Life comes at you very fast. Even if you’re not ready to handle it, it comes anyway. One day you’re outside with your family playing games and having fun. The next you are at a hospital watching your sister deal with pneumonia. That is an awful thing to watch your sister go through.

My sister was diagnosed with a life-threatening case of pneumonia in both of her lungs. She was only six years old and very helpless. She was sent to the hospital immediately to be treated and cared for. This was the beginning of one of the scariest times in my life. You always think that this kind of thing will never happen to you, just like you think that you will never get in a car accident or a family member will die. But these things do happen. They happen all over the world, every day. And they happen in our lives too.

My sister was a very good sport; she took everything well and listened to the doctors. Even though she had an IV in her arm and tubes in her nose, she wasn’t scared. I can’t believe how much courage she had during that week. She was so strong. If I were in that situation, I don’t think I could have handled it. She knew that everything was going to be okay. She relied on Jesus to take care of her. If we did that more often, we wouldn’t be worried. We would trust Jesus in everything we do.

But how can I trust God to help me when he does something like this? During that time I found myself asking God why he would do this. It seemed unfair that she was put in a life-and-death situation when she was only six. Why her? Why not someone else, someone older? If God loves us so much, why do people die and get sick or hurt?

My pastor visited every day and told us that everything will work out for our good. He was right. A couple days later my sister was getting better. God does work everything out, and he also has a reason for everything that happens in our lives. God puts many obstacles in our way, but he does it for a reason. This whole experience brought my family closer to God. It taught us that bad things can happen; people can die or get sick. But God is always with us, and he helps us with our struggles.

The Bible says: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). We can’t stop bad things from happening. We can only embrace them and trust that God will make things better. After a total of eight days, my sister was released from the hospital. She was healthier than ever, and we were all very happy.

So yes, bad things do happen, and we will be scared. But we can always count on God to be there for us and to protect us from the evils of this world.