Tag: loss of a spouse

He’s Not a Vending Machine God

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Butterflies cannot see their own wings. They can perceive the motion of their wings but not detect individual colors and patterns. They turn from caterpillars to pupa and emerge as a clear-winged butterfly, a blank slate of sorts. After their first meal they develop colors and patterns on their wings.

I perceive what is going on in my life and know exactly how it “should” look…and yet I can’t SEE the whole thing. I’m only capable of seeing what I’ve experienced up to this point. The future is a mystery to me. But it’s not to God. And yet here I am trying to decipher what happened and plan out what will be.

For example, sometimes I feel like I’m not grieving enough, like if my husband were able to speak into my life he’d actually say “it’s barely been six months and you are laughing with people?” or “How are you just having a jolly old time with our grandbaby without me there?” But, let me tell you, I’m still so broken. I’m so broken that I’d feel like there is powder left rather than shards. Can’t make a mosaic out of that. But how could it ever be enough grieving over someone so amazing and wonderful isn’t here anymore? How much grief would do him justice? Sounds silly doesn’t it? And yet the pain of these thoughts seem to have tendrils that stretch out and wrap themselves around my every limb, over my eyes, into my mouth. There are times when I feel as if I cannot function…but what would ever do justice to who he was?

I also experience an inordinate amount of guilt over his last night here. As a nurse with many years of experience, why didn’t I do something else, make demands sooner? Because I know that I experienced a similar paralysis of thought processes when my son was very sick with meningitis, I know that it is very hard to be a nurse and a close family member at the same time. My fear over what was happening and my concentrated efforts to shove that fear down inside me so that I could comfort him, so I could try to allay his fears, that’s what kept my nursing brain from thinking straight. So much fear.

But God does not give us a spirit of fear. And that brings me to guilt over prayer during that night.

Bear with me because, as I am having somewhat of a revelation about these things, I realize that a lot of this doesn’t sound rational…but grief is not rational; it is a fire-breathing dragon with armored scales and gnashing teeth. It does not do things rationally. I am working to bring this all together so that it makes sense (not just in print but in my head, too, trust me.)

That night, I really didn’t pray during the time he was struggling. I’m just being honest. I was focused on my husband. I was concentrating on how to do anything I could to make him feel better. To ask the right questions, to find the right solution, to fix it. I do know that my “nursing brain” was malfunctioning during that time due to emotional disconnection from that part of my brain. I know this because, although I did have intermittent thoughts and ideas pop through from that part, mostly I was focused on things in a different capacity. And so I wasn’t actively praying much during the time he was struggling.

After he stopped breathing and I was escorted to the ICU waiting room by a kind security guard while they were attempting resuscitation, my prayer sounded stuttered. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. God, help. Please don’t take him from me. Save him, Jesus, please.

Now I sometimes think, “Why didn’t I pray ‘better’ then?” “What if the way I prayed, the words I said, weren’t the right ones to get our miracle?” “Why didn’t I do enough to help him? To save him?”

The Lord of Heaven and Earth is not a vending machine God. As far as prayer is concerned, if you put in a nickel instead of a quarter or a $1 bill instead of a $5, He doesn’t spit it out and say “that’s not going to work to get what you’re asking for, sorry.” That’s not how prayer works. That’s not how God works. He wants us to pray in order to commune with Him, spend time praising Him, and especially to learn how to rely on Him. To trust Him. But it’s not a process where it becomes useless if you don’t lay it out in precisely the right format.

My mind is like a pachinko machine. All the time, but definitely as I write this. Even as I type that He wants us to trust Him, somewhere in my mind says “I trusted Him with my husband and he’s gone now.” And then my mind says back “Yes, you trusted Him and he’s taking care of him better now than anyone else ever could; he’s healed, and whole, and happy. Now are you going to trust Him to take care of you, too? Those little metal pachinko balls bounce off of the metal pins, back and forth, zig-zagging constantly.

Trust him to take care of me now…

I’m unhappy. I’m so sad. I feel lost in so many areas of life and I feel alone. I hate all of it. And I also feel like a toddler having a temper tantrum at the same time. “This wasn’t the plan! This isn’t how it was supposed to be! I want my old life back!” Mentally screaming and kicking my little Mary-Jane-clad feet as I thrash at the floor with my tiny toddler fists. “God, make it stop! Turn it back! This isn’t fair!”

He’s not a vending machine God. You don’t punch in the numbers and get the snack you chose. Sometimes God is up there saying “I’m not going to let you settle for a measly, overpriced bag of chips and a candy bar when I have a banquet-style buffet, all-you-can-eat, with all of your favorites and some you’ve never even tried but will love…I have that coming up for you.

Isn’t that a typical parental thing to do? Keep you from eating junk food so that you can eat nutritious food instead, stuff that’s good for you? And sometimes there are brussel sprouts on the plate. You don’t want them when you’re living in that toddler phase. Yuck! But you grow up one day and realize that your tastes have changed and that, now, you love many of the things you used to hate to eat. Especially things that are healthy, good for you.

He’s not a vending machine God because he doesn’t reject your prayer if you don’t put “the right amount” or “the right kind” in. He’ll find ways to teach you and lead you into more prayer but He doesn’t just tell you to turn away from the machine if you don’t have the right amount of change.

He’s not a vending machine God because you don’t always get to pick what comes out. And you don’t need to because He’s going to make whatever you “get” perfect in His time.

I’ve also fretted and panicked and cried and stressed over my future. (How am I still not getting it? That He’s got this?) I’ve tried to plan it every which way by saying things like “okay, if this happens then this piece would work out” and “I’m going to need this to happen for that part to work out.” I mean, I’ve literally looked up average lifespans and tried to plan what I’m going to do, financially, for all of the years between now and then. Like I’m in control of the calendar…and the wind and the waves. (Insert eye roll here.)

He is not vending machine God because He makes the decisions based on his omniscient knowledge of what comes ahead. I don’t. As much as I think I’d like to control my life, I don’t get to and that’s a good thing. I’m pretty good at messing things up sometimes.

God doesn’t like all of the decisions that are made down here but, if we trust Him, if we follow Him, He is more than able to bring beauty and wholeness and joy out of each one. If we turn to Him, He will work it all for our good. I’ve read it. I believe it. I know it. And then I forget, time and time again, when I’m hurting.

In case you’re wondering how on earth it tied into the rest of this, I’m that caterpillar from the first paragraph. Here I am, plodding along my branch to find the right spot to knit my little pupa case. I’m trying.

