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Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Well. It’s New Years again.....

My dearest Nathan,

It’s New Years again. Another year without you has come and gone.

Hold on I need to take a second to let that sink in.

So, 2018 was hard, but I have finally started dancing with my grief  more than I am being crushed by it. Those are words I never imagined I’d say but I have and I will continue in 2019. The start of the second year was so so hard. The end was both harder and easier all at once. It was beautifully bittersweet in moments. There were simply sweet moments and admittedly totally bitter moments. I suspect the third year will be much like that, two completely contradicting things all at once. Easier and harder. Beautiful and ugly.  Both bitter and sweet and especially both heavier and lighter.  I have never been afraid to sit with and experience my grief. I’ve never been ashamed to speak about it or to acknowledge it and I’ve never been scared of the words suicide or mental illness because they are my reality and they shouldn’t be so stigmatized.

What I have been afraid to do is to let myself get lost in the joy of moments. To hope for anything besides what I know is on the other side of heaven. I haven’t allowed myself to hope for my children’s futures or for my future. I haven’t planned or dreamed. I have felt guilty for laughing and finding joy and happiness but this year I’m letting that go.

I will always have pain. I will always have so much love for you and I will always miss you as much as I loved and continue to love you, but I am going to allow myself to plan and to hope and to dream and to laugh and to remember that it’s okay for me to continue to live. My life ended with yours but it started over too and I am giving myself permission to remember that you would want that. That you see me and you see our kids and you smile when we smile and laugh when we laugh and you want us to dream and to hope and to plan and to love life. I am going to share my story and my hurt....our story  and my happy and watch as through our darkness Jesus continues to bring light to other people.  He uses the broken people. The dark stories and though he’s been using ours I’m going to open myself up to that even more so.

We are allowed to grieve and to hurt and to cry and to miss you, those things never really end they just get different BUT I am freely reminding myself this year  that when we do ALL of the things in the previous paragraph we are honoring your memory just as much if not more than when we are weeping.

2019 will be a year of continued grief but more than that a year or love, laughter, joy, and growth in person and in Jesus.

Until the next letter,

We love you. We miss you. Forever.
 
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