When Grief Makes You Question God: My Thoughts on the Passing of Minister Toluwanisings

This is a very vulnerable post.

I feel a little better tonight, and I have decided to write about something that has been weighing heavily on my heart.

For the past few days, I have found myself wondering if there truly is a God in heaven. I decided not to pray or speak to God because, honestly, I was just too angry.

I kept asking myself one question: Why did Minister Toluwanisings have to die?

I don’t know about you, but there are different preachers and gospel singers who carry me through different seasons of life. Sometimes, a song finds us in a place where words fail us. Sometimes, a minister’s message becomes the very thing that keeps us grounded when life feels uncertain.

Last year, I became deeply invested in the ministry of the late Minister Toluwanisings. His songs stirred something in me. They made me thirsty for more of God, drew me closer to Him, and made me yearn for His presence in ways I cannot fully explain.

His music became so meaningful to me that I introduced his songs to my family, and they loved him too. I made so many videos on my camera and phone while listening to some of his songs, although I hardly shared them. I think I posted just one on my YouTube channel.

His music had become part of my life, especially on Sundays.

Then came the news.

When I first saw posts on Instagram asking people to pray for him because of a medical emergency, I became worried. But I hoped it was something minor, something he would recover from. I imagined him coming out of it with another testimony, just as I had heard him share testimonies during the many ministrations I listened to.

I hoped he would pull through.

But this time, it was different.

He was gone.

He was dead.

And I did not know what to do with that information.

I kept wondering why God would allow something like this to happen. Of all the things I have been trusting God for in this season of my life, there are some that I have watched happen for other people and quietly wondered when it would be my turn. Yet, the one thing that kept me grounded, especially on Sundays, was the ministry of this man.

And now he was gone.

I felt as though God had been unfair. I know how that sounds, especially as someone who believes in Him, but that was honestly how I felt. I could not understand why God would allow someone whose ministry had drawn me closer to Him to be taken away.

How was I supposed to process this?

I reached out to one of my pastors, someone I had spoken to about Minister Toluwanisings before. I asked him, “Why would God do this to us?”

I remember him saying, “Alapadupe ni Olorun.” The way I understood it in that conversation was that God is the One who gives and takes away, and that we must still give thanks to Him.

He went on to talk about Jesus dying at the age of 33.

And I asked him, “But didn’t Jesus die for our sins?”

We went back and forth for a while, trying to make sense of it all. Eventually, I moved on from the conversation, but if I am being honest, it was not enough. I still did not understand. I was still numb.

I had not cried this much over the death of someone I never personally knew in a long time.

And perhaps that is one of the things grief teaches us: that we do not always have to know someone personally to feel the weight of their absence. Sometimes, we know people through the songs they sing, the words they speak, the testimonies they share, and the way their lives and ministries touch ours.

Minister Toluwanisings may not have known me, but his ministry had touched a part of my life that mattered deeply to me.

And that loss was real.

In the middle of all this, I started asking even bigger questions.

What is the essence of life?

Why do I have to deprive myself of certain things I enjoy because I am working toward particular goals? Why must I keep sacrificing, pushing, waiting, and trusting God for a future I cannot see? What is the point of all of it if, at the end of the day, life can be taken away just like that?

I know these are difficult questions. Perhaps some people reading this will have answers, Bible verses, or words of encouragement to offer. I understand that. But at that moment, I was not looking for a quick answer. I was hurting, and I needed to be honest about it.

This was a man who, from what I had seen and heard of his journey, had been through a lot. And he died in what seemed to be the prime of his life.

Not long ago, I came across beautiful pictures of him with his wife and daughters on social media. They were such lovely pictures. Their chocolate-brown asooke looked beautiful, and I found myself admiring their family. It had been less than a month since i came across those photos, and dying few weeks after those pictures were taken is a sad reality.

There is a wife who had lost her husband. There are daughters who had lost their father. There is a family whose lives had been changed forever.

And I could not stop thinking about them.

I could not stay on social media for long because I did not know what hearing his voice or seeing his face would do to me. I have not even had the courage to play his songs on YouTube.

This was someone I had imagined messaging someday, just to say thank you. Thank you for the songs that carried me through difficult seasons. Thank you for ministering in ways that helped me when I was struggling with self-doubt. Thank you for pointing me back to Christ when I needed to remember who I was in Him.

I had imagined that one day I would get the opportunity to tell him how much his ministry meant to me.

Now, I will never get to have that conversation.

And that hurts.

How do I reconcile the God whose presence these songs helped me seek with the God I am struggling to understand right now?

How do I continue trusting a God whose decisions I cannot explain? How do I sing along to songs about His goodness when life keeps reminding me that we do not always get the outcomes we pray for?

I do not have all the answers tonight.

I am still processing. I am still grieving. And, if I am being completely honest, I am still trying to find my way back to a place of peace with God.

Maybe faith does not mean we will never have questions. Maybe there are seasons when all we can do is bring those questions to God, even when we are too angry to know how to pray.

For now, I am allowing myself to feel what I feel. I am allowing myself to grieve a man whose ministry became part of my story, even though our paths never crossed.

I pray for his wife, his daughters, his family, and everyone whose life he touched. I pray that God will comfort them in ways that words cannot.

And for those of us who are left wondering why, I hope we find the grace to keep going, even when we do not understand.

For now, I have questions I cannot answer, feelings I cannot fully explain, and a heart that is still hurting.

It is well.

I am still learning what those words mean when everything does not feel well.