God is doing a work in me and, tonight, at 3:00 in the morning, I hear Him telling me all of this. Tomorrow may feel silent again but these reminders are what gets me through. They’re what let me know to let go of the rigid plans I keep trying to make. I do not have control of them. I may live to be 90 or maybe only until next week. I cannot plan out my survival for each of the years. But He can. And He won’t let me go. He will bring me great joy. He will bring me hope. He will be my provision and my strength in any circumstance that I walk through.

I do worry about the joy part. How can I even look forward toward a place where I can find exuberant joy when my husband is not here. It feels like it would be an insult to him for me to find a way to move forward and really be integrated in life again, living to my fullest potential. It feels as if that demeans the life I had with him. If I can be happy without him here then it somehow takes away the importance of having him when I did. I feel overwhelming guilt immediately after any time I begin to laugh over something, to enjoy something.

And there’s that pachinko ball again, bouncing all over the place. “Listen here, are you remembering where he is right now? I know you can’t be fully cognizant of what it’s like up there but, rest assured, he’s good. He’s more happy and healthy and healed and whole and joyful than he’s ever been. Nothing you could be doing on earth is anywhere near what he is experiencing where he is so go on, take the joy. Accept it. Appreciate it.” (And there’s a little pout about how he’s happier now than he’s ever been…even when he was with me. Then it’s “of course he is; it’s Heaven…hello?” Then I go back to being 100% glad that he is because I want that for him. See? Pachinko.)

So no matter what wonderful experiences God pours into my life, my husband is still living even better off than I am, just at the new address while he waits for me there. And I trust and have faith that God will bring healing to my heart so that I can enjoy living again one day, I cannot push away every opportunity to appreciate life here because he is not here to do it with me. I know I’ll experience sadness at times over it, but it’s sadness for me, not for him “missing out.” I’m just missing him doing all of it with me.

One day I’ll test out my butterfly wings to see if they’re ready to fully unfurl. I’m sitting here in this dark pupa casing and letting God grow me. Sometimes growing is a one-step-forward-two-steps-back process for me but God won’t get annoyed that I haven’t learned all of the things yet. He just keeps reminding me that this is an open book test and to go back to the chapters I’ve already read to find the answers. He reminds me He’s the one who put them there since he wrote The Book.

For me, for now, I’m going to pray and sit with Him for awhile, and then I’m going to try to concentrate on that studying. And I’m thankful there’s no vending machine here. I’m content with what I have for right now and I trust that something good will be there when I need it.

The Clockmaker

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Famine shows itself in many figurative forms. You can be starved of many things besides food.

And “fair” is just the place where you buy cotton candy.

Life is not fair and, because of that, I’m starving. I’m not hungry, no. But I am starving for the life I had with my husband. Call it metaphor or an analogy but I’m going to staunchly maintain that it fits. This feeling goes beyond “missing him;” it’s just bigger, broader, more all-encompassing, more saturating than just “missing him.” This condition is deadly without intervention, exactly like starving.

Let me put it another way.

I keep reading that grief is the price you pay for love. I guess someone feels like that makes it all better. Grief is also proportionate to intensity of love. My sister and I LOVED our Granny and our stepdad VERY much and were oh-so-sad when they left. But my sister’s grief over her son and my grief over my husband is bigger. Your husband and your children are essential pieces to every part of your life. They are an integral and necessary cog in the clockwork of everything you do or plan to do in life. Take one of those cogs away and, well, let’s just say duct tape won’t fix it. You have to rebuild the entire inside of the clock to work in a different fashion if it is ever to keep time again. You have to painstakingly find a new place for every single cog and figure out how to make it a part of the working timepiece, how to make all of them turn and work together. It’s exhausting and it takes forever.

My cogs, springs, screws, other random pieces are scattered about all around me. Every time I try to fit two of them together, the teeth on the cogs don’t match up. It feels as if I will never find a way to make all of the wheels turn properly again. Typically, if this happens to your clock, you return it to where you bought it. I don’t want to do that. I LOVED this clock when it was working properly, when all the pieces were as they should be. I don’t want to go back and trade this clock for a different one. I just want this one to work again. The problem is, they no longer make the missing piece. So now I have to find a way to put it back together without it. To do that I’m going to need an expert clockmaker.

Since God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, He knows everything there is to know about time and about how to keep clocks running. The thing is, I’m scared to turn it over to Him. My clock is already broken and seems to be beyond repair. What if I send it off and it just gets lost? What if I give it to Him and find out that it truly is broken beyond repair and there is nothing anyone can do about making it tick again? What if, just like my engagement ring that was too big when I got it, I just don’t want to let go of it long enough for it to be fixed for me? I want to hold on to all of my own pieces that I do have left because I don’t want anything to happen to the ones that are left.

But then I’ll still just be sitting here with a broken clock. What good is a clock that doesn’t keep time? It becomes just a bauble, a knock knack. It just sits there and never does anything ever again. That’s not really what I want for my clock. I want it to work again because I’ll feel better if it does.

And yet I feel guilty for even trying to get the clock working without that essential piece. Maybe it shouldn’t ever work again. Maybe it was meant to only be functional when that specific piece was in place. Maybe that one cog was so important that it will always keep the time wrong, too slow or too fast or in the wrong time zone, if it is ever repaired to work again.

The Clockmaker. I have to give it to the Clockmaker. I’ve got to make a decision to send it off to Him, give it up in order to get it back in working order.

Uggghhhh, but I still just can’t.

I’ll keep trying. I’ll get a box to send it in, pay the postage, and just keep trying to send it out.

One of these days, I’ll be able to step close enough to the mailbox to put it in. One of these days, it will work again.

Coming Full Circle…One of These Days

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I recently found a blog post that was left in the draft folder on my blog website from many years ago, one which had never been posted.  It was from 2013.  There were only two paragraphs written and I guess I got distracted and never went back to finish it.  By the date it was saved to drafts and by the last paragraph, I can tell you that I had just met the man who would become my husband, Scott.  The last paragraph probably tells you all you need to know…I was already fully twitterpated and loving every second of it.  And before he died, only a too-short three years and two months after we were married, almost ten years since we’d met, he was the one who was constantly telling me to write a book.  He loved my writing and he felt like writing was one of my callings, that God would use it if I did finally write a book.

The first paragraph of the following saved draft (at the end of this post) is because of divorce.  Somehow my divorce, my re-marriage, and my becoming a widow all tied together to become the fodder for this very blog, at various stages in my life.  I began to blog when I was jaded and trying to navigate life as a single mom of three and still figure out who I was if I wasn’t a wife.  It had become an identity and once it was shed, I felt naked beneath.  I vowed never to let someone else “become my identity” again.  I was ME and I was perfectly happy being just that (most of the time.)

