Tag: grief share

The Cemetery

Published on by God is in the OutcomeLeave a comment

July 21st, 2023

***Trigger Warning*** This post has some graphic imagery related to being a widow at the cemetery. Please read with discretion regarding your own sensitivities in this area.

The cemetery is hard.

People tend to think you should go there a lot, “spend time” with him, maybe that will make you feel closer to him.

It doesn’t.

If anything, it does the opposite.

When I am sitting propped up on pillows in my bed at night, I can close my eyes and listen for his breathing, wait to feel the covers rustle on his side of the bed, catch a smell that reminds me of date nights because I sprayed his cologne on a little throw pillow.  It’s an elusive feeling, almost ethereal – like you can almost see him there or, if you close your eyes, turn away and turn back, maybe it never happened at all.  Sometimes, I fall asleep now trying to listen, wait, smell….  

The cemetery, though…

Everything around me screams that he is gone.  All the way gone.  No mulligan.  No do-overs.  No rewind button.  No, no, no…

I know that he is not there.  Not his spirit.  I hope today, when I was there at his grave, that he was deep-sea fishing in beautiful turquoise waters, with a sailfish (the bucket list fish he never caught here) on the end of his line in the great ocean in the sky.  I feel sure Heaven has oceans, somehow.  Since there must be beaches or us Florida people might be slightly disappointed. (I kid, I kid…)

No, I know he is not there…but I do know that his body is.  I saw him in that wretched casket that they want you to think of as having a “beautiful finish” when you’re looking for one to lay them in…so you can put them in the ground inside of it.  (Mind you, I know that these people are doing a very difficult job in the very best and kindest way that they know how.  The people I dealt with were full of compassion.  But nothing in the world would have made me think that any casket that would be “laying him to rest” was beautiful, in any way.  I think they would all understand me saying that.)  I know this is a lot of imagery.  Sorry, not sorry.  It’s stuck in my head every single day and you’re reading to find out where my head is these days or because you’re looking for answers as to whether what you see, hear, feel, smell during grief is “normal.”  Well, here it is.

As I kneel on the ground beside the place where a few random weed-looking leafy things have begun to sprout up over the dirt that still sits, too recently disrupted to contain grass (note to self:  bring grass seed and watering can next time), I know his body is approximately (if folklore is correct) six feet beneath me.  He was six feet even.  If they’d stood him up in there, he could reach me. 

The body, his body, that I used to wrap my arms around and he’d kiss my forehead then rest his chin on my head as his arms, so much physically stronger than my own, wrapped me up in a safety that made me feel as good as the forehead kiss.  The body, his body, his chest that I would lay my head on at night and his chest hair would tickle my face but I didn’t want to sit back up.  The body, his body, that was the keeper of his voice as he would tell me how much he loved me, that I was the only woman in the world to him, that I was beautiful, that I was smart, that I was talented…and all the things that I felt that day that I was not.  He always gave me back things I thought I had lost.  He also gave me things I had never even thought to have.  Some memories that I will hold like glittering treasure within me.

I don’t have to “sit there and think about” his body being beneath me in the dirt, lest you’re saying, “Try not to think about that part; think about those memories.”  As my tires crunch against the gravel when I pull into the gates by the road, these thoughts, the unbidden and unwanted ones, are already coiling around me, squeezing the breath from my lungs.  I was here in May and there was a flag laying over him…it’s in my house now.  So, as I actively try to think about good things.  About where he really is right now, about his smell, his sound, his touch, his face, his eyes….I’m trying…I’m trying…I’m trying…nope.  There’s the dirt again.  Still there when I open my eyes.

Today I had AirPods and my iPhone.  There is zero cell service where he is but I have all of the important songs downloaded so I can listen offline.  I played music and, although it made me cry, with harsh sobs that hurt my throat and squeezed my chest and weakened my knees until, there I was, down on the ground with them in the dirt beside him.  I stay there so long that my legs begin to have pins & needles from kneeling so I pull them around front and cross-cross them, always ready to leave but never ready to leave.  So more music.  More memories.  More crying. But maybe distracted from the dirt a little bit.  I look up to the sky, knowing God sees my tears and counts them, saves them.  I feel a tear slip off of my chin and watch it drop to the mound of dirt below me.  It makes me think of the movie Tangled.  It reminds me of when Flynn Rider died in the end and, as she cried, Rapunzel’s tear dripped onto his chest which began to glow as he returned to life.  I randomly think that if his chest started glowing, I couldn’t see it from up here and I wouldn’t even know…at the same time that I remember that cartoon movie are cool but the caricatures can do things we never can.  Not ever, ever.

The sobs have stopped.  The dirt is still there.  But, I feel, somehow, maybe a strangely odd bit better.  Like all of those tears, all of those rib-racking sobs, had been hidden away in a pressurized compartment which was becoming too full, the compression becoming too much for the steely outsides.  Now that they’ve been released there is room to store them up again for awhile, I guess.  I lean back with my hands on the ground behind me and haphazardly wonder whether anyone was in the cemetery witnessing my display.  When I walked from the car, I could only see one grave…now there are others all around.  I glance furtively around, not because I care if anyone saw my ugly crying, but because there may be someone else who needed their moment of depressurization.  No one.  But still, it’s time to go.

I had felt dread coming here.  I know what it means to be here.  I know how it feels to be here.  I know he’s here but he’s not here.  But now it feels as if I don’t want to leave because I’ll be leaving him again.  (Yes, I still know he is not actually here; I cannot control the inert thought pattern.  As I said, they do their own thing, coming and going as they wish and I do not own the key to the lock that would keep them out.)  When we left my sister’s house after my nephew passed away so that we could drive to a place to stay for the night while the police finished their necessary plundering, she began to cry and said “I can’t leave him here alone.”  All I could say was, “Julie, he won’t be alone. They’re going to take care of him.”  Because he wasn’t fully gone in her mind yet, and being taken care of was important. 

This makes me wonder when I will really, fully believe that he is gone.  Gone, gone.  The for real, this is it, never going to change, like it or not, imaginary breathing beside you in bed is GONE, gone.

There are times when I fall apart because I think I’ve just realized it, that this is all really real.  And then my brain throws out flares and pulls the rip cord that inflates the rescue raft and there’s some kind of chance, theoretically, that this is all just an awful dream.  *pinch*pinch*sighhhh*

Driving across the crunchy, loose gravel is just as hard going out as it was coming in.  It’s for a completely different reason but I can’t describe it.  I’ve not said one word to him while I was here.  Because he’s not here even though he’s here.  And if I want to talk to him, I’ll do it in our bedroom at home because it feels more likely that, if there were holes in the floor of Heaven, that would be the place he’d most likely hear me from.  I hope he only ever hears the “I love you”s and “I miss you so much”s, not the sobs.  I would never want him to be as sad as I am, not ever.  I guess now he never, ever has to be.

I love you, baby.  I miss you so, so much.  One way or another, we’ve got this, K?  See you later.

Breathing With No Air

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July 19th, 2023

I don’t know how to adequately explain the immensity, the all-encompassing grip, the sustained continuity of grief.  When someone has never experienced a loss of this magnitude, they cannot understand the way that it trips you up hundreds and hundreds of times every day…even after what seems like a very long time to everyone else.  

