Author: God is in the Outcome

Normalize Telling People You Love Them

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May 24th, 2023

Normalize telling people what they mean to you.

By that, I don’t just mean your family, your best friends. I mean that you should make it a point to tell people that you think they are important and that they have made a difference in your life, or in this world.

As I read through many of the things people have written over the past couple of weeks about my sweet husband, I wish he could have known the impact he had made, was still making, in the lives of others. Scott always felt like he should do more, be more, help more. Many times he felt he just wasn’t “enough”. I’m betting a lot of you can relate. I can. We let the weight of the things we haven’t gotten right override the strength of the things we have done well.

I know that you have done so many things well. Scott loved well. He made people feel worthy, safe, heard, appreciated, and loved. He made people feel like family and he wanted to be that with everyone. You might be that person to others, too.

My nephew, Judah, needed to hear these things more, too. He was all noise, exuberance, light, color, joy, and fun. He needed to know that he was that, not just to his family, but to many around him.

So, I encourage you today to tell someone what they mean to you. Tell them of the impact they have had. Tell them that the world would lose a great source of light if they were not here. Tell someone that you have learned something from their life and that it has changed you. Tell someone why you think they are an amazing and inspirational human. Not just your family members and closest friends. Tell an aquaintance, tell a co-worker, tell a stranger.

Just tell them while they are still here. ♥️

Funeral Finality

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May 23, 2023

Today has been hard. Funerals are hard but this…a whole different level.

I want to make something clear, though. I don’t grieve for Scott. I have no doubt that he is living the good life where he is now. I grieve for myself, for the future we had planned together. I grieve the loss of my very best friend in the world, for the person I wanted to be beside me all the time. For the man that he was and what that meant in my life.

Many who knew us may have wondered why we rarely did double dates or ever went on girls trips or guys trips separately. We both love other people, lots of them. But we were so content just being together. We were peas in a pod, peanut butter and jelly (or marshmallow cream, since Scott loved Fluffernutter sandwiches). We knew ten years ago what we had found in each other and didn’t want to miss out. When we were separated by Scott’s travel assignments, we talked a minimum of twice a day, usually several hours at night or off and on ALL day on the days he was off. We counted down the days to when I could go be with him for a week. Or when he could come home to see us.

And we did spend quite a bit of time physically away from each other, but that is because Scott had big dreams and plans for our future, for the time when we would be retired together. He didn’t want me to work anymore and he wanted us to be able to enjoy it together when it was time. We always thought there would be time. I grieve the loss of that time. Those plans.

I don’t regret those times now. Of course I wish we had more time, but being a provider and protector, both of which he was wonderful at, made Scott happy. He felt better about himself when he knew I was taken care of, even if that meant trimming the bushes I wanted done in our yard, bathing the dog, or helping with dishes. I told him once that, when he sat in the living room watching TV while I was cooking supper, I’d rather him come sit on a stool in there and talk to me. He never watched TV during my cooking again until he got hurt. He said he felt the same but didn’t want me to feel like he was hovering.

He spoiled me to no end. I tried to spoil him, too, in different ways. We had different love languages and yet figured out how to make the other feel special. I always felt like I didn’t deserve him and he always felt the same about me. We both always wanted to make sure that the other felt loved and appreciated. I think that says something about a relationship. Neither thinks they are higher than the other, both thinking their person makes them a better woman/man. And he definitely made me better.

So, I don’t grieve for him. I do grieve the way he went but he’s not there anymore. I’m just sad that I’m here trying to pick up the pieces and find a way to make just enough of them fit to make it to glory myself.

So, today was sad, but not for Scott. Scott’s somewhere on the outskirts of Heaven, waiting for me to get there. Then we really do get forever.

Forever was Fleeting

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May 23, 2023

I never imagined that grief could feel like this.

I was sad when I lost my Granny. Very sad. I could tell myself that she lived a long life. She wasn’t sick anymore.

I was really sad when my stepdad died. So sad. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s for years and I could tell myself he was better off now, could picture how well he was in Heaven.