Enter Scott…who made part of my new identity “wife” again.  Once I met Scott, suddenly I didn’t mind a bit taking that identity on again.  If we were famous, someone would have invented some name for the two of us like ScoJen or Jenott because that was all we ever, ever wanted to do.  Be together.  A therapist may have called it co-dependent but, if it was, neither of us cared.  It sounds mooshy and gross probably, to some people, but we completed each other.  We were peas in a pod.  Peanut butter and jelly.  Insert any other combination where it just doesn’t seem right if the two parts aren’t together: that was us.  I loved it.  (He did, too, and he would have told you so; I’ve heard him say it many times.)

But it didn’t end up the way we planned and he was quite suddenly gone…without me.  I’m sure he’s managing just fine because he is walking streets of gold.  Me?  I’m down here feeling like I’m lost in an endless, foreboding forest with magically changing paths that continue leading me absolutely nowhere as I try to find out who I’m supposed to be again…as just me. Another new identity: widow. I hate this one more than any other I’ve had, ever.

So, I decided to hit the laptop (not literally, although at times I may have wanted to) and start doing what he had always wanted me to do.  I started writing. I’m writing a book, a novel actually.  Look at me, being an author.

A part of me will always feel guilty for not finishing it while he was here to see it and glow with pride as he bragged to people about me and my book.  He knew a lot of the overall premise of the book and I had started and restarted several times. He thought the prologue was a good hook. If I’d finished it while he were still here, he’d have gone on and on about it; I know he would. He wasn’t into bragging much unless it was about me or our boys, but then all bets were off…if you knew him, you were going to hear a LOT about us.

A month or two ago, I suddenly got the unction to write almost every day for a week.  I got to Chapter 10 so that equated to somewhere between 1 and 2 chapters a day.  Writing a chapter sounds like something you could do in an hour of one day but this comes along with outlining, character mapping, planning rising conflict, plot twists, crises, and resolutions before diving in and then having to go back and edit and then edit again.  I think I was making pretty decent progress.

Then one of those magically moving paths in the dark forest shoved me down, down, down into another deep pit with a quicksand called despair at the bottom. I didn’t write blog posts for quite some time and still haven’t written another word in the book. At first I started getting stressed about how I had just quit in the middle and I needed to keep going. Then I’d sit down at the laptop and just stare at the screen. I had nothing to say. I’ve now decided not to worry about it and also that when it’s time to write more of it, I’ll know.

Once I finally do finish it, I don’t know what happens next, when I finally get to the point where I’ve written the epilogue.  That’s something I’ve decided to wait until later to worry about, too, because right now the important part is that I do eventually write it, get it done, finish, accomplish completion.  Even if he is the only one who ever knows I did it, then I’ll know he would be proud.  For today, that is what matters to me the most.

But when I found this saved blog draft today, it brought a couple of things together for me.  I once live in The Before, the place I lived in prior to meeting Scott.  Mistakes, regrets, a lifetime of falters that led me to heartbreak and total opposition to romantic relationships.  That Before was also an After – after divorce.

Then, quite unexpectedly, another Before popped up; that’s the one that I lived in prior to Scott’s Homegoing.  That middle part was the best there ever was; that was where I lived knowing I had been given a wonderful gift, a real kind of love, a soulmate.  

And now…now I live in The After again.  I have to remind myself that, once, a long time ago I lived in a different kind of After.  After divorce.  And then one day another unexpected Before came along.  One day life was worth living so much that I often thought I must have dreamed it, dreamed him up. He was so perfect for me that he should have been a dream.

That means that sometimes The After is also a Before. I’m hoping you’re still following me here. (After divorce but also before finding the love of my life. After meeting my soulmate but Before losing him.)

I know that one day God will pour out some kind happiness over my life again.  One day I’ll feel like I’m in a new Before and not just the After. This time The After is devastating, but the Before will have hope and light and life. I doubt I’ll ever be involved in romance again because, without a doubt, Scott was my soulmate.  He was The One that people look for their entire lives and some never find. But other good things could be in the new Before. And Before what? I don’t have a clue.

The second thing this ten-year-old post (written just three months after meeting Scott) brought together for me was that I’m using all of this, parts of the life I lived in both of The Befores, to create something.  They say to write about what you know.  This is it.  (It is fiction, yes, but I am using pieces of my life to breathe life into the narrative.)

So, although there has been tremendous happiness and there has been devastating sadness, they will blend somehow in a medley that creates a new song altogether.  And I hope it’s one worth tapping your foot to the beat. I actually already know a lot about what the second book will be about but have to get through the first. It’s a process I am determined to complete.

The blog post draft saved from 2013 but never posted…until now:

Some people say they don’t regret any of the choices or mistakes they have made because each decision has taken it’s part in molding them into who they are now. I cannot comply with this way of thinking. I do regret mistakes I’ve made. I regret being stupid enough to have needed lessons such as the likes of some of my falters. I regret the changes that some of those trespasses made in me. I’m not even happy with parts of who I am because of the changes some of them made in me. I never wanted to be jaded. I didn’t want to be suspicious and fearful. I never intended to be someone who sometimes uses anger to walk through hurt. I do wish I could go back and not be who I have been at certain times, but I cannot…so I will be a better me now, today. And better tomorrow than I have been this day.

None of this is to say that I am not happy today.  I have actually been deliriously sparkling with newfound joy lately, so much to the probable annoyance of onlookers who don’t like to watch people being “mushy”.  I’m thankful to have found a soulmate who accepts me as I am and whose faults I accept, also, knowing that we all are imperfect.  It is being able to accept each other with our imperfections and not putting one another on pedestals that allows our relationship to be real and yet still adoring.  This is, surprisingly, where real love is found. I’ve really found it. This is definitely it.

The Countdown

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The holidays are bearing down on me like a freight train. I feel like I’ll go through this next few months saying “Six months gone…survived it – check. Veteran’s Day…survived it – check. My birthday – check. Thanksgiving – check. Christmas – check. Lillian’s First Birthday – check. Scott’s birthday – check.” And I wish there would be some kind of sigh of relief at the end of all of that but there cannot be. If only I did have to survive just one year of him being gone and then he’d be back, like a far-away military deployment, but it won’t be like that. It will never be like that.

