It's been a week.

1. I know I will probably survive this, but the problem at this moment in time, is survival is not much of a consolation when it means surviving without him. Yes, my kids and parents and other family members are important to me and I know I need to be here for all of them. But, I feel like the most important part of me is gone and what is left of me will never be enough.

2. There are so many things I wish I could go back and change. Things from the time we got the diagnosis til his death and other things that I think about like that stupid shower setting I kept griping about. I wish we had taken that last trip we had planned, but didn't go because of money. I wish he hadn't felt the need to sell his bike to pay our bills. I wish I had gone to the office with him more. If, we had walked out of the hospital instead of doing the surgery, would we have had more time? I wish to God that I had stayed in the hospital with him that night, instead of going home.

3. I'm still struggling with God about it all. Why wouldn't He preserve Steve's life? This man was a minister; he was sincerely helping people. Outside of my father, he had more faith than anyone I have ever known. I have tons of scriptures to prove that my husband should have been healed.
People try to give me something to hold onto. They tell me:

A. "It was God's time/will." Well, I know it wasn't. Steve was 44 years old and he was advancing the Kingdom while he was here. God wasn't done with him yet. If it was his time, then we wouldn't have witnessed the miracles that we witnessed that week. By the way, what kind of cruel God would want to make me a 36 year old widow and 4 children fatherless? I don't believe that.

B. "Everyone is predestined by God to die on a certain day and nothing can change it."  This makes no sense to me either, if that were the case then you are saying God predestined babies dying by abortion.  Why would God decide that.

C. "God was saving him from something worse in the future." I can't believe this either because The God I believe in created life; created everything and He would know how to fix every broken thing. If God is all powerful, then he could have fixed this and whatever is in the future.

I have been close to people who have died and I knew it wasn't their time to die, but they had been sick and they were tired of fighting; they just couldn't fight anymore. Steve wasn't tired of fighting. He was making a miraculous recovery and he was scheduled to be moved from the ICU the next morning, he didn't give up. Hundreds of people across the country were standing in faith for his recovery. The only answer I can come up with that makes any kind of since at all is that some unknown thing happened to take his life and in that hour and a half or so of CPR and praying, he was given a choice and he chose to stay in Heaven. I can't tell you how badly that hurts. Yes, I KNOW that heaven is supposed to be better than this and I am fully aware that every Christian is supposed to be striving to sit at the feet of Jesus. But, my life on Earth WAS so good that I cannot fathom being given a choice and choosing to leave him. In my head, I know that heaven should be amazing and the spirit there won't care about the body here, but for some reason that doesn't bring me any comfort. I have known two people that started to die and God sent them back; didn't even give them a choice. I have read books of people who died and actually went to heaven and came back. Why didn't it happen that way? The testimony of that story would be incredible.

Now, all we have is a story of all that was and all that will be missed.