I buried my husband one year ago today.  I can’t explain how surreal that sounds and yet so…normal.  This week has been emotional.  I’ve cried more than I have in probably months.  I’ve felt it building  up so it’s a good thing that I let it out.

My pattern has been that when there is a hard date coming up, I usually get all my emotions out ahead of time and am fine on the actual day.  I’m a planner, it’s just who I am.  But there was something about this 1st that was different, because Thursday was harder than I expected and I’m glad I left room for that.  I woke up Thursday (February 3rd) feeling OK, and then I don’t know what set me off but I just started weeping.  Now, you have to understand that I am typically a very quiet crier so if I say I was sobbing or weeping, that is unusual.  Anyway, so I started weeping but I knew I needed a shower and I needed to hurry before my kids woke up.  So, I grabbed my things and got in the shower and just continued weeping.  Eventually, I knew I needed to pull myself together and I was so thankful that I was able to.  It wasn’t that long ago that I wouldn’t have been strong enough.

The rest of the day, I was so blessed by the love that was poured on me and was completely exhausted that night.  Intense grief takes a lot out of me.  God really spared my mind from keeping track of the time and reliving last year hour by hour, until after I got the kids to bed.  I just glanced at the clock and started to crumble knowing what I was doing and about to do one year before.  Memories of laying beside my dead husband’s body just so I could feel him beside me one more time.  He was still warm, but there was no movement of his chest breathing in and out…no steady, reassuring sound of his heartbeat.  I remember in the days to come the pain of being hugged and hearing other’s heartbeats…and my heart would break for the one I would never hear again.  I remember going home that night and walking into our house and the emptiness and stillness was almost more than I could bear.  I remember walking into “our” room and not being able to sit on “our” bed but collapsing at the foot of it and it feeling like the sobs that racked my body were going to tear me apart.  I remember somehow finding the strength to breathe and stand and prepare for the next thing…telling my sweet daughter that her Daddy would not be coming back home.  I remember the grace that carried me through the next two days of planning Josiah’s funeral.  I remember wondering if something was wrong with me when I did not cry.  I remember the verse that God gave me the night before Josiah’s funeral, Psalm 5:3 “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up.” Oh, how that verse carried me the next day!  I remember feeling so incredibly lost standing alone at his funeral.  I remember somehow making one foot go in front of the other walking down that aisle behind his casket…I think that was the hardest thing I had to do that day.  I remember my hands shaking as I raised them while barely making out the words to the song “You give and take away.  You give and take away.  My heart will choose to say.  Lord, blessed be Your name”.  I remember deciding to go home after everything was done that day and even though I felt like the wind had been taken from me, I found strength and comfort in finally being able to hold and touch and care for my babies…oh, how I had missed them!

So many memories.

In preparing for this milestone, God impressed on me that I needed to write a list of all the things that I had accomplished and that God had worked in me over this past year.  I worked on it for several days and ended up with a list of 80 things.  I am a visual person so having that list was such a blessing and needed reminder of all that I have to be thankful for.  God has done so much in my life this year and I am amazed by that.  He is doing what He promised…He is healing me.  He’s not finished, but it has begun and that knowledge is so powerful to me.  This time last year I didn’t really see how healing could even be possible but I gripped onto His promise and chose to trust Him.  There were so many days when I felt like I was barely keeping my head above water and some days when I felt like I was going under…but God has given me a solid place to stand.   Psalm 61:2 “From the end of the earth I will cry to You, when my heart is overwhelmed; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

Thank you to everyone who has helped hold me up this year.  I am completely humbled by the love I have been shown.