I feel myself sinking deeper as we get closer. And I don’t even think it’s only that. Is it getting closer to these holidays that we celebrated and spent with our family? Or is it that every day closer to those days is a day farther from the last time I was with him? I can’t tell. I’m not focusing on the holidays with dread (although I do not feel ease going into them this year either.) I’m not specifically trying to focus on how long he’s been gone. But the tenth of the month just keeps on coming back around, for crying out loud.

The sinking seems to be a phenomenon all its own. A chaotic spiral over which I have no control to avoid the suction, much like the approach of a tornado toward your home. I still have faith that God will bring me out into the light but that doesn’t prevent the bleak and frightening outlook of the dark while I’m in it.

I went to the cemetery today…well, it’s yesterday now. I sat at his grave for nearly two hours. I played music on my phone. I picked all of the weeds and leaves off. I took implements to allow me to clean his grave marker. I added a flag honoring Veteran’s Day, honoring him. I have already purchased flags for Thanksgiving and Christmas to put there soon. The Christmas one has a photo of him, smiling and handsome, sitting on the lap of a fake Santa. I took that picture when we went to Savannah together.

Mostly, though, I cried. I ugly cried. I sobbed. I asked why (again.) I didn’t think I’d stay that long but I found it difficult to leave, despite the fact that I know that is not his place of residence. Mostly I feel closer to him at home than anywhere else. But that place is a home to my grief. It is the representation of the fact that even though his body is on this earth…in this earth…he is not. It is a quiet place of emptiness that mirrors the way my life feels without him here. I don’t talk to him much there (like I do more so at home) because the cemetery represents the fact that he is not here. But I also didn’t want to leave him there. Such a strange paradox.

I remember the night when my nephew died, when it came time for us to leave my sister’s home, still crawling with police officers and investigators, and go somewhere else to stay the night. My sister said “I can’t leave him here; I don’t want to leave him here.” As a parent, we would never leave our child alone in a houseful of strangers. You’d take him with you. But leaving nails the first level of finality right through your skin. I felt the same way leaving the hospital that night. I didn’t want to leave him there. I was supposed to stay the night with him. I was supposed to drive him home in the morning. Nail. Nail. Nail.

I don’t know how many nail holes you have in you when grief allows the curtain to part to begin letting light in again. I know it’s a lot. Pour water in and I’d leak like a sieve right now already. Need a sprinkler to water your lawn? I’m your huckleberry. And I guess I still have room for more holes because I didn’t want to leave again yesterday. I actually had an incredibly strong urge to lay down there, right on the dirt. Instead, I sat Indian-style with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands for most of the time. Thankfully, he’s way out in the country so no one else was at the cemetery to witness my profound grief.

Then I decided to push through more time in the day by stopping at the theater on the way home. I sat, completely alone in an empty Saturday-afternoon theater, and watch the After Death movie by Angel Studios. For today, I’m reserving my thoughts about it because I’m still processing what I saw. I did cry. I also felt comfort at some parts. I felt the choking feeling of being in the hospital room a few times. Now I’m mentally processing the scientific process with which they documented facts vs. potential hallucinatory effects. And there were irrefutable facts. I’m leveling that with what I know about life after death from a Biblical perspective and then how all of that relates to what my husband is now experiencing, what he experienced on that night. I do know that they reviewed hundreds of what they call NDEs (near death experiences) although those who experienced them were actually clinically dead for a period of time before being resuscitated. One particular line stuck with me over which I am still pondering the full significance: “Doctors resuscitate their patients; they don’t resurrect them.” And yet some of these people were clinically dead or without oxygen for up to 90 minutes.

The recurrent theme for me, throughout the entire documentary, was that I wished Scott were here, watching this movie with me, and telling me if that’s what it was really like. Because he had come back when they resuscitated him. I could almost hear him saying “that’s pretty much what it was like” or “I didn’t feel/see/experience that part.”

And then I think of the parts of the movie where people described being greeted or welcomed or even guided by others they had loved and who had already passed…

And so my countdown to someday is still on. Someday my prince will come…and he’ll take me to meet my King, face-to-face.

Savannah, GA. November 21, 2014

Give Credit to the Meek

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I’m reflecting this morning on the word “meek.”

Matthew 5:5, in the Beatitudes, says “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Previously, to me, meek would have been interpreted as weak, passive, or timid. None of these are words that strike a chord of longing, typically. We don’t strive to be “meek” if that is our interpretation of the word.

But some study through various sources today taught me something different.

First, I went to my Dictionary app which instructed that the definition of meek is the following:

  1. Humbly patient or quiet in nature, as under provocation from others.
  2. Submissive or compliant; tame
  3. Gentle; kind

Besides the fact that the world typically looks at the world “submissive” as a bad word, these are all things we might strive to be. And even more so after the other things I read.

For the record, the definition of submissive in the dictionary includes “unresistant or humbly obedient” and “yielding to the authority of another.” While I have authority in the name of Christ, that is all due to submitting to His own authority, (doing my best to be) being obedient to His authority.

I learned today that, in Matthew 5:5, the English word translated as meek comes from the Greek word “praeis.” It means gentle, humble, or submissive; modest, mild, or unpretentious.”

The very first thing that struck me about this explanation was: my husband, Scott, was meek.

He was truly gentle, humble, submissive (in the appropriate situations – to God, to work leadership, and to the needs of others.) He was modest, mild, and the most unpretentious person I know. Although it’s hard to be prententious when people are teasing you (in a good-natured fashion) about your Baker County accent! 🙂

When I was young, these are not things I looked for in a partner or in myself. I wanted to be powerful within myself, to be in control of my surroundings and my situations, to be who I was unashamedly. But I don’t like some parts of who I was then (although that was a process of learning and growing that we go through) and I learned – usually the hard way because that’s how I roll 🙄 – that we are rarely “in control” even when we think we are. Things that we are unable to control can take us to our knees in literally the span of a heartbeat and we are forced to recognize our vulnerability to outside influences. To a drunk driver, to cancer, to words or actions of heartless people and unkindness.

It took a lot of growing up, spiritually and emotionally, to learn that Scott was exactly what I wanted and needed. I thought God sent me Scott to make me happy. I’m sure that was part of it because I know He wants all of the best things for me. And oh, glory, did he make me happy. But I learned that God had another purpose in that beautiful gift I called a soulmate. I learned that I needed to be more like Scott in many ways. I still want to be and I’m working on it, albeit slowly and with backtracking on some days.

If you’re looking for a partner now, you want God to send you someone who is all of these things (and recognize that person for these reasons.) Maybe today that isn’t what you think you want right now but I assure you that your whole world will flourish under the influence.