The most seemingly ridiculous or innocuous things bring me to tears.  I’m not sleeping well again, (see my last post) so I know that has something to do with why I cannot seem to keep the tears behind my eyelids lately…at least part of it.  But despite valiant efforts to remain a statue of fortitude and strength, my efforts are struck down constantly by vague references that, for me, are enormous catapulted stones headed straight for my head.

This morning a friend who is a school teacher posted a meme that probably means something to school teachers but normally I would have just scrolled past.  It said “Today is the 200th day of 2023.”  That’s it.  Just those words.  (I’m guessing it’s a teacher thing because I know they usually make a big to-do about the 100th day of school.  I don’t know; I may be wrong – but not the point…I digress.)

Immediately, I was devastated – no conscious thought over what this post “means” (pretty self-explanatory, right?) or pondering this 200th day’s relation to any other day of the year to understand why one would post it.  The very first thing that popped into my head immediately was: “165 days left in the last year I saw him, the last year he was ever here.

You see, when you are grieving, nothing has to make sense.  In fact, I feel that many, many things do not make sense in my life right now.  I often think about situations like this one, or if you have read my post about my first trip to the grocery store after he died and the infamous pickle jar, and wonder why on earth that upset me so much.  Some to the point of literal panic attack.  These occurrences seem so insipid, so completely without meaning but, for me, the meaning feels like more than I can handle at that moment.

I was telling my daughter-in-love today that I have only watched television twice since my husband died.  We weren’t huge TV watchers but there were a handful of shows that we followed and always watched together in the evenings when he was home.  Even when he was away on contract work, sometimes on his day off or in the evening after he got home from work, we would FaceTime or use speakerphone while we each watched the show, trading typical banter that we would have if he’d been home.  It was just one of our things.  Now, a new season of a show just aired this past week that he and I had been waiting to be released.  I can’t watch it.  I can’t even bring myself to be interested in what had been happening in the previous season finale that made it seem as if it were taking forever for this next one to come out.  It just doesn’t even matter.  

One of the times I watched TV alone in the last couple of months was to watch the last two episodes of a series that I typically watched alone when he wasn’t home.  That went okay except that, when he was home and I watched it, he’d have humorous input on what was going on.  (I have a secret addiction to “Married at First Sight”: don’t tell anyone. I’ve seen every season.) He’d always say something like, “Is it just me or is she really being a drama queen?” Or “Oh, I know he didn’t just say that to her.  She should just get out now.”  I thought of him as I watched, but mostly with fond memories and kind of chuckling at who is is…who he was…

The second time that I watched TV, I thought, okay, I won’t watch anything I’ve ever seen with him.  I’ll watch some random older movie and I should be fine.  Except the movie had me full-on sobbing by the time it was over.  Let’s just say that the description Netflix provided did not accurately provide enough context to what the movie entailed.  (It was “The Choice”; and, in my defense, I did NOT see that it had been written by Nicholas Sparks before I watched it.)  Alrighty then…no more TV for me.  At least for awhile.

My overarching point here is that what makes me sad doesn’t (and doesn’t have to) make sense.  

I’ve had several people telling me lately that going back to work should be good for me because “it will help you get your mind off of things.”  Ladies and gentlemen:  I completely understand where you’re coming from and why this won’t make sense to you.  Before this tragedy in my own life, I feel sure I would have thought the same.  But, nothing takes my mind off of things.  Like, so far, nothing.  He was so much a part of every part of my everyday life that every moment screams the regret of my loss.  Am I capable of staying alive without him?  I am, even though I admit to moments and sometimes days when I’d rather just not.  But normally, in the way the world should be, he was part of everything I did.  Hear something funny?  Text him.  See our granddaughter do something new?  Sent him a pic.  Question about pool chemicals?  Him.  Aggravated that they dog chewed something up?  Him.  Proud of something one of the boys did?  Also him.  Just having a random, hormonal, funky, sad, off day?  Still him.  I was able to retire because of him and going back to work just reminds me that he didn’t want me to and that I didn’t have to when he was here.  And nothing else I have found so far ever “takes my mind off of it.”  Two of my favorite things are having my kids over for Saturday lunch and cheering on Lillian, our granddaughter, when she does a new “trick” (she’s almost seven months old now so she learns new things practically every day now.)  Although I’m glad that I have my children and Lillian to count on to do everything they can to cheer me up, neither of those things have brought the same joy since he’s been gone.  Kelly Clarkson sings a song that says “Since you’ve been gone, I can breathe for the first time…” Since he’s been gone, it feels as if I can’t.  All the time.  It’s been two and a half months and it still feels like I have to work to breathe.  In…out…in…out…like a respiratory metronome.  His absence is as all-encompassing as his presence always was for me.  I could have breathed him all day long, every day.  Jordin Sparks sings a song that says “Tell me how I’m s‘posed to breathe with no air, can’t live, can’t breathe with no air…” Yes, this one fits; if it’s hard for you to imagine, just YouTube this one:

Tell me how I’m s’posed to breathe with no air…

If I should die before I wake

It’s ‘cause you took my breath away.

Losing you is like livin’ in a world with no air.

I’m here alone, didn’t wanna leave

My heart won’t move it’s incomplete

Wish there was a way I could make you understand.

But how do you expect me

To live alone with just me?

‘Cause my world revolves around you

It’s so hard for me to breathe.

I walked, I ran, I jumped, I flew,

Right off the ground to float to you.

There’s no gravity to hold me down for real.

But somehow I’m still alive inside

You took my breath but I survived.

I don’t know how; I don’t even care.

Tell me how I’m s’posed to breathe with no air?

Can’t live can’t breathe with no air.

That’s how I feel whenever you’re not there.

There’s no air, no air.

Got me out here in the water so deep

Tell me how you’re gon’ be without me?

If you ain’t here, I just can’t breathe….

Psychosomatic

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July 18th, 2023

𝙋𝙨𝙮𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙘

Well, I’ve finally gone crazy.

(Okay, crazier than usual…)

It seems my brain has found a way to give my body physical symptoms.  Isn’t that fun? 😕

The word psychosomatic even sounds like it means you’ve gone nuts.  It has the word psycho in it, so there’s that.

I’ve developed something called neuropathic dermatitis.  Also known as neurodermatitis.  And dermatitis sounds like there would be a rash but there’s not; there is no physical, outward sign.  Basically, it means that nothing is actually wrong with my skin but my brain tells the nerves in my body “Listen, you’re not okay.”  My brain tries to say that to the rest of me some days, too. 

I start itching in the same couple of places every night, right at bedtime.  And I don’t mean a little annoying feeling where you can scratch or rub the area and it’s gone for awhile.  I mean 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦 itching, like I have never experienced before, that makes you want to scratch so hard that you could rip your skin, and then scratching does 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 to alleviate the itch – it doesn’t even stop for a few seconds.  In fact, the worst and most common complication of this diagnosis is skin infection from where people do just that, injure themselves just because they can’t stop scratching it so hard.  It feels like you need to scratch 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 your skin.

Yes, I know, if it itches, DON’T scratch it.  More histamines start dancing around in there and make it worse.  You’ll itch even more.  But you don’t understand this kind of itching.  Creams don’t help it.  Steroids don’t help it.  Oatmeal baths don’t help.  Warm or cool compresses don’t stop it (in fact getting warm makes it even worse somehow.) Antihistamines don’t help it.  