When my nephew died, I was heartbroken. I cannot explain the sad because he was healthy and way too young and full of life and beauty and color and noise. And the heartbreak of my sister and brother-in-law took my breath away. Scott was there to walk through it with me, to hold me when I sobbed. To take me to be with them. To join me in every small measure of help we could muster.

I still never imagined grief could feel like this. People keep saying “I can only imagine what this must be like for you.” I know you’re trying to imagine it but you can’t. As hard as you might try, you just can’t. A very precious few friends who have already walked in my shoes can feel it, I imagine all over again, by watching me go through it because they have lost soulmates. They have been where I am today.

I described it to someone as having been given a paralytic before surgery but someone forgets to give you the actual general anesthesia. Someone starts cutting, opens up your body and starts taking parts out, and you can’t even scream or move to tell them you’re feeling all of it. And since you can’t really imagine that in a way that you can feel it, I’m thankful most cannot feel this either.

My sister and I are close but we cannot really comfort each other now. We’ve texted but have only spoken on the phone a few times since it happened. The rawness of my pain and of hers intermingle and pour over us like white hot lava, but a mysterious kind that doesn’t consume anything in its path; it just solidifies and burns continuously, taking your breath once over and over. How did sixteen days steal so much from our family?

My mother-in-law is the strongest person I know right now. She has lost both of her children in less than a year and a half but still finds a way to comfort me and hold me up when my knees no longer want to. And we do not grieve as those who have no hope but, dear God, I don’t know how to wait on that day right now.

Today we do what they call “laying him to rest” but there is no rest for me and he has already been resting for almost two weeks. I doubt I have consumed what would normally be one day’s calories in two weeks and have slept three hours or less per night except one when I miraculously made it to almost five. Everyone keeps telling me to eat and sleep. But even when I eat it returns and sleeping brings no rest. I’m thankful Scott is not in any pain, that his heart doesn’t hurt like mine, but it doesn’t change the fact that my pain is so deep that I feel I cannot breathe. There are literally times when I feel like I have to think to take a breath, like my body doesn’t know how to do it on its own anymore without him.

All of our children and our granddaughter are what keeps me tethered here. Without our boys and our girls, I don’t think I’d bother getting out of our bed…it’s such a huge bed now. Scott’s body was always like a furnace; I used to tell him that he could keep me alive in a desert tundra just by staying/sleeping near me. I imagined yesterday that I would be comforted by being able to put my hands on his face one more time. It wasn’t comforting at all.

I don’t know how to walk through this day. Or all of the tomorrows. Why does this day feel like such a final goodbye when I already know he’s been gone for so long…how is it only two weeks? There will be people there who try to comfort me, people who want nothing more than to ease my suffering. I wish I could make them all feel better by acting like I do…but the life sentence of living without him beside me reaches so distantly into the future.

I will be okay one day; I know that I will although it doesn’t feel like it is possible right now. Like everything else in life, God will give beauty for ashes even in this, as unfathomable as that seems right now. He’ll find a way to use this thing He didn’t cause to bring cause for me to walk a dark path with someone else who hurts. And then He’ll give me the strength to do it.

But today feels like an ending, all over again.

I love you, Scott. I miss you insurmountably.
I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with you. But I realize now that you spent the rest of your life with me and I know that you loved me with your whole heart until the moment you had to go.
Until we meet again, my heart. ♥️

The Last Time, Ever I Saw Your Face…

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May 22nd, 2023

Today is the day I will see his face for the last time here on this earth. There is an earnest fear in this. I want to remember him the way he is supposed to look, with this beautiful smile on his face and the look that always told me that no matter who had come before, there would be none, ever after, and that really, I was always the only one, the one he’d been searching for all that time. He always knew the same of me and we talked about how we had discovered that, at one time, we were in the same football stadium at the same time and wished we had crossed paths then.

I don’t want to remember him the way he will look today. But 𝘩𝘰𝘸 can I 𝘯𝘰𝘵 see him one more time, knowing this is the last time I can ever look at him? How can it be the last time? I cannot understand how this happened, how my healthy, perfect husband’s soul is no longer in the same world as mine.