Allow someone to walk into your life who has traits of beauty that you don’t see enough of in yourself. Someone whose very existence urges you to be more like them.

I always admired Scott for his patience with me. Don’t laugh; I know y’all probably already know it’s true. When I am hungry (especially) or overly exhausted or stressed, I’m far from meek. I’m testy, grouchy, and definitely not patient.

The night my nephew died, just sixteen days before Scott did, I was mean to him. I couldn’t get packed and in the car fast enough to get to my sister and brother-in-law, and I was throwing things willy-nilly into the suitcase. Scott was hurting for them, too, but he knew we’d be staying awhile. He was quietly methodical and thoughtful. He gently removed random things I threw in (a little bottle of air freshener? a beach hat? the ceiling fan? Seriously, though, I was just grabbing and tossing and I have no idea what all went in there but I know I saw him replacing them with things I would really need – I know I didn’t think of underwear or shirts but there were probably six pair of pants from when I ripped open that drawer and then was ready to LEAVE!) I yelled at him, “We have to GO! You’re moving too slow!” But he wasn’t being slow, he was being purposeful and I was rushing because my mind was madcap. I simply couldn’t think straight.

Another time, we were on a vacation trip, just the two of us, and we were riding bikes around Savannah looking for a place to eat. We started off wanting to find the most amazing local restaurant that you couldn’t find anywhere else. Then, as time passed, he still wanted to find that and I wanted to find FOOD of any kind. We were fairly young in our relationship, within the first year, and he didn’t recognize the signs yet, bless his heart. But I was getting sweaty, lightheaded, and nauseous (low blood sugar) and I suddenly stopped the bike, got off and said “We are eating here. I have to eat right now.” He did, then, realize that these must be signs of 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 and said, “Okay, baby, if that’s what you want.” We ate at Panera.

I feel guilty about those things now but I don’t have a single doubt that Scott knew how very much I loved him. And there were times he told me that he wanted to be more like me in some ways so I know we balanced each other out and we helped each other grow.

Don’t be afraid to be meek. Challenge yourself to memorize and understand the real meaning of the word. I know I am. ♥️

The Waiting Room

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I read that someone calls it “decorating the waiting room.”

That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m sitting around wondering when I’ll be able to see him. Like pacing back and forth, hoping the doctor will come out any minute and say that someone you love is stable enough for you to go see them.

And, truth be told, the pacing is doing me no good at all but I somehow cannot stop myself from wearing a hole in the flooring. A long, straight path back and forth, back and forth with strides sometimes quick and short and others slow and long-paced, but just back and forth nonetheless. All I 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to do is wait…wait until I get called to come on back to his room.

The last time they called me back to his room was agony, but I know the next time won’t be. I won’t harm your thoughts with the photographic memory that I have of the last time I saw him, alive and thereafter, but despite that constant visible reminder I am unable to believe that it was real, that it really happened, that he could possibly be truly gone. And so I wait, I pace dutifully back and forth waiting for the sign that it’s time to go see him.

The thing is, I could be waiting a really long time. I’m 50 so, theoretically, I could possibly only be halfway through my life. While I know most people don’t live to be 100, that’s the timeline I have to be prepared to live through. And I know my husband would absolutely hate it if I was just surviving it and not finding a way to live it.

So, sometime, I have to start decorating the waiting room. I have to start doing things that don’t even sound enjoyable to me at all right now, with the belief that it will be something that brings me joy someday. God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. For He knows the plans He has for me: plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me a hope and a future.

I can’t just pace back and forth in this waiting room I am living in and focus constantly on when we will be together again. It brings no good to the situation, has no benefit, and is actually harmful. If I were to decorate in here, maybe not only I could have joy but perhaps others here could, too.

The question is, what supplies will I need to decorate? Where and how, pray tell, do I get them?

The bigger problem than that is apathy.

Apathy:

  1. absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.
  2. lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.
  3. Also ap·a·thei·a, ap·a·thi·a [ap-uh-thee-uh]. /ˌæp əˈθi ə/. Stoicism.freedom from emotion of any kind.

I’m ashamed to confess to my current and constant state of apathy. I felt the same way as I faced a bout of major depressive disorder the last time. I know, trust me – I know – that I have a plethora of things to be thankful for. I have the most amazing kids and granddaughter in the world. I have an extended family (siblings, parents, aunts & uncles, in-laws) who care about me and check on me all the time. I have friends and family who haven’t forgotten my loss, do not try to diminish it, and who don’t expect me to hurry up and “get over it.” I still have a roof over my head and it is the same roof that Scott and I chose and bought together, which comforts me. I have a LOT to be grateful for, so much more than many people. And I got to experience the love of a lifetime – also something that many never will.

But somehow my brain functions, right now, in such a way as to tell me nothing matters, even as I try my hardest to remind myself many times every day how many things and people there are that do matter. I know that this means that my brain is sick.

I’m going to preface this next part with this: I am safe. I am not considering a spiritual change of address. I look forward to it but I am not planning it to be in my own time instead of His. I promise I am safe.

But I want to talk to you about how people look at severe depression and even suicide. This isn’t a choice. This isn’t something you can “try harder” to pull out of or “pray more” to successfully leave it behind. Trust me, please, when I tell you that I have tried hard and I have prayed and prayed. Mental health issues are real and just because you cannot see the wound, doesn’t mean it is not there.

When someone has cancer, we feel compassion for them. We encourage them to pursue treatment. We tell them we’re going to love them through it. And we understand that it’s not just “all in their head.” Just because a CT scan cannot show you evidence of depression doesn’t mean that the illness isn’t physically affecting the body and the mind.

The person with a major depressive disorder episode isn’t just “sad.” It also doesn’t mean that they don’t love you when they’re having thoughts of leaving their pain behind. When a cancer patient is told there is no further treatment doctors can do to help, we know how much we will miss them but we give our blessing if they choose hospice. We tell them it is okay to go. We understand and don’t want them to continue to be in pain. And I’m not saying that we should encourage people unaliving themselves over depression; I’m saying that we should try to understand that this is an illness. It changes the way life looks and feels. It’s painful. And on top of all of that, people tend to diminish it by thinking it’s able to be controlled with “happy thoughts.” I’ve been here twice. Rest assured, that’s hogwash.

When I say I’m having trouble finding enjoyment in life, it absolutely does not mean that I love my family any less. I am more grateful for my family than I could ever explain. And I still am unable to shake off the way I feel. I cannot just perk up. Oh, I can fake it for awhile (and it’s exhausting) but it doesn’t leave. I take medicine. I see a therapist. I’m praying and I’m in the Word. I’m doing all of the things I’m supposed to do to fight this. Still I feel a weighty despair that rarely lightens and never subsides.

