If I had a single word to describe the last 7 years, it would be gratitude.
The glaring question is this – how can anyone have anything remotely reminiscent of gratitude after five years of cancer only to be left widowed with five young children?
How can anyone be grateful floating in the freezing cold sea of grief?
Because deep down, in the innermost parts of my heart, I know there is a purpose to my suffering.
The past 7 years have not been wasted. I’ve been knocked off my high horse and forced to sit in the dirt with the least of these.
Because I am the least of these.
The ones who are cast aside, the ones branded unlovable, unforgivable. The ones who suffer so much that to even look at them would be to hurt. So they look away.
The truth is, none of us walk this life painless or blameless. And none of us are better than our neighbor simply because tragedy has not yet struck or we’ve not yet made a poor decision in the midst of our pain.
I won’t ever understand my husband’s death nor his suffering. But I am grateful that along that road I stopped and picked up shoes that will never wear out. Shoes that allow me to walk beside others who have lost, carry those who have nothing left, and sit beside those whose hearts are freshly broken. And do so graciously and softly.
I don’t recognize the person I was 7 years ago. In many ways I thought I was whole. But the brokenness these 7 years have brought have somehow made this broken woman whole again.
I’m grateful, today, for the sacred suffering these seven years have brought me. And I’m grateful for the privilege of being invited into others’ lives, whoever they are, wherever they are.
Knowing that they’ll, too, be made whole. đź’™
#laughterafterdeath ##lookingintherearviewmirror #itsme #lifebeginsnow