I can’t fall asleep until somewhere around 2:00 a.m. every night and wake up around 5:00-6:00 because I’m itching; apparently my brain is still working overtime in my sleep when I don’t even know I’m stressed.

The most common causative factor (often referred to as “trigger” these days) of this idiopathic disorder is…(drumroll, please…) S͛T͛R͛E͛S͛S͛.  Yep, you read that right.  Stress (also translated as grief in my scenario) has taken over.  It’s in control.  Clearly I am not.

Y’all, I really actually checked my bed for bedbugs (and I don’t GO anywhere to even be exposed to anything like that) because I couldn’t figure out what could be making me itch this badly.  

I’m not using new soaps, laundry detergent, lotions, etc.  There is no rash.  There are no bug bites.  If it’s not currently itching (and so I’m not scratching) then you can’t even see any indication that there is a problem.  But it literally feels like something is crawling around under my skin…hundreds of something’s.  It doesn’t spread anywhere, always the same two spots and always at night.  These are apparently two hallmark signs of this specific diagnosis.  It will occasionally itch a little (same spots) during the day and yesterday I was able to pin those episodes yesterday with times when I actually was more upset and stressed.  Fortunately those times aren’t as bad as at night, only mildly annoying.

WHY AM I TELLING YOU ALL OF THIS?

Because it is real and it was 100% caused by my grief journey.  They can say it is stress-related, yes, but every particle of stress I have right now is related to losing my husband.  I have only mentioned this to a couple of people because it makes me sound like I have either the plague or the creepy crawlies…or that I’m just plain nuts.  I am NOT contagious and there are NO bugs!  I can neither confirm or deny the rest.  I also know that I’ve required a lot of prayer from a lot of people lately and it probably gets old hearing about how screwed up my life is right now.  I haven’t wanted to say that there is “something else wrong with me,” plus it makes me sound like a lunatic and like it is “all in my head.”  I assure you, it’s not; if you could see those places on my skin at night or when I first wake up in the morning, you’d know that there’s more to it but that still doesn’t make it sound any less ridiculous even to me.

I’m getting very little sleep, am beginning to feel delirious at times, have even less control over my emotions (because I’m getting no sleep), and it is beginning to feel like more than I can handle…again.  I was just starting to feel, not “better,” not less sad or lonely or lost, but maybe just as if, well, if I’ve gotten this far then it’s not going to be fun and I’m still going to hate this life without him but it looks like I’m going to do it; I’m going to live through it.  Now…now it just feels like the task got even bigger.  If this is what Paul’s “thorn” was, in the Bible, I know now why he begged to have it removed from him; it would make perfect sense to me now, for it to have been this unexplainable thing that appears to have no reason to occur but, nevertheless, just IS.  (I know a lot of experts believe it was epilepsy but I’m just saying this would have been bad, too.) 

Isn’t it funny how, when you’re grieving, you feel like telling other people how you feel is too burdensome?  Like, if you keep telling them how awful you feel, it’ll just be too much for them and they will avoid being around you?  Heck, I’d avoid being around me right now, if I could, probably.  If you’re someone who is grieving and are having more physical symptoms of that condition than you would care to explain, just know that it is real and that our minds can only take so much before it tries to find a way to protect us.  Unfortunately for me, this particular coping mechanism may take my mind off of grieving temporarily as I claw at my own skin, but not in an effective way; only in a way that feels even worse than it does at all the other times.  And maybe for you it’s not being able to sleep due to insomnia (I had that for the first few weeks), maybe it’s not being able to eat, no matter how much you know you need to (I lost about 12 pounds in the first two weeks and then have continued steadily, albeit less quickly, since then.  Maybe it’s nausea or diarrhea (yep, been there, too).  Or maybe it’s something I haven’t experienced but it’s making you feel like you’re going insane.  Well, insanity is relative, I suppose.  I certainly feel that way sometimes now because I don’t recognize who I am a lot of the time.  The day I went from a “we” to just me…I lost a piece of myself and it feels like it equates to having an essential part amputated.  Like learning to walk again after losing a leg while still having terrible, excruciating phantom pains because your brain often tells your body that the leg is still there when you can look and clearly see that it’s not.  But it hurts anyway.  That change of identity makes you feel a little “crazy” for awhile.  I mean, how is it possible for me to not know who I am?  Still, it feels as if I don’t because I’m so different now.

So, for now, I learn to live with a new thorn and just keep praying daily that it will be removed.  Life was feeling hard enough, impossible really, before this problem came along so I could certainly use a break.  I do know that, even in the roughest nights of the storm, God is still here.  He still holds me in the palm of His hand.  For today, knowing that is enough.  So I just keep swimming…

Loved with Wild Abandon

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July 17th, 2023

I’m supposed to be writing my book; that’s the window I should have open on my this computer.  I should be writing what God is having me write, and Scott encouraged me to finish…but I’m not.  I’m back here again, in the grief journal…and I don’t want to be.

You already know from my previous post that today was, for some reason, a rough day.  I don’t know why I have had trouble getting through random sentences without my voice breaking, without having to check my resolve before completing a verbal thought process today.  My daughter-in-love said it was because I’m overtired.  I have been back to only sleeping three hours a night for about the last three nights or so.  But I don’t know if that’s it.  

Yes, the stuff came today from Legacy (the organ donation people).  And yes, it speaks, once again, to the finality of everything that has happened.  Part of me says, “I don’t need reminders; he hasn’t been here for over two months.”  While part of me screams, “WHY???  Why isn’t he here now?  This is America!  Where is the judge and jury who says he cannot come back out?”

But it is not a prison cell where he now resides.  I know that with every shred of my being.  

So, it is not on the fact that he is not here that I demur.  It is on the principle of the length of my remaining.  While I do not know (why can’t I know?!?) the amount of time during which I will remain tethered to this plane of existence, my mind reaches to the greatest length imaginable before I will be to join him.  The average age of a woman in North America is 81 but the oldest person alive is 116 years old.  Jeanne Calment was the oldest human documented (in contemporary time, by the people who don’t consider the Bible to be documentation) was 122 years and 164 days old.  They say she is the only person verified to have lived past 120 years.  I don’t expect to be the oldest person alive (my genetics won’t likely stand for that) but even if I live to be average, 81, that is 31 years that I still have to live knowing that I don’t have him here and, right now, it feels like I’ll stil be here figuring out how I’m supposed to manage that by myself.  

There is something special about when God tells you that He has delivered to you exactly what you need. When He says to you, “Hey…I’ve got this soulmate thing for you on lock over here…got it all figured out.  You’re gonna love it…”

Yep…there’s something special about that.  He doesn’t actually warn you at the time of when it will all be over or how much longer you’ll have to figure things out without him, after that. 

Just so you know…that doesn’t make me wish that I hadn’t jumped in with both feet.  Ohhhh, and boy did I jump in!  When Scott showed up in my life, I lit up like a Christmas tree.  I even have a few friends who could still now attest to that statement being pure fact.  No sloshy, mooshy, fake gooey love stuff.  The real  sloshy, mooshy, gooey love stuff. The kind that some people (use to be me, people) don’t even think really exists.  Oh, and there was my mother-in-law who called us “twitterpated.”  She had to remind me, at the time, that the word was from Bambi but she was right; it fit.  I dare say we were twitterpated for as long as we knew one another.  (I have watched Bambi at least three times since then.)