Sure, there are wonderful photographs. We took a lot of pictures together but I wish there were more. And yet the photographs cannot wrap his arms around me, cannot kiss me goodnight, or hello, or just because.

Tomorrow is the day we will “bring closure” with a memorial service. We will have a slide show to represent his life but you cannot properly represent Scott in 100 pictures. You can’t even truly represent him in photographs because he was larger than life but in a quiet way.

Now, Scott could talk your ear off. I sometimes would walk out to the yard after he had been talking to the lawn guy or the cable repair man, or the person walking their dog and gently suggest he come back inside because they probably had other things they needed to do and I didn’t want anyone to get into trouble. But then many times they’d still stand and talk longer because Scott never met a stranger. They were already fast friends and enjoying their chat.

But he still had a quiet thoughtfulness. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders sometimes, never understanding how people could be ugly to one another because he was all kindness and soft-hearted. He was hurt so much more in this life than he would ever have given back because people would take advantage of his gentleness. Don’t ever forget that your candle will never glow brighter by the action of extinguishing the candle of someone else.

Scott isn’t here anymore. I keep trying to convince myself. At the same time I try to convince myself he is on a travel assignment and will FaceTime me soon. That doesn’t work for long. Yet even though he is not here, his light is here. His gentleness. His grace in all circumstances, even over and over again for those who did not deserve it. He lived like Jesus in that way, always believing that people could turn around and redeem themselves even though some constantly hurt him and never did change. It made me angry, not at him but for him.

Today will be the last time I see his face. I saw him after it was all over on the 10th and I know he doesn’t look the way he should because this didn’t happen the way it should have. Life turned on a dime and left me floundering in this abyss of grief and loss. But I will see him today for the last time until I see him again. And I know it will break open the hurt that keeps trying to hide underneath the beginnings of a scab, of scars that will keloid and never fade. I miss you, baby, so much. 💔

Dreamscapes & Dry Spells

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May 21st, 2023

I’m afraid of sleeping. Of what I’ll dream about, or that of what I might not dream about (haven’t dreamed his face or his voice yet and I ask him to come to me even in dreams every night). I’m also afraid that once I actually sleep more than a few hours a night, I’ll realize it’s an escape and it will be all I want to do.

I’m afraid of people seeing me in what I’m calling a “dry spell” and not understanding just how much I miss him and that I’m dying inside because I just don’t have tears at that point (until I do and they won’t stop) and because my brain is working hard to compartmentalize and shut the boxes so it doesn’t hurt so badly. Not because other people’s opinion of my grief matters but because it feels like it matters that they know how important he was. Scott was upset when I didn’t cry the day he asked me to marry him. I had been a single mom for years and learned to hold it all in tight to keep from scaring my boys. After trapping it for so long, it became difficult to express any of those kinds of feelings. Oh, but i was sooo happy on the day he asked me – and the rest of the day we had one of the best days ever. It’s actually hard to differentiate because I feel like we had soooo many best days ever. Now, when I am crying, it feels like I can’t hold it in to save my life. When I’m not crying I feel guilty for even being able to function because I still don’t know how I have survived this many days without him.

I’m afraid of so many other things. Things about how I 𝘢𝘮 going to live without him here. Scott would have told you I was fearless, that the only thing that scared me was losing one of our kids. And that was pretty much true because I never worried about losing him. He wore his seat belt. I used to tease him about driving like a grandma, but he was very safe. He was nervous about the surgery, as anyone would be when their spinal cord was involved, and I told him not to be afraid, that this would be like any other surgery he’d had and that he would come out feeling so much better (and he did…for awhile). And no other woman was ever going to take him away from me. I was never afraid of that because he couldn’t talk about anything but me when he was away from me and he only wanted to be in the same room I was when he was not working. Anyone we knew would tell you that. We were inseparable and I thought we always would be. We said “til death do us part” 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘵 when we got married. I thought we had until we were 80.

But there are three primary emotions with this grief: white hot anger, intense, devastating sorrow, and fear. Disbelief sneaks in there but then the anger takes over again and proves me wrong.

