My Story of Hope- Morgan (My Sister Rylan)

Rylan Richelle Steubing, 19 years of beautiful life… Her name was so unique that she could never find it on a keychain, (much to her dismay) and almost everyone pronounces it “Ryland” and she was so sweet and shy that she would never correct them. So me being four years younger, yet ten times bossier and louder I would correct them for her.

When we were younger, I was about 5 and she was 9 and she would make me answer the phone because she was too shy to.

But… just a few months before she passed, she preached an entire sermon to spanish speaking people with a translator by her side in Peru.. yes! Peru. Safe to say she’d come a long way not only in her shyness but in her walk with God.

Her soul was so pure and sweet and so rare and her death is such an enormous loss to this world, but I can only imagine the praises that were sung when she returned to her heavenly father

Since the day of her death, there are so many “nevers” in my mind that I don’t think I could even list them all:

• I will never hear her laugh again.
• I will never see her smile again.
• I will never fight over her clothes again.
• I will never go to small coffee shops with her and play jenga ever again.
• I will never get to hug her again.
• I will never get to eat the cookies she made (and sometimes burned) ever again.

I’m sure everyone who’s lost someone has these thoughts. This negative, never-ending feeling of despair.
God has taught me in the last year, to take those “nevers” and turn them into being thankful:

• I am thankful that she got to laugh and had the exact amount of time God himself had planned for her, even if it isn’t what we’d hoped for her on Earth.
• I am thankful that she had moments in her life that made her smile, and that for the time she was here, she was happy.
• I am thankful that I had a sister to steal clothes from and bond with.
• I am thankful that God gave me a built in best friend to live with for the first 15 years of my life, that was a beautiful example of God’s love and being his servant.
• I am thankful that I got a sister that made me cookies

God has numbered our days. He holds us in the palms of his hands, he knew my sister before she was in my mother’s womb and he knew she would pass away on February 22nd, 2017 in the morning. He knew she would be diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of fourteen and he knew that she would become an amazing woman of God.

All things work together for our good, and we have a good God that will not let me fall no matter the amount of grief I’m under.

Losing my best friend will forever be the most painful thing i’ve ever experienced, but I am more than grateful that I know she is with Jesus, and I know he planned for all of it to happen.

(Say Goodnight written by Morgan Steubing)