What’s hard is knowing how much God loves you, knowing He wants the absolute best for your life, hearing that He wants you to have fullness of joy and gives you a promise for a hope and a future… and then seeing all of that drift away…or surge away in drastic measure and infinitesimally small timespan, in our case.

***But He did.  God has showed me some pretty good promises already and He has come through on them, every time.  Even in the times when those promises seemed absolutely impossible.  Even when there should have been no natural way for some things to occur.  He still came through for me.  He still fulfilled promises that I didn’t even believe were for me…surely, they had to apply to people who were better…who were worthy.

For today, I am going to choose to say, let it be…. I don’t know the hour He will call me home.  I don’t know what blessings or heartache will occur along the way.  What I do know is that my God loves me with wild abandon.  I know that, despite my doubt, despite my heartache, despite my loss…He is the rock on which I stand.  I can only imagine how hard that is for some to understand…but I am grateful that He has given me eyes to see.

Organ Donation

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July 17th, 2023

I’m trying my best not to get down in the dumps today.  Trying being the operative word.  

This came in the mail today.

One day you have a husband, a soulmate…

Two months later, you have a certificate of appreciation and a little box.

Long before I lost my husband, I knew he wanted to be an organ and tissue donor.  We had talked about it at length and we both had already registered as such before we ever met.  I knew that, one day, if he ever left this world before me, this is what he wanted.  

He wanted to do the same thing he spent his life doing when he was here, as a veteran and a nurse: he wanted to help people.

Because of the sudden nature of his passing, organs weren’t an option for donation.  But other parts, tissue, corneas, cardiac valves (which are considered tissue, not organs, even though they are part of the heart, and even bone could be harvested in order to provide someone who is still here with a better quality of life.

I know he would be proud of all of the people he was able to help.  We don’t know how many people that is yet, but they told us that around the end of this year we will get a letter telling us what they were able to give to someone; we’ll know how many people Scott helped in death.  The number of people he helped in life is innumerable.

I should be feeling happy, some kind of pride, for the fact that his wishes were upheld and that this would make him happy.  I should be feeling so glad that other people are benefitting from something that he no longer needed.  I know I should…

But I don’t.  I can never tell when the anger is going to pop up, when it will rear it’s ugly head, let out a loud, throaty battle roar, and come charging at me to hijack my day.  Anger, sadness, depression, devastation… none of those guys fight fair and they’re never going to give you a head’s up before they attack.  I suppose that would be counterintuitive to their intent to lay you out like a boxer, knocked out cold in the ring.

I wish it would knock me out, though.  Beats the chaotic turmoil that screams in my belly right now, the cacophony of all of the not-fun emotions trying to take center stage.  Sometimes I think it feels like dying…but it doesn’t.  It feels like living…

I’ve been on a “good” streak the last few days so this attack came quite out of the blue.  I realized I hadn’t checked the mail box since some day last week.  There are a lot of things around here that should be done but aren’t.  I’m getting a better handle on it sometimes but others just feel like, “Ahhhh, why bother?  What’s the point?”

When I opened the mailbox (which I’m glad I checked because there may not have been much room for mail today, oops) this little box and a separate, large envelope were inside and the matching return address on both of them was a beacon, shouting to me that I was entering the danger zone, a lighthouse warning brightly:  Jagged rocks ahead!

Scott had already shed his earthly body before I agreed to let them take him away to the donor center.  He didn’t need that stuff anymore.  It was of absolutely no use to him whatsoever because he already had a new “body” of some sort.  He already had the eternal kind.  

But I miss the one he had here so much.  I miss his “voice box” and how he had a high pitched laugh when he got really tickled about something.  I miss his amber eyes that could be brown or almost golden at times, even though they were also always red, much to his dismay, because of allergies.  I miss holding his hand.  I miss his bald head.  I miss hearing his heartbeat when I would lay my head on his chest, the sound that he always said belonged to me because he would never, ever give it to anyone else.  I miss…just him.  I miss him.

And so I do not regret the decision to help others with his gift.  I just regret what made it happen now.  I regret that it was so soon.  I regret that our plans, dreams, adventures, and hopes were dashed in an instant…in an unexpected instant.  Somehow, even now, I just don’t know what to do with all of that.

I don’t cry as much now usually.  It’s almost like your body becomes conditioned to what the day-to-day heaviness, sadness, loss feels like and it just doesn’t respond the way it used to anymore; the tears just won’t even come most times.  In the beginning, I cried so much that it felt like if I blinked to hard, plop…there would go my exceedingly dry eyeball rolling across the floor because it just got inadvertently squeezed out by the normal movement of my eyelid.  Now, though, it is a blessing and a curse to have adapted to this “conditioning,” I suppose.  I’m not as likely to embarrass myself in the middle of the pickle aisle, but it also means that a lot of stuff just seems to live inside of me, instead of escaping to the outside.  I’ve apparently just grown accustomed to feeling this way…sort of.

I’ve been staying busy writing.  My novel has had me tied up for a little while now and I’m 1/3 of the way finished already.  I think that knowing Scott really wanted me to do this, that he felt strongly about the fact that it was something I should do, that it was a calling for me…that seems to have punched the time card on my purpose meter.  I was able to suddenly write a full outline and know exactly which direction it will go when I’ve been trying to figure out where to start, what the plot was, where to create drama, etc., for literally years now.  And so writing is what I do all day when the kids are at work.  I’ve had some “good” days; I use quotation marks because good is relative.  Good for me now would have been complete misery in The Before.  Funny how your perspective changes.

Writing helps me process emotions and, now that I’ve blogged all about how much it sucked rocks to open these, knowing that they are just another symbol of the brutal finality of it all, I’m getting back on a relatively even keel and will return to my authoring tasks. 

Rejoicing for Joy…even if you don’t feel happy

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July 16th, 2023

“Rejoice in the Lord always.  I will say it again: Rejoice!”  Philippians 4:4

There are times in life, and especially in a grief journey, when it feels difficult, if not impossible, to rejoice.  The word rejoice gives the inherent impression that one should be filled with happiness, the mental image showing someone jumping for joy, a new graduate as they hurl their mortarboard cap into the air in an exuberant fashion with a smile radiating a glow of happiness on their face.  That’s what rejoicing is, right?  

So how on Earth do we do that when we are downcast and feel destroyed?  How is it possible to radiate joy when we are miserable and lost and sad and feel alone?  “At all times, God?  Surely you didn’t mean that literally…because I definitely don’t feel happy right now…”

I’ve researched the difference between joy and happiness before and I took the time today, after reading this verse for probably the millionth time in my life, to locate a few definitions of joy as defined on the internet, with a particular focus on Christian pages.

“Happiness is something we feel because of our situation or circumstances.  We are happy because something has made us happy, but we are joyful because of something within us.”

“Joy is a practice and a behavior.  It is deliberate and intentional.  Happiness comes and goes blithely on its way.”