It’s not been six months yet and I’ve been given instruction from several people on how to turn myself around. You’ve got to get out and do some things you enjoy. (I don’t enjoy them now; I’ve tried.) You need to spend some alone time with God. (I have spent so much alone time with God through the middle of the very long nights and every single weekend that I may have forgotten how to talk to people sometimes.) Don’t focus on it so much; take your thoughts captive. (It is almost impossible not to “focus” on something that literally changes every single moment of your life and your future. Every. Moment. And I’ve prayed that God would help me take the thoughts captive and redirect me. I speak His Word aloud against the constant barrage of nightmares and day thoughts that attack me. For everything there is a season; apparently this is my season of loss and it’s going to continue to be until it’s not anymore. I do not have control over it.)

I’m physically exhausted. I would sleep all day, every day, if I could yet when I do I’m plagued with nightmares sometimes and others I just cannot sleep at all, despite the fact that my body often feels as if I have no strength to stand. That’s not all in my head either.

But the point of this writing today is to decorate the waiting room. HOW do you decorate when you feel like you can barely lift your arms and don’t even want to look at pretty decorations?

Grief is debilitating. It stops your life at the exact same moment as they tell you that the person you loved more than life is gone. Your job is to stay alive until it feels like your heart has begun to beat again. And, apparently, that takes a very long time. I’ve come to decide that the depth of the loss determines the weight and length of the grief cycle. Mine is about five elephants, give or take. And my daddy once said to me “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” So I’m doing the best I can to chew at least one bite every day, more if I can manage it.

Perhaps when I’m down to only one elephant left, I’ll be able to decorate the waiting room.

One additional point for today: being a Christian doesn’t make life easy:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

If you’re wondering why I’m a Christian when it’s still this hard, or how I could really be a Christian if I’m not handling this better, understand this: you can be the Christianest Christian there is and still struggle to get through things. And if someone not being able to “get past” their grief confounds you, count yourself blessed to have never experienced such a loss. Or count yourself unlucky to have never known someone over whom you would grieve so deeply. So why don’t you find a way to help them decorate the waiting room?

And what I do know, as a Christian, is this: even when I can’t see Him, He is working on me and for me. I do not travel this dark road alone. And He will absolutely carry me to a way to get out.

Even If…

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Written December 3, 2023

You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. Genesis 50:20

I’m trying to ascertain where this is going to fit into my life, my situation, and my grief.

The enemy was alive and well in that hospital when my husband died. He thwarted possibilities for recovery over and over by using the actions (and inaction) of people. He stopped every action that would have turned it around. I cannot count the number of times, the number of decisions, that could have turned this all around and let me drive home together with my husband. I know each and every one of them but they are many. A tidal wave of failures, one right after the other. An indefensible path to an outcome that we can never return from.

I remember praying in the room with him, when he was having trouble breathing, more and more so. Praying “God help him.” Praying with a security guard in the ICU waiting room while they were coding him. For this stranger, I will always be grateful because he spoke words that refused to be plucked from the whirling dervish of panicked thoughts inside my head. When he left to go back to his work post, I remember texting and asking my Daddy to pray and then saying “Jesus, please, help him. Please bring him back. I need him.” Something like those words over and over and over again. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

I do not believe that God chose this path for my husband. I believe He knew it would happen because He is omniscient. I believe He could have stopped it because He is omnipotent. I believe He was with me in that waiting room, with my husband in his hospital room for every terrifying second he was still within his earthly body, and with my mother-in-law as she traveled to be with me, because He is omnipresent.

So why didn’t we get our miracle?

Because God gave humans freedom of choice. He could have forced Adam & Eve to worship him. Made them bow to Him and serve Him. But humans would have then been slaves. If a man or woman tries to force you to love them and stay with them, how much more likely are you to try to get away, to end up hating them? No, He gave us free will.

Part of Joshua 24:15 says “Choose this day whom you will serve…” That day, some people chose wrong. I’m not calling anyone a Satanist. We all choose wrong sometimes. When you have an attitude or are being prideful, you’re choosing wrong. When you are arrogant. When you gossip. When you snap at someone because you’re hangry. We’re all guilty of choosing wrong. Some do more often than others.

For some, even kindness and compassion are difficult to display. And then, mixed in with bad decisions, there are probably just some plain accidents and some ignorance of what to do sometimes…and this time, with us, unfortunately an egregious amount of outright negligence when it came to people, trained and licensed, to whom we entrusted his safety.

There are myriad reasons why he’s not here anymore but it all comes down to the fact that sometimes the enemy wins a battle, already knowing he will never win the war. He (the enemy) knows what the Bible says. He believes in God because, to put it gently, they’ve met. Satan knows Him. He’s just always trying to see if he can sway more people to his side while he’s still got the chance.

For some people, loss does cause a sway. Some people cannot imagine how there could be a good God if people who don’t deserve to die, do. The thing is, God doesn’t cause those things. Satan made sickness, not God. And sometimes faithful people don’t get their healing this side of Heaven. I’m not going to pretend to know what God sees that He allows it to happen. But I do know that what we see is like looking through an old-fashioned keyhole. Our vision is so very limited, just what you can see by putting your eye up to that little keyhole. God can already see the whole world of things on the other side of the door. The full panoramic view. I trust that He loves me even when I don’t understand. I trust that He is for me when all else seems to be against me.

My granddaughter is going to the doctor for shots today; one of her parents will have to help hold her still while she receives them. When my children were young, I took them to the doctor for vaccinations, too. I remember the look on my sons’ faces when they were little. That “I thought you loved me; why did you help them do that to me? You didn’t protect me” look. But I was protecting them. From chicken pox and pertussis and polio. I knew something they didn’t. I knew it would be a moment of pain for a lifetime of protection. I could see what they couldn’t.

As for my husband, glory to God, he is enjoying himself now. There is no pain, no heartache, no loss, no weeping, no disappointment. He went through so much of that in his life and I’m so thankful that he’s free of it all now. That doesn’t change how much I selfishly wish he was here with me.

As for me and my house, we will still serve the Lord. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago (in the beginning chapters of the book of Daniel) were going to be thrown into the fiery furnace. They told the king that God would save them but then said even if He doesn’t, we won’t worship your idols. We’re still going to worship only God.

God not stopping the tidal wave of events that caused my husband’s demise does not make me hate him any more than my kids, knowing I loved them and cared for them, stayed angry at me after shots. They immediately held onto me afterwards because, even if I allowed something that hurt them, they still knew I was their best protector, biggest fan, and first love.

