomorrow, Joshua would have turned 47. He died on St. Patrick’s Day, 2023—suddenly, unexpectedly, the way death sometimes comes. No warning. No goodbye. Just a phone call that changes everything.

His mother, Mama Marci, still drives to Glenn’s Farm where his ashes were spread. She goes on his birthday. She goes on the anniversary. She goes when she needs to be close to him. Grief doesn’t seem to follow a schedule. Why should she?

Joshua is frozen at 44. I turned 43 this month. I’m catching up with him now—a thought that didn’t unsettle me before this year. But lately, I’ve been thinking about how thin the line is. How suddenly a photo becomes a memorial. How the living keep aging while the dead stay still.

My church is in a sermon series called The Lighthouse Project. This week, Pastor Colin preached on the parable of the talents—Matthew 25—and he listed the things we’re called to steward. Time. Talent. Family. Our bodies. Our thoughts. Creation. The gospel.

And then he said it: our suffering.

I sat with that for a long time. Stewarding suffering doesn’t mean pretending it isn’t there. It doesn’t mean rushing through it or burying it in the backyard like the fearful servant buried his talent. It means asking God what He wants to grow from it. It means believing the pain isn’t wasted — even when you can’t see what it’s becoming.

Joshua’s death was sudden. No one saw it coming. And I’ve learned this year that any of us could become a photo someone else posts, a memory frozen, a birthday that stops coming.

But I’m still here. Still breathing. Still catching up with a friend who’s stuck at 44.

I don’t know why I got more time and he didn’t. But I know I bear His name. And maybe that’s all faithfulness is — showing up on the dreary mornings, stewarding whatever you’ve been handed, and trusting that the light points somewhere even when you can’t see it.

The space between grief and gratitude is thin. I’m learning to stand in it.

Happy birthday in heaven, Joshua. Save seats for Mama Marci and Me.