“Happiness is in the mind and feelings.  Joy, on the other hand, is deep in the heart, the spirit, the center of the self.”

“Joy is something grander than happiness.  Joy is a fruit of the spirit, and when we find joy it is infused with comfort and wrapped in peace.  It is an attitude of the heart and spirit.”

“Joy is caused by elation at a moment in time.  Happiness may dwell on materialistic, worldly pleasure while joy is derived from soul satisfying, emotional well-being.”

And then, even a secular page:  “Joy is a deep feeling of contentment.  It is cultivated over a lifetime and can even be borne from suffering.  Happiness is more about getting what you want in the moment – it is fleeting.”

1 Peter 1:8-9 says this:  “Though you have not seen him, you love him.  Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Peter was talking about something profound but that we already know, deep in our hearts.  Though we cannot see the air, we believe that it is there because we feel it as we inhale and breathe it in.  You may have friends who live across the continent, or even on another continent.  Even if you cannot see them, you still enjoy the beauty of that friendship.  You still know that, if you call that friend at any time you needed them, they would answer the phone or come to you in order to help.  You may find yourself laughing about something they said once while you are all alone, or even laughing at what you imagine they would say in a certain situation.  As Christians, we cannot physically see God with our eyes but are able to view the evidence of Him all around us, so we know He is there even when we can’t see or feel him, just like that faraway friend.  And also, as Christians, we know where our loved ones who trusted in Jesus go whenever they leave this world.  We cannot see them, we cannot tangibly feel them, but we know their spirit still exists, apart from their flesh and bone body, in Heaven.

I’m not happy that my husband is no longer here.  I find it very challenging to find happiness in any of my circumstances these days.  But I can say that I have joy.  Joy is not circumstantial.  It is a state of being.  

Even Dictionary.com says that the definition for joy is “to feel joy, a festive gaiety; to be glad; to rejoice; a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated.”  How is it that even the dictionary, not religiously focused in any way, speaks scripture over this word?

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 34:4

“…and Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart…” Jeremiah 15:16

“For then you will delight in the Almighty and lift up your face to God.” Job 22:26

“You will make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy.  In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”

“Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing.” Psalm 100:2

And my personal favorite: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.  He will rejoice over you with gladness.  He will quiet you by His love.  He will exult over you with loud singing.”  Zephaniah 3:17

There is so much to unpack in these verses regarding the meaning of joy as opposed to happiness.  “Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart.”  God’s word imposes joy within us.  “Delight in the Almighty and lift your face to God” is an action that will plant seeds of joy in our hearts.  “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” Well, that one is self-explanatory.  “Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing:” says that serving God with gladness (a joyful spirit) and singing to Him brings joy.  I repeat, joy is a state of being; it is not a feeling.

There have been days when I did not feel like going to work.  Nights when it was all I could do to drive to the hospital and clock in for a shift.  Even in those times, however, when I did not feel happy about being there and was probably exhausted, I did not go about my work with a sour disposition.  I smiled warmly at my patients.  I conversed with my coworkers with a friendly tone.  I spoke to supervisors and administrators with an attitude that belied my current temperament.  Most people do this and we call it professionalism.  It is unprofessional to speak to a customer, patient, client, or coworker in a grumpy or disrespectful manner just because we woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or because we are dealing with circumstances in our private life that should not cross over into work relationships.

I may go to see a friend but feel like they are mad at me or suddenly don’t like me anymore.  They may have had a fight with their teenager right before I arrived and are still stewing on that, unintentionally extending that attitude toward me.  I think I’ve done something wrong and don’t know how to fix what I don’t know but it turns out that it’s not really even about me at all.  It just made me feel that way.  Feelings aren’t fact.  

The source of joy is in being able to do the same with God, in a manner of speaking.  That doesn’t mean that you have to “fake it til you make it” with God, even though I confess that it feels that way sometimes.  Remember, “feelings” are not always reality.  I may be presented with the same scenario on two different days and feel very different about them.  A couple who are in college and learn that they are soon to be parents may have very different feelings about the situation than they will when they have their second child five years later after planning to conceive again.  Our emotions are fickle.  But reality is not.  God is not.   

Don’t get me wrong, feelings are valid and we all have a right to experience them; in fact, we often cannot help experiencing them.  My journey through grief sometimes feels like a journey in grief and I certainly cannot change the way I feel on a certain day, but that doesn’t mean that I do not still have joy living inside me, waiting to find an opportunity to be expressed.

We have to find a way, at least be reaching for a way, to be joyful over God, over the beautiful opportunity we have to have a relationship with him, over the sacrifice he suffered to give us the ultimate desires of our heart, to be with Him in paradise one fine day, even when we don’t feel like it.  Sometimes that feels like a major undertaking of mass proportion.  Other times it comes naturally.

There are mornings when I wake up and jump right into the Word, eager to see what God has for me that day.  There are also days when I wake up and the last thing I feel like doing is to try read the Bible or a devotional or even listen to praise music.  I don’t feel like praising because it feels like praising my situation.  It feels like praising for this feeling that won’t leave my gut.  It feels like I’m going against every miserable bone in my body to do something that I don’t want to do.  But if I can do it in order to go to work, if I can change how I am postured to do it for other people, can’t I do that for God?

When I’m praising in the middle of a storm, I have to remind myself (sometimes over and over) that I’m not expressing being glad about what has happened.  I’m glad for the knowledge that God already knows the outcome and I trust Him with that.  I trust that He can and will, in His timing, turn these ashes into something beautiful.  Scott would have wanted that.  That doesn’t mean that it is always easy to do.  In the contrary, some days it is really, really hard!  But for the sacrifice He gave for me and trusting in the promises that He has made, I can do it.  I can live through grief.  I can give God glory in dark times.  I can still have joy within me when I do not have happiness pouring out.  I can do hard things.  I’m doing it.  I’m doing it because God can still be joyful over me even when I am at my worst.

Forge Ahead: Forward Motion

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July 15th, 2023

FORWARD MOTION…

You’re used to my posts being long so I don’t really feel like I need to tell you…but it is long, so…

I’ve been quiet on the grief front for a couple of days. If you can get past the first two paragraphs, this one is a little different than most of them have been, at least lately.

Many of you are probably saying, “thank goodness…that stuff was heavy and sad.” That’s why I often post grief trigger warnings when I know it’s a particularly rough day with darkness in my thoughts. If you need to steer clear of other people’s trauma, you’ll be forewarned (that’s not what today is about, though.)

Others may be thinking, “Good, maybe she’s finally able to get past it, move along, now…” Oh, how I wish there were a sign that I would ever be a “past it, “ or at least an end in sight to the gnawing heartache that seems to be my constant companion from now on.

But I’m writing about something new today. A couple of days ago, I felt a searching in my spirit as I pondered at least the previous week’s worth of writing. Where was the hope? What was the purpose? I use writing to cleanse my own thoughts and spirit, to relinquish some of the weight that sits like an albatross around my neck throughout the days and nights.

Laying it all out on paper or, these days, inside a Word document journal that I sometimes copy to Facebook, seems to take the chaos, the scrambled thoughts, each one warring for top billing in my head, and bring them outside where it is easier to sort them, like various colored Post-It notes that I can move around, cross out and re-write, or scrunch up with a quiet rustle and toss in the wastebasket, swish! Writing allows me temporary respite from the swirling tornado of thoughts by calming the winds down enough to let me try to make sense of some of them.

