Ed Young and his wife, Lisa, are opening up about their grief and God’s provision after their eldest daughter, LeeBeth Young, died in 2021. LeeBeth, who died at 34, had taken a wrong turn in her life, falling into alcoholism and abusing Adderall. After the couple announced her passing in 2021, they shared that LeeBeth had struggled with depression and had been involved in what they called a “tumultuous” relationship. When the relationship ended about five-and-a-half years before her death, LeeBeth admitted to her parents that she believed she might be an alcoholic. The revelation was a shock to her parents, as LeeBeth had never partied in school. The admission led to LeeBeth attending Christian counseling and AA meetings. She suffered seizures due to her alcohol use and had to be hospitalized. She was warned that binge drinking would kill her and was on the right path, according to her parents. 

The night of her death, Lisa was visiting with her mother when she spoke to LeeBeth on the phone. Realizing something was not right with their daughter, she told her husband to check on her. LeeBeth had apparently gone on another drinking binge and had taken Adderall. Ed took her to see her therapist and then took her to his and Lisa’s home to spend the night. LeeBeth had reported feeling anxious but hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital. Ed tucked her in, saying, “LeeBeth, I love you.” While he was working on a sermon about Isaac and Abraham, he heard a sound from the room LeeBeth was in. He found her in an emergent state after another apparent seizure. Despite Ed’s son and daughter-in-law, who are paramedics, performing CPR and LeeBeth being hospitalized, she did not recover and passed away. 

Now, two years after their daughter’s death, the Youngs are sharing how their family has dealt with LeeBeth’s death in a book entitled, A Path through Pain: How Faith Deepens and Joy Grows through What You Would Never Choose. Lisa shared that it was important to be open. “This is a messy death; it’s an out-of-order death. It just seems so surreal that your child would die before you do. As pastors, we have a daughter who struggled with addiction. That’s a messy thing for anybody, but let alone someone who’s teaching and preaching on the goodness of God, parenting, all of those different things,” she said. “But the day she passed away, we came to the conclusion, which was not a difficult conclusion to make, that God doesn’t waste pain. We didn’t want to sugarcoat it.” They shared that after it happened, they realized that despite the pain and the suddenness of the event, their hearts had been prepared to deal with pain through their faith. Ed said, “People will say, ‘You’re never prepared for something like this.’ Lisa said, ‘Yes,’ at first, and then she thought, ‘No, you can prepare for this.’ We are prepared because every time we have those times with God, we read His Word we talk to Him in prayer, no matter what it is. We’re just building that bank account.” Their book gives four principles to help others go through the healing process. They shared that while they still grieve for their daughter, they do not grieve like those without Christ. LeeBeth had been dedicated as an infant and, although she struggled later in life, had given her life to Christ and had expressed a desire to be better on the night of her death. “We really trust [God] with eternity,” said Lisa.