God still loves me just as he loved my sweet husband. I don’t know why He allowed him to be taken away so young and left me here. I don’t know what plans He still has for me or what purpose He wants me to fulfill but Here am I, Lord. Send me.

I’m always, always going to wish that things had turned out differently. I’m always going to dream about our plans to grow old together, travel, play with grandbabies, and all the things. But even still, I trust that one day I will be okay. I trust that one day He will bring joy and purpose back into my life.

By the time you’re reading this, it will have been a while since it was written. I write because I need you to know that, even when there was wrong done that caused the death of my husband, even though I run a race against anger every day, trying to head him off at the pass with forgiveness, I am still about my Father’s business.

Choose, this day, whom you will serve. I’m still choosing You, Abba God. I’m still choosing You.

Every Single Day is a Wake-Up Call

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I don’t want to cause hurt to anyone who may read this. Whether you’ve been through this before and you’re just further on in your journey than I (and I don’t know “how that works” as you get farther out from where I am now,) or whether you’re reading it going through the same now, or somewhere down the line, I’m farther out and you’re just beginning your journey, I don’t want to cause you pain so ask yourself now if you’re called to read more at this point.

I don’t know who to talk to about this because I do know that people who know me and love me, my kids, my family, my closest friends, they’ll all hurt for me as they watch me hurt. Sometimes I just feel trapped by the need to let all of this pour out but also by the need to hold it in, behind a Hoover Dam type of internal apparatus that keeps anyone else from experiencing it.

Today my daughter-in-love left with my granddaughter, who stays with me during the day while her parents are working or schooling, to go home. My youngest son, who still lives at home, came home from work but left again (like teenagers do) and I sat down, like I always do, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do now, until bedtime.

Today it’s hitting me all over again that I’m alone today and that this is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life…just alone. I sat down to try to watch TV, just noise to fill my house and my mind, but this time it’s not filling anything, even partially. Today it just makes me feel even more empty.

My husband and I used to watch TV together. I mean, we didn’t watch a ton of TV but there are shows we always liked to sit down and watch together, discussing the events, the plots, what would happen next in the series. I still can’t watch any of those programs. But now, even trying to fill my mind with useless stories just feels fake, like even “reality TV” actually is.

It hurts so much to think that this is what I have to adapt to because there’s no going back…and he won’t be back. It’s been five months and my brain still cannot fathom the idea that this could possibly be forever. Even when he was away for work, he always came home. We always talked on the phone or FaceTime multiple times a day while he was gone. He’d have to be at work by 6:30 a.m. so I’d wake up just to talk to him as he got ready and was on his way to work. I haven’t had a day with any part of him except memories for over five months and I just still cannot make my mind accept the fact that he is gone from me until I see Heaven.

I’ve struggled through every 10th of the month since he transitioned to the other side. This month I made a conscious decision to try to be positive. To think of good memories, to honor who he was. I’m trying today to go back to that mindset but I just keep getting dragged back down into the muck. I MISS him terribly. I just miss who we were together and that feeling, that emotion of sadness and despair over never having that again refuses to be challenged.

I know that prayer should be my first decision during times like this but these times, the worst times, are when words to pray are least likely to surface. I do know that the Holy Spirit translates my agony into superfluous prayer, but it always takes time for the comfort to come. The amount of time varies but it is always agonizing until it arrives.

When it does come, I’m able to be grateful for the comfort and some level of peace so I do pray then, praising in the midst of the lighter rain of the storm. I guess I put it that way because it has rained for a lot more than forty days and forty nights here, but there are times now when it’s more like “sprinkling,” or at least less like a deluge.

I know God is here because, even in the sadness when I cannot stop myself from sobbing, I feel him here. He is here and yet the physical absence of my husband feels no less so I cannot resolve the coalescence of those two feelings. It is what feels like the tearing apart of the two that seem to undo me.

Often I feel like I’m not being “a good enough Christian” in how I’m handling this. Understand that, as I admit that, it is not anything I would ever judge anyone else of, only myself. I know fully-well that, if I were listening to someone else say the same, I would admonish anyone else for their overly harsh criticism of themselves. But I cannot escape the feeling that, if I were more faithful, I should just be trusting God to work it all out. Satan screams inside my head that I’m failing while God’s voice is always a calming whisper…if only I could fully interpret His words beyond the noise of the enemy. “You call yourself a Christian but you can’t even believe what you say you do! What a crock. Do you even believe what you keep telling everyone you do???”

Yes. I do. And I’m fortunate to be well-read on spiritual warfare and spiritual attacks. And yet, in the moment when it is I who am standing at the warfront of a barrage of enemy fire, still I fall victim, at times, to his relentless firepower. Even armed with the Word and speaking it aloud doesn’t immediately silence the battle cry.

I say this to you so that, if you, too, feel that you are being held captive, you will remember that Paul was arrested in Caesarea and imprisoned for two years, was shipwrecked, and then spent two more years imprisoned on house arrest in Rome. As a human, albeit a faithful one, he must have experienced spiritual attack because who would Satan have in his sights more than someone who would help write the New Testament. Paul had to have times when He felt alone, dejected, forgotten, and yet he still proclaimed his faith in the midst of it all. Remember that Paul was Saul, who persecuted Christians. Satan has to have screamed his unworthiness to him many times, but Paul persisted in faith.

Persistence is never easy. It means that, despite difficulty, one continues on their original path. Paul continued. While I have no inclination to be compared to Paul’s level of dedication and faithfulness, I am choosing to continue on a path of trust. A friend said to me this week, “faith is easy because it’s specific; trust is harder because it is in the dark.” That has been a resounding message for me this week. Faith, for me, is easy because I have seen evidence in my own life of what it has already done. Trusting that God still has a plan for my future when it feels interminably bleak is harder, but His faithfulness has been true to me in the past.

I’m clinging to that. The future will mimic God’s faithfulness of my past because He never changes. That’s what I’m counting on today.

Jesus, Help Me…

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I feel like I’m dying all over again tonight and I don’t know exactly why. For some reason, a tidal wave has rolled back over me and I feel like I’m back at the beginning, when he died. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop pleading, wishing, arguing about why it shouldn’t be this way. I thought I was beginning to mend but I’m in millions and millions of pieces again tonight. Jesus, help me…I’m drowning.