So as I meandered through some of my earlier posts and then through the last week, I noticed a stark difference, as I’m sure many of you reading them have, as well. My hope was failing. The farther and farther away I seem to unwittingly and unwantingly drift from the days when Scott was here with me, the deeper it has felt like the cave I was sitting in became. It’s a dark cavern without a light source or company, a cold, damp, uncomfortable place with only jagged rocks to rest upon and no visible way to feed my soul; I must feel my way through everything in the dark. I didn’t want to stay there but seemed to have lost the map to leave since I can never go out through the same entrance I came in. I have to find another way out. There has to be another way.

Here’s a short detour but I promise it will all come together; bear with me.

Many have mentioned, either in comments, private messages, or telephone conversation, that I should use my grief to write a book. That sometimes my writing seems to make enough sense to some of them that they can come closer to feeling what I describe on this journey.

What most of you don’t know is that, for several years now, since Scott first encouraged me to retire from nursing, he had been trying to inspire me to write a book. He’d actually said, “you should be a writer, seriously” before that but when I retired, he told me he felt like it was something I was supposed to do. Like it was something God had called me to but I had never followed through.

I had started a few novels throughout the years before but would get a chapter or two in, or even only a prologue, and then just not know where to go with it. I also had various pages of writing that didn’t start as any kind of book but that I wondered what they were supposed to be, where they were supposed to go from there.

Part of the reason was courage (or lack thereof) and, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, lack of faith. If I truly am called to write an entire book, then God is going to be the one who formulates the direction, the idea bank, the path to completion, and then anoint me to receive the words He pours out over me. I was trying to find faith in myself, in my own abilities, and doing it that way just gave me complete writer’s block Every. Single. Time. And from there it just felt pointless to continue.

I started praying a couple of nights ago, at 2:00 in the morning, actually, for clarity regarding specifically this endeavor. Am I called to do it? Would it be any good? Would anyone ever want to read it? Would I even be able to figure out how to send it to a publisher or make a wise and well-informed decision about whether self-publishing would be the best route to take to gain any readership at all? I don’t care about notoriety; I would just really like people to actually enjoy reading it and be able to feel immersed in it if I’m going to write it.

I don’t know much about marketing. I don’t know much about book editing, cover art, catchy titles, or even if my ideas are really in a niché that would catch anyone’s attention. Actually, the first novel I began, several years ago, falls into two potentially conflicting categories, areas that some people who read one might be offended by the other and vice versa. But for me, they fit together, hand in hand.

I know that’s cryptic but I’m not really ready to divulge any more about the actual book just yet. Just imagine it being like the way that there are Pharisee-like Christians who believe that dirty, lost, unsaved people are too unscrupulous and far-gone to be welcomed in God’s house. But they’re not. Jesus says they’re never too far gone to come to him, period…even on the cross. Anyway, let’s just say it falls somewhere along those lines…sort of. A conflict of alternate beliefs, in a way.

It started when I was sitting in Miami after leaving my nursing job. I was down there to stay with Scott for a week and, although we had five days to spend together, he had to work two shifts in the middle of my stay. I had kept myself busy; there is a lot to do in Miami and I won’t deny taking a couple of trips to my favorite pastry and coffee place for almond croissants, Cuban coffee, and spinach empanadas.

But during one of those days, I was sitting alone in the sweet AirBNB where Scott had been staying during this contract, and truly just out-of-the-blue, something popped into my head that I knew I needed to get down on paper. I grabbed my iPad (which is more like a laptop, with a keyboard), opened a Word Document, and just started to type words that flowed from somewhere I couldn’t describe.

It wasn’t like I was thinking through phrasing, metaphors, context, or plot development. It was like what some people I know call a “download” from God. Some may disagree, and that’s okay and I 100% love and respect every single one of you, too. But I knew that, although there are similarities to some events in my life (they say you write best when you write what you know), most of it just came from what seemed like a whisper.

I typed furiously because the words, the story, were coming faster than I could keep up. It was only a couple of pages long but took me just minutes to write. It felt like a prologue, a middle of the story piece that then flashes back to how it all started. I showed Scott when he got back from work. I eventually showed a handful of friends because I wanted to know if it was intriguing to them, if it drew them in. All responses were, and vehemently, “You have to finish this; you have to write the rest of it. Can I read it when you’re done?”

I’m not tooting my own horn because, in a way, I feel like I didn’t even write it. It was inspired from a seemingly intangible source (maybe intangible l, but known to me). But several times following this, I tried to sit down and figure out where the story was supposed to go from this one little blurb. I didn’t know how to flesh it out.

Despite feeling like I didn’t write the first part, I felt responsible for figuring out the rest and that felt really big, overwhelming. Everything I contemplated felt like something others would think was dumb or boring or trying too hard or (insert any number of negative remarks here). Every time, I walked away from the dining room table defeated. Man…that enemy is a smooth talker, eh? Sucks you right into his vortex where you feel ill-equipped to muscle your way back out of the centrifuge.

After that 2:00 in the morning prayer session this week, I woke up at around 6:00 the next (well, the same) morning and, before even brushing my teeth, getting coffee, or making breakfast for my baby boy, I grabbed my iPad and the mini “desk” I use when I’m writing from bed, and located that very first prologue I had written, hidden in my iCloud files.

Instead of trying to just pick up the story and run with whatever popped in my head or getting stuck because nothing did, I prayed again and then scribbled out an outline. The entire book. Rising tension, climactic discovery, resolving conflict, all of it. There are 24 chapters unless I add or take away during the rest of the writing process. Each of those chapters already has a plan, a road map like I wish I had for this part of my life.

Somehow, knowing that I would be finishing something that my adoring husband always encouraged me to do feels like it needs to be done. He would have been so proud of me if he had been here to see me finish; I’ll regret that one day when it’s done, that I didn’t do it when he was still here to see it, but I will have done something he felt was important and assured me would be successful. And even if I finish writing it but it never goes anywhere, that will be a success. I’ll know I did it.

Maybe it will be successful (by the world’s standards) or maybe it won’t. Maybe I’m called to do it or maybe I’m doing it because it feels good to be doing something for Scott, in a weird way, at least something he had always wanted for me.

I say all the time that I try to tell God that I am not good with subtlety. I pray for neon signs because the more faint arrows pointing which direction I should go seem to go unnoticed too easily for me. I know I probably talk too much and listen too little (quiet in the peanut gallery, please.) I’m not going to try to pretend to know, for sure, if this is His purpose for my life now or if I’m called to write this book because there are people who will like it or even because there is someone out there who needs to hear it…maybe it’s only one person but that one person can glean something from it that they really need in their life.

I’m writing it, though. In the last two days, as I’ve been radio silent here on Facebook (and in my own journal), I have written a complete outline and almost five chapters. I tend to write rough drafts of each chapter then go back and tweak them rather than doing the whole thing and starting over. I have the rough draft of Chapter 5 and am about halfway through the rewrite of it. I’m sure I’ll reread it again when it’s finished and do the same thing with the whole book when it’s complete, but I’m finishing up Chapter five out of 24 today.