We didn’t take a wrong turn. We did everything we were supposed to do. We followed the rules for pre-op and post op. We did what insurance and doctors told us to do. And he was healthy, so healthy. This was not supposed to happen, under any circumstances, and yet it did, despite everything.

So I’m afraid a lot. I’m afraid of how long it is going to feel like for me before I see him face to face again and can tell him how much I love him and missed him. He wouldn’t have wanted to miss all of this, the goings on around here – the grandbabies, the graduations, the successes and accomplishments, the trips we had planned (we have a payment plan for our trip to Jamaica which was postponed due to his injury). And he wouldn’t have wanted me to miss this (although I never plan to ever go to Jamaica now, ever – we dreamed about this delayed honeymoon for over six years). He would want me to find a way to enjoy all of it but I just can’t see my way to that point right now.

The light and color is gone from my life and I feel like I’m watching a black & white movie with no sound or subtitles; it doesn’t make sense.

I’ll figure it out. No need to call for a welfare check. Scott also would have told you I was strong and for some reason he was really proud of that. I’ve lived through a lot and I’ll live through this. But before, he was always there 𝘪𝘯 the storm with me (ever since I’ve known him) 𝘢𝘯𝘥 on the other side of the storm. I know he will be this time but I have one hell of a hurricane to ride out. And so, I’m afraid of doing it alone.

Edited to add: Minutes after writing this post, my app alerted me to the verse of the day. Here is what it was today, because God is always on time. God is not the author of coincidence and, once you know Him, you’ll see that there are too many instances of “coincidence” to ever thing it was chance again.

“Peace is what I leave with you; it is my own peace that I give you. I do not give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset; do not be afraid.
John 14:27 GNT

Don’t Give Up – Fairytales Are Real

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May 19th, 2023

I want to say something to anyone out there who is jaded by difficult relationships, divorce, or just waiting so long to find “the One”.

Don’t give up. It’s out there, especially when God directs your steps. I’ve said that Scott was my fairytale from the day, yes, literally the day I met him. His sweet spirit was looking for mine while I had given up on looking. When we met, there was an electrical, spiritual connection that we couldn’t deny.

Oh we fussed and argued sometimes, mostly over things that are so trivial now; we’re humans and so emotions and stress and even hormones get in the way (TMI trigger warning: menopause is a beast). But he held on to me when I was in chaos and I held onto him when he was.

He told me to retire from nursing in February of 2021; I did so in April. There were a few reasons for this. The first was that he knew I had suffered through burnout for many years (nursing is not for the faint of heart) and that it wasn’t getting any better. He hated seeing me struggle as much as I was. Scott was on top of the world nursing at Jackson South in Miami so me crying over work every night broke his heart.

The second, a reason I loved with all my heart, was to have more time to spend with me. Scott was travel nursing and when I was working I had to rush down to Miami for a weekend or else ask for time off and see if it got approved and if I could get coverage. He said “then you can come see me anytime you want to and you can stay for a whole week or two”. And that’s what I did. The memories of all of those visits to him in Miami and New Hampshire and the memories of the road trip we made home together when he finished in NH and we took a slow ride home, stopping to stay in places with great food and enjoyable attractions, this will live inside me forever.

The third reason was this: I asked Scott when he said “just retire, we’ll be fine without your paycheck”. I asked, “but who will I be then? What is my purpose going to be?” My last baby was going to be graduating soon and, although I’m still a mom, I knew it soon would not be the same. And I loved being Scott’s wife so much but I feared I would feel useless and without direction. He said, in an almost prophetic way, honey, one day we’re going to have grandchildren. You always said that you wished you could have stayed home with the boys. Now you can be a stay-at-home grandma and it will save the kids tons of money in daycare so you’ll be helping them, too. (This was just over a year before we ever knew that Lillian Reese was coming into our lives). And so I agreed. I’m so very glad I did. Because if I had kept working we would have had more money…but I wouldn’t trade the last two years (or the last ten) for anything in the world, certainly not for money.