There is a movie about a Tsunami called The Impossible with Naomi Watts. She is with her family on vacation and, when the storm hits, there is a graphic scene of what happens during the giant wave hitting she and her family, separating them and thrashing them about underwater. One thing I remember is that her breast was ripped open by something she was thrown against underwater, part of a tree branch, I think. I almost feel like I can understand that feeling but the ragged branch punctures all the way into the muscle of my heart. Vivid, yes, but I have no other words to describe the agony of this moment.

I knew when I started to feel stronger that this couldn’t last. I have four friends, three very close to my own age, who have lost their husbands, also suddenly and unexpectedly, within the last three years. I know from their experiences that this will come and go, but it catches me by surprise every single time I fall back into the pit, tumbling endlessly down, hitting sharp rocks, getting caught up in choking vines, and hitting my head, knees, jaggedly ripping open the skin of my breast, and all other body parts along the way. It is more painful than I have words to explain. I can literally feel the moment he stopped breathing, the moment they came to tell me he was gone, the moment I laid my head on his still, warm chest but with no heartbeat inside. And my heart screams WHY???

God is still here or my emotional shattering would most definitely become physical. It’s the only explanation for how my skin remains on my body, for why my body pumps blood through my vessels instead of spraying it, pulsing, from every open wound I feel ripped open. He is here holding me together and yet I am in pieces.

There is a song by Barlow Girl, an “old-school” Christian female rock band, that sings “I cry out with no reply and I can’t feel You by my side, so I hold tight to what I know: You’re here…and I’m never alone,” followed by a strong guitar rock solo. That is what I feel right now. All I can do is hold tight to what I know. God is here; I’m never alone.

Abba God, please show me Your presence wrapped around me in a tangible way right now. I don’t know how else to survive this. I still have a family who needs me and I need to land on my feet. I have to keep my head above this torrential flood of salty tears. Hear me. In the name of Jesus, I’m asking You, please, raise me to where I can stand again. Amen.

What is “Real?” Pain Surely is.

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I look at the picture of him that I put on his nightstand and I still can’t believe that he isn’t going to be here, that he’s not coming back. And I don’t mean that like “Oh, wow…I can’t believe it…”

I mean it like, I cannot fathom the idea. My brain still says it doesn’t make sense. I watched him not breathing as people poured into the room with the crash cart but I still literally (yes, I literally mean literally) cannot believe this is truly real.

I understand that, unless you have ever experienced a sudden, extremely traumatic loss in a devastatingly traumatic manner, this probably doesn’t make sense to anyone else. It doesn’t make sense to me that this whole thing doesn’t make sense.

It should because I was there. I watched it all play out while trying to find a way to make it stop, to change the outcome, to flip the script. I fully remember pacing and praying, begging, pleading that despite what was already happening, it would all be turned around and we’d go home together. I recall fully real but seemingly crazy details about being told he was gone.

So I don’t know how it is possible that I just cannot make myself believe it.

I keep thinking that, if I can come to terms with the fact that this whole thing isn’t some crazy comatose nightmare that I’m having, I will be able to start whatever healing is even possible after this. I feel like I have to wake up to know if it is really this way or if I was dreaming it.

No, I’ve never had a dream this long and this detailed before. That’s what I keep telling myself. So it must be real, right? But my mind refuses to accept that reality. Refuses. Utter refusal.

At the same time, I’m terrified of when that happens. I already feel like I’m clinging to the shreds that are left at the bottom of a very fine rope.

God’s the only thread left in our strand of three cords because I’m not even sure I’m really still here. What is this existence if I am living it alone? So I’m grasping desperately at His piece of the rope because it’s the only one dangling stretched taut by the weight of my pain here.

I always saw adventure in our future because our present (now our past) was filled with them. I can’t see adventure for the life of me now. I see terror.

The last month has been drastically different from the previous few because now I feel panic at the drop of a hat. I mean, I’ve had actual panic attacks since the beginning sometimes but now the panic focuses on the ones I have left. All of my kids, my granddaughter, my parents, my siblings, my nieces and nephews, my close friends.

It takes almost nothing to be terrified something is going to happen to one of them. I know who the author of fear is (and it is NOT God) and I know that I am instructed to take my thoughts captive but, for now, strategically ensuring their captivity eludes me when the intrusive thoughts begin to take over. My mind goes blank except for raw fear. Raw, with ragged claws ripping at the exposed meat of my body.

My heart feels as if it stands as still as his. It feels like as much weight lies upon my chest as the pounds and pounds of dirt that lie packed over him now. It becomes difficult to breathe, as if it takes effort to inhale or exhale, either one, even though my actual lungs still have the same capacity as before. And I hurt everywhere. It feels sometimes as if my bones ache within me and my head pounds with the strength of a jackhammer on concrete.

These days, I don’t want to move. I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do. I don’t want to rise from my chair, but sometimes I do. I don’t want to get groceries, but I do. I don’t want to talk to people, but I do. I sleep and sometimes I have nightmares with images of him in his last moments, but sometimes I don’t dream at all so I go to bed yearning for that sleep of absence and dreading the morning when I will wake to a photograph of him instead of his arm draped across me, moving it gently and quietly so that I can go make him coffee before he wakes up.

I’ve gotten pretty good, again, about wearing a face that looks like “okay-ness.” All signs point to gentle healing and a fictitious facade of blossoming hope. Or maybe I’m just imagining that it looks that way and everyone can see right through it; I can’t always tell.

In six days it will have been six months since he left me here, albeit not of his own choosing. How have I survived half of a year…a year…without him here? “You’re so strong,” people say. But I’m not strong; I’m surviving. Maybe I’m brave to keep trying it, day after day, but strong is not an adjective that I can feel within me. It’s a direct contrast to that, in reality. I feel so weak and incapable of living this life without him. I feel lost in so many situations. I feel like I’m drowning in my own incompetence often. There were things he did, things he provided to me, that I can never properly recreate. He was half of my life and, while I cherish the parts of my life that I still have without him (namely, my family,) I feel like I am trying to live without half of my body, like a stroke victim. Nothing works right without him here. I’m one half of a whole.

Let God complete you, not other people. That’s how it should be, I’m sure, but God gave me this gift of someone and said “the two shall become one.” And we did. A therapist might call it codependency but it’s not; it’s marriage. It is how God intended it to be. We were no longer two me’s; we were a we and my mind doesn’t know how to digest the discrepancy now.

So for today I’m going to try to remember the words of a song that means so much to my heart now:

“God is in this story. God is in the details. even in the broken parts, He holds my heart. He never fails. When I’m at my weakest, I will trust in Jesus. Always in the highs and lows, the One who goes before me; God is in this story.”