Who knows, I may get a second wind (my energy levels still leave a lot to be desired) and start on six.

After it’s finished, I have NO idea where to go with it or what to do next but I’ve decided not to get bogged down and discouraged by that part just now. For today, I am thankful I spent time in prayer and petition two nights ago. I’m thankful for an early morning answer that sparked me to begin doing something that is making me feel productive and, like Scott, would be, proud that I’m doing it.

I know I’m still going to have rough days. Like my dear, wise friend told me, “Grief isn’t a choice; grief just is.” But today I’m able to lift my head and choose gratitude and forward motion in at least one plane of my life. I’m not moving on from Scott, but I’m moving forward, at least for today.

P.S. Look at my handsome hubby. We always had a different kind of smiles when we were together. Life was always good when we were side by side. ♥️

Emergency Contact?

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July 12th, 2023

𝘎𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, again.

Emergency Contact…

I went into the settings on my iPhone and, as is typical for me, went down a rabbit trail that somehow ended up in the part where it lists your emergency contact…surprise…guess who? And here we go, down Alice’s rabbit hole…

I had to change my emergency contact to one of the boys. There is a fear that comes with losing my husband so suddenly and unexpectedly, especially after losing my nephew two weeks earlier in a different but also abrupt and unforeseen way. Many times I’ve thought, since then, about how disruptive and undecided life is. One minute everything is coming up roses; the next minute it smells like rotten garbage and someone tells you that this garbage dump is your new home. Welcome home and, by the way, this is the station where you get off. Have a nice, long stay.

I think a lot now about how I don’t want my boys to have to go through any of the tribulations I’m walking in now. Scott was only 49. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t have a will. He had a high-paying job and I was, theoretically, retired from nursing so that we could spend more time together. So there are bumps that feel more like jagged mountains in this rocky road I’m walking on…shoeless. I don’t want all of my kids walking this road, not this way. I at least want to get them thick-soled shoes first and try to smooth out some of those big hills and valleys.

So a will is on the agenda for sometime after probate gets handled, which could take forever but I know God will hold my hand while I’m walking. He’s already picked me up and carried me more than a few times until I got my will-to-keep-going and strength back.

Scott would never have intentionally left things undone. We just didn’t know. You never know, right? And people who go through tragedy tell you that, but I think we always tend to think that really bad things like that only happen to 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 people…not us. Or maybe it’s that some part of us thinks that if we don’t talk about it, it won’t happen, like an ostrich hiding it’s head in the sand. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me…

But this is where we are now and it did happen; it happened when we were unprepared. Out of all of the people who read this, most of you won’t go do anything differently after reading it. You’ll be like we were, if you’re young. I know I’m 50 now but we were still SO YOUNG.

If you don’t do it for any other reason, do it for your spouse and/or for your kids. Please.

Things like emergency contacts trip you up in grief. It sounds like a simple thing: hit the delete button for each letter of their name and then just type in a new one. No biggie, right? And yet every single time you have to hit that button, it is like a stabbing, gut-wrenching wound opening back up the place that you just got clotted off and were hoping against hope that it would stay that way. Now you’re bleeding all over the floor again. Another mess to clean up and you still have to figure out whose name to type in this stupid box to replace his.

R͛E͛P͛L͛A͛C͛E͛. It feels like you’re slowly chipping away at pieces of your person, the one you loved…the one you still love despite immeasurable distance. You’re purposely not packing away the clothes and all the things because you want them to know that you still want them HERE, not gone. But it isn’t the clothes that force your hand. It’s things like the words “emergency contact.” Just in case anything happens to me, I need an emergency contact who will answer the phone. Scott’s phone would just ring and ring on his nightstand. Yep, he still has a phone and his number. Well, I have it. Can’t cancel that either. Not yet.

Yes, logically I know that changing something like my emergency contact and other paperwork that has to be done isn’t erasing 𝘩𝘪𝘮. I know, I know. Say it loud for the people in the back but it still won’t change how it feels…to me. The figurative language that opens its mouth during the reaping of his name, one sharp slash of the scythe at a time, has a deafening, slicing sound. With each swish, the word echoes in your mind: gone. gone. gone.

I know you can see by now that today was a rough day. One bright spot was that I did get to have lunch with a wonderful woman who understands the pain I’m going through and who is so good at making very valid points about grief.

Let me tell you about some of her wise words today. I asked her a question. I told her that something has been plaguing me, worrying me about whether I’m “doing this right.” I know God didn’t promise us the rose garden and He even said there would be trouble. But while thinking of my instruction manual (Bible) I got this: If you want to follow Him, you will have to die to self daily, and by dying, you actually live. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” (John 11:25) Die to self; live for Christ. Got it…I think…?

Yet I feel SLAP FULL of self these days. I’m not 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 to have a pity party. I’m 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 to find a way to bust out of this prison cell I’m in called grief. I promise. But all I can think about is how SAD I am, all the time. It’s immersive. It’s intrusive. The missing him is incessant.

People keep saying “You need to get out of the house; get your mind off of things.” They mean well. They’d do anything to help. They just want to relieve the burden, take some of the pain away. What they likely don’t realize is that nothing “gets my mind off of things.”

That’s why lunch today was good for me. She doesn’t expect me to put my mind in places that intend for me to concentrate on not only the thing that never leaves my thoughts but also some other conversation that is difficult to follow when I cannot concentrate, not properly. We talked about Scott. We talked about her husband. We talked about grief. And that’s okay. It didn’t hurt worse. It helps because the things my brain is tormenting me with are things she went through, too. She doesn’t make me feel like she is uncomfortable if I talk about him.

That is why, while it’s happening, while I’m feeling all of the pain that I feel right now, I’m writing it down and I tell you about it. One day someone will be feeling what I am now and they’ll see themselves deep in the mud that I describe in these pages. They’ll know there’s a hand to reach for. I’m right here…just reach…I can almost touch your fingers…!

Sorry, I digress, as usual. Back to the “dying to self” scripture. So I was feeling like, if I cannot stop thinking about how sad I am and how miserable this life is going to be without him, then I’m clearly not doing a good job of dying to self and living for Christ. I should be spending my time pointing people to Jesus, not wasting the beauty that God can make from these ashes of my life. I should be taking every thought captive and focusing on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. ALL of the Fruits of the Spirit. Instead, the ashes from the incinerating burn of my life are just going to blow away on the next breeze that comes through.

You know what my beautiful, wise friend said? I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact words but here is the takeaway: you aren’t making a decision to grieve. Grieving just is. It just is what it is. God gave me my husband and he gave you yours. They were treasures to behold and now they’re just gone. Grieving the loss of that gift is just something that happens; you don’t “decide” to do it. IT JUST IS. God created us with emotions and He knows and understands what they do to us. He lived on this earth as one of us! How worthy was that love of a grief so deep?

Jesus wept when Lazarus died. He already knew that he was going to wake him. He knew he would bring him back to life to show the glory of God’s power. But he wept. He cried for the pain he was seeing on the faces of those he loved. He didn’t choose to weep or not to weep. It was a normal, human reaction to deep empathy for those he strongly cared about. Grief wasn’t a choice, it was a human reaction.