A love like that, so selfless and pure, I never believed existed. He wanted to take care of me. He wanted me to be happy. He was really enjoying travel nursing (especially in Miami) but he knew I was floundering so he came up with a solution. He stayed with me during one of the toughest battles of my life before that and then saved me from other tough ones. Because of who he was, I’ll never doubt that, every day since we met, he loved me with every beat of his heart. True love, fairytale love, unimaginable love does exist. I felt blessed and so grateful to have it every day, even when we fussed over things. It was the forever kind and I will cherish it forever, even though our time was far too short.

So DON’T GIVE UP. Don’t settle. Don’t stop believing in the miracle. Don’t expect it to always be easy but if it’s really a gift straight from God, it will almost all of the time.

I was twitterpated (ref. Bambi) since the day I met him. That never stopped.

Waiting on a Woman

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May 16th, 2023

In about an hour, it will have been one week since you left. About half an hour from now was the last time I saw you when your spirit was still here. I still don’t know how to process that this is my real life now. That the rest of my days here will be without you here to hold me, to tell me you’re proud of me, that you think I’m beautiful, that you love me. I can’t even fathom how this could have happened.

I want you back home, selfishly, I know, because you are rejoicing and enjoying the next life with our Savior. I’m thankful for that but I miss you so very much. It hurts. I have always known the depth of how much I love you and you love me (you never, ever let me forget it). But I don’t think I realized that you were the reason I ate food or could sleep. I did know that you were the reason for so many other wonderful things in my life.

I held Lillian today and remembered you saying you couldn’t wait until your surgery was over so you could hold her again, and how excited you were to hold our next granddaughter when she arrived. We were getting to enjoy what it’s like to love on baby girls after all of these years of loving all of our wonderful boys. I wanted to do this with you and never imagined I would be having to without you. It’s never going to be the same; nothing will ever be the same and I hate this new way of life. Everyone says we’ll all find a new normal but nothing will ever be “normal” again. Nothing will ever feel right without you here.

The only saving grace to all of this is the fact that you were saved by grace, meaning I will wrap my arms around you and spend all of the next, much longer life loving you, together with you for always. It feels so very far away right now for me, but I’m glad it will pass quickly for you. I’m glad you don’t have to be sad while you wait. You were always the one who was running late but this time you got there first. Wait for me; I’ll be the one running through the gates to get to you like an old movie…swing me around like that, okay? I love you. ♥️💔

“I’ve read somewhere statistics show
The man’s always the first to go
And that makes sense ’cause I know she won’t be ready
So when it finally comes my time
And I get to the other side
I’ll find myself a bench, if they’ve got any

I hope she takes her time
‘Cause I don’t mind waitin’ on a woman
Honey, take your time
‘Cause I don’t mind waitin’ on a woman”

Guilt is an Ugly Dinner Date

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May 16th, 2023

Being an experienced critical care nurse and being completely unable to save someone you love, your person, your own heartbeat, is a whole new level of pain. I’d have twenty kidney stones back to back if he could be here to walk me through it again instead of living through what happened to him with me being useless at his bedside.

This isn’t a call for sympathy; I just saw someone else express the same agony this morning and I want you to know that, although everyone will tell you there was absolutely nothing else you could have done (and I know there wasn’t anything because I was playing on someone else’s home field and had no control) if you still feel the gut-wrenching guilt just because of what you know from your training and career, you are not alone and you aren’t crazy for not being able to dismiss it.

I should probably give trigger warnings on my posts for awhile because writing is what helps me clear my head; it always has been. And when I write and share it, usually here and/on FB, it is somehow cathartic for me because I know that we all feel alone in this world sometimes but we’re all the same in so many ways. There are others like me, like you, out there who have the same hurts you do and sometimes it just helps to know that. So I share for myself, the release of it, as well as for others to know they aren’t the only ones struggling. We do not struggle alone.

My mantra during the most painful time of my life before now, that I had no idea was only a drop in the bucket, was one of two things: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” or “Jesus, I trust you” over and over again. And so it is again. And He is sufficient, as much as it doesn’t feel like it right now. I can’t trust my feelings but I can trust in Him.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9

I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: So shall I be saved from mine enemies. Psalm 18:3

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and they are safe.
Proverbs 18:10

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10:13

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27