Isabelle is a testimony to my faith——not only because I decided to become a Christian during the first year of my PhD, supervised by Isabelle with the last year of her life, but because, more fundamentally, “This may sound strange, but you are one of the people who ‘convert’ me. Although you are not a Christian, you have embodied for me Imago Dei most vividly: the steadfast love that genuinely cares and understands people’s essential beings and the gratuitous delight in their becoming their better selves.” (From my letter to her upon hearing her illness) So, if such a person as Isabelle has ever walked on the earth and blessed my life, it makes me even dare to speculate that God, who is love, the transcendental ground of all love, may even exist. But then isn't what happened to her a testimony against God? What sort of God is that that can allow such a cruel illness and untimely befell Isabelle? I don’t know. I was asking those questions after receiving her difficult news, and spending the entire afternoon praying in church, reciting Psalms, reading The Book of Job, asking and arguing with God. I am not sure if I have or ever will have found an answer. But one thing I am sure of is that the last answer Isabelle would give is the counsel of despair. If anything, she would want us to remember her with joy and to continue her work of love. I know that our mourning for her will need to take time, and it should; it will affect our lives and works to come, and it should. This Wednesday, when attending the mid-week mass dedicated to Joy, I also felt a sudden joy when mourning Isabelle. Isn’t our mourning a testimony to her indefatigable love for us and our steadfast love of her despite her death? And that testimony is an occasion for joy, a joy not in spite of but because of mourning. See, wherever you are, Isabelle, love and joy blossom.