Before I turned 14 death wasn’t very real to me. But that changed.

I loved playing basketball on a homeschool team. I built so many friendships. There weren’t many Kansas teams, so we traveled far to play each other often. Many families involved followed Christ, so we became a close-knit community.

My freshman year our guys’ team had a lot of talent. A sophomore, Cody, and his senior brother, Jesse, led the team with their dad coaching.

We played our last regular-season game on a rainy night in March. Heading out for an hour-long drive home, Cody and Jesse jumped in the car with another teammate, Will, and took off down the highway. About 2 miles down the road, their car hydroplaned and they spun into the path of a semi.

We saw there had been an accident, and sat waiting in the car while Mom went to see what happened. She came back crying. “Cody and Will are dead.” Jesse died later that night in the hospital.

Who can comprehend death? It made no sense that three teenagers who had been playing basketball minutes before were gone. Death fills you with this overwhelming sense of your own mortality and the value of life.

The families who lost their boys showed us what God’s grace looked like. I know they hurt, but they trusted God. They lived what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

We want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.

I got to see godly Christian grief lived out in that time.

Our team drew close together. We girls decided to play in our State tournament for our guys. Someone made us wristbands with the guys’ numbers on them – 2-23-45 – to wear while playing. We left our hearts out on the court during our second game and won by one point. After the game, when we lined up to give fives to the team we beat, many of them hugged us. Tears flowed as much as sweat that night.

Death brings devastating pain, but I saw God’s love through the comfort we experienced as a team and through others who reached out to us and to the families who lost their boys. I saw living faith in the lives of our friends whose sons and brothers died.

People ask, “Where’s God when bad things happen?” The truth is, he’s right there going through the hard things with us, something I saw clearly in the death of my teammates.