I’m grieving the loss of my primary emergency contact. It may sound silly but it just is what it is. It is an ugly, messy, disconcerting, discombobulating, disastrous, painful grief. And I can’t stop doing it because it just is. And, truthfully, I feel better about that.

No one is “doing it wrong.” No one “isn’t moving on like they should.” No one is going overboard and no one isn’t grieving enough. Some people have a pretty good talent for keeping their mask attached firmly at all times public. Others fall prey to tears with each trigger that jumps out dramatically from every possible hiding spot. We’re all doing it 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. We’re processing. Sometimes we’re stuffing it away to deal with later. We’re doing the very best we know how to do in order to survive each new onslaught, every single day.

Eventually, I’m going to boss this grief. Not every single day, and not right now, because I’m learning how to combat the evil tactics it throws at me. But one day, I’m going to be the overcomer, eventually, that I was created to be. 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 it won’t be like this. I think.

The Pride of a Loved One Goeth Before Success

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July 12th, 2023

Scott, my husband who looooved fishing and was quite good at it, wasn’t even irritated about this. He was so proud that I got a good one. On this particular day, everything had been fairly small, as ocean fishing goes so I know it’s not huge by that standard, but Scott glowing with pride as I reeled it in (several of them, actually) was enormous because he was always like that, about everything. He was always proud of what I did and how I did it. He watched me do really hard things and was still proud of how I walked in it and encouraged me consistently.

I really miss that, but it’s a good memory to have inside my heart. ♥️

I really miss it because, although I know there are people who are proud of me for various reasons, my family, friends, other widows, etc., who will be HERE to be proud of me now. Who is my day-to-day? How will I know if I’m doing it right? Who will encourage me to keep going?

And so the questions about how to survive just keep rolling on in.

Dig Ditches Even if There is No Rain

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July 10th, 2023

It’s been a long and difficult day but I am moving through some changes in my spirit.

I can’t help saying again that two months feels like it’s been forever one minute then like I still can’t believe he’s gone the next. How has it even been two whole months since I saw his face or heard his voice? But how had it been only two months when it also seems like forever? I’ll never understand the way that time morphed into something different, something that doesn’t make sense, since he’s been gone.

I talked to him a lot throughout the day today, out loud because there’s no one here most of the time to hear me anyway. I’ve told him how much I love and miss him. I’ve told him I wished I was making two sandwiches instead of one. I’ve told him how much our dogs miss him because he spoiled them so much more than I do…I’m the disciplinarian (don’t feed them people food in the living room; that’s how they learn to beg. At least take it to their bowl so they know that’s where they eat.) I’ve told him my heart still hurts so much. I’ve asked him why he left me alone.

But overall there may be a season of change coming. Early this morning I listened to this Steven Furtick message and it truly, deeply spoke to me.

In the beginning he says “If it left your life, it’s not necessary for what’s next;” he said that twice. I got offended by that. like, really offended. You don’t know my story, Pastor Furtick. How do you know? Dude…he was NECESSARY for my life. I NEEDED him. I wanted to turn the video off but a whisper said not to.

The pastor kept talking. As he spoke, I heard a Word that was meant for me. He said that “whatever left your life, whether it was abandonment or whether it was just tragedy, I declare that the Holy Spirit is going to fill all of those gaps.” Okay, now, come on, Holy Spirit. Do. What. You. Do. Fill me! I’m ready! (But am I acting like I’m ready…?)

And so I continued to listen to this 15 minute message and it meant something to me. The whole thing quivered in my spirit, deep down inside of me.

God will tell you to dig ditches for water to fill when there is no rain. He will tell you to get ready for provision when there is no source in sight. He will tell you to prepare for overflow when you are fully empty and cannot remember, can’t even imagine what it would feel like for a single drop to fall on the parched earth that is now your heart.

I confess that I have heard Him say just that. And I’m not ready. My human mind, with all of it’s limitations, tells me I am not ready. How can I accept a life with overflow when my husband is not here to share it with me, to celebrate it with me? I’ve made no secret of the fact that Scott grounded me, encouraged me, was my champion, lifted me up, and supported me even when I did not feel worthy of what was before me. And now my husband is not here to bolster my defenses. Yet, God still has plans for my life, even still. He has plans for abundance. He has plans for growth. He has plans for fruitfulness. He has plans for a time of building. I literally and truly already know these things because they’ve been revealed to me and spoken over me again and again. It’s strange because even when I feel like I’m incapable of listening, He speaks. Even when I don’t want to hear because I want, somehow, to remain stuck in my brokenness, in my despair, He won’t leave me alone.

And I don’t really want to remain stuck. It hurts and it is a wretched place to live. I want to be free of this pain and anguish but what would that say about how much I loved and adored my husband? Oh, how I did, so much. And oh, how I do not want to live this life alone, without him. And yet I have been given no choice in the matter. How do I leave him here and “move on?” Well, by not leaving him here, of course. But it doesn’t feel that easy. When he is not here to go with me, it feels like if I take a step out of this spot, he won’t be beside me anymore…and yet he isn’t actually beside me now. It’s an absurd emotional paradox.

God will wait until I’m ready, however, or until I force myself to move. It’s such a conundrum because I physically have difficulty moving at times. No one tells you how much carrying the weight of this emotional pain weakens your physical body. It doesn’t even seem as if it conforms to natural logic. But if I can make myself (sometimes) go for a walk, or take a shower and wash my hair, or load the dishwasher, or walk to the mailbox, then I can make myself move on God’s intended path.

In the mornings, I already read devotionals because they are short and are enough that I can manage to get through reading them but can also still retain what I read. I read short passages of scripture. I pray even though it 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 small and ineffectual. I listen to praise music. Then I sit in the quiet, but it’s not in obedience to listening, if I’m being honest; it is in response to apathy and lethargy. These are decidedly two side effects of grief and depression. I have created these rituals because even when I cannot feel like worshiping, I know that the Word of God does not return void. I know that the decision to worship is every bit as important as, if not more than, the 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 of worship. We are not our feelings. Emotions are fickle and foolhardy. God is not.

God is preparing me to move. He is giving me space. He is letting me process things on the timeline that my mind is capable of maneuvering. I still do not feel like I can take on the world. I still don’t feel, many days, like I can walk, much less run. But He’s going to wait, and He will keep gently pushing me toward what He has planned for me because He already knows that His will, His plan, is what will eventually bring me joy. I just have to decide that I am worthy of that without my husband beside me. I’m still not sure what happened when “us” became “me” and of what I still have left coming out of that change.

Father God, Abba, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. You are my fortress and my deliverer. Only You hold the key to my salvation and to a future that will bring me joy. I don’t want to waste that, but I don’t know how to feel the strength to walk the path that ends in it. You are my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in You and you help me. My heart will leap for joy, and with my song I will praise You. In You, I am strong and courageous. I will not fear or be in dread, for it is the Lord my God who goes with me. You will not leave me nor forsake me. I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength. For they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not get tired; they shall walk and not become weary or faint. You have not given me a spirit not of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control. I will seek You and Your strength; I will seek Your presence continually. You, Lord, are my strength and my song; You also have become my salvation; You are my God, and I will praise You. I will exalt You and seek Your face. I have peace in my heart because the Holy Spirit comforts me.
In Jesus’ name, I cry out to You. Amen