Love and Loss...Death and Divorce

* Disclaimer: I am not condemning the choices made by anyone. I am well aware that there are situations in which divorce is the right thing to do. Please do not take anything written here as a judgment. 

There have been different times throughout this journey that I've had revelations that served to move me forward. There have also been a few times throughout this journey that everything has falling apart again and I find myself back at square one. I recently wrote Shift 19 months, and in it I explained that I thought I could feel a shift coming. It is the way God has always worked with me, I feel what he's doing, with no way to explain it, before it happens. It made for some interesting conversations with my husband. Rarely did we disagree about how to handle something, but if we did Steve would ask why I thought we should or shouldn't do something and my only response sometimes was, "I can't explain it; I just know." I'm sure that took some trust on his part. I found myself there again when I wrote about the shift I was feeling. Something was changing, but what was it.  It was revelation coming. I'm hoping revelation that restores hope and trust.

I was talking to a friend  about my spiritual struggle with Steve's death and all the other issues in my life. Me even talking about this with someone doesn't happen a lot anymore. Simply because I have realized that unless the person I'm talking to has had a wonderful marriage that only ended because their spouse died, they cannot comprehend the depth of this pain. So, I typically just don't discuss it with people.  I am not trying to be arrogant in any way, it's just an experience you have to have to understand. It's like trying to explain to someone how much they will love being a parent, they can try to understand, but they cannot fully understand until they experience it.

I cannot understand things I have not experienced either. This friend I was talking to is going through a divorce (not the friend 75% of your are thinking of, so chill. I only met this person a few months ago).  During the conversation, I knew they were not comprehending the only words I could find, although inadequate, to explain my issues with God. Then the topic changed to divorce and my friend said something that struck me as being bitter about their divorce and a light bulb went off in my head. I said you can't understand what I had and lost and how that impacts my life just like I can't understand being in a broken marriage and going through a divorce. I will freely admit that I cannot comprehend the emotional impact a divorce has on a person. I can empathize, but I've never been divorced.

I have been the 2nd wife. I will apologize in advance if this hurts anyone's feelings, but when I started writing this blog I committed to be transparent and honest on this journey and I'm not going to start hiding things now. This will be one of the only negative things you will see me write about mine and Steve's life, but Steve also told this story to help people. He was married for 5 years to another woman. He was supporting a wife and three kids. During that time, he worked full time and then he started going to school part time so that he could start a career instead of trying to make it on a minimum wage job. From almost the beginning of their marriage she was unfaithful. She did not respect him and she attempted to be very controlling. When she left him for another man, his heart and his spirit were broken. Instead of allowing himself to be broken and seek God, he allowed himself to become bitter. Fast forward a little and I came along. He was a very sweet man, but anytime I had a suggestion he immediately assumed I was trying to control him and all hell broke loose. This is was my only experience in dealing with a divorced man and I was too young and dumb to understand what was happening. As time went on, I realized that she had spoken that distrust into his life and he didn't trust me because of her. I was starting to get angry because I was paying for her mistakes. Why did she get to have the best part of him and I got the jaded part. I got a good man who had been wounded and now I was dealing with the fallout, We had a conversation in which I attempted to relay that I had not cheated on him, lied to him, or given him any reason not to trust me. She may not have deserved the man he was, but I did and I wanted a chance to prove to that him that his trust wouldn't be wasted on me. Something amazing about Steve was once he saw that he was wrong, he worked to fix it. After that conversation, he fixed it. It took a little bit, but eventually there was no residual bitterness or resentment from that 1st marriage anymore. We had worked through that and our marriage was stronger because of it.

So, even though I haven't been divorced and I cannot understand it, as a party of the divorce, I have seen an aspect of it. I see a pattern in it; it's a thread that keeps unraveling in each subsequent relationship. Not always, but very often in a failed marriage, a giver and a taker emerge. Everything usually starts out great. Both parties are so in love they are willing to do whatever it takes to make the other happy. At some point life starts throwing curve balls and one or both of them starting looking out for themselves only. Often one spouse gives and gives and the other takes and takes until the taker decides the giver still isn't doing enough or the giver decides they are tired of the taker taking so much. Either way when it ends and the dust settles, there are two takers and no givers left. One or both of them are bitter and jaded and assuming that all members of the opposite sex are the same way. Trust is gone! The cycle continues in relationship after relationship until they choose to let go of the anger and trust again.

I promise this will come together and makes sense (I hope)

So, during this discussion, my friend asks me, "Do you trust God?" to which my response was I'm trying. The more I thought about it, my counter question was "trust God to what?"

I have trusted God with my husband's life, my medical issues, my children's medical issues, our finances, etc. I have believed my entire life that God is good and only does good and only wants good for us. Everything is within his control right? On September 11, 2013 at 11:06 p.m. I lost the trust I had in God. We stood in faith and trusted that God was going to work a miracle. I believed in miracles, I had seen them. I've seen God move in impossible situations, so I believed God was going to intervene in this situation and He didn't.

In the midst of the most painful part of the grief is where I felt the most betrayed by God. I made excuses to try to wrap my head around why God didn't intervene (none of them work, they only served to keep me from going insane). I was begging God to stop ignoring me and show up; show me something that proves He cares about ME and my kids and the pain we're in. It didn't matter how hard I cried or loud I screamed, God wasn't showing up. That is where I began to feel the most betrayed. At some point, I started dreaming. In the beginning most of the dreams were only sent to bring peace and as I began to realize that God was finally showing up the dreams became more frequent and started becoming more about current and future events; warning dreams and wisdom dreams. I have had a lot of dreams since then, but 4 of them were way beyond dreams. It was in the unfolding of all of this that I began to trust God again. I was starting to come to a place that I could let go of the betrayal I felt and I actually started to feel like God really did love me. I still didn't understand why he didn't intervene and heal Steve, but I was coming to peace with not having that answer.

Then my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. There I was sitting in that hospital room wondering, Where are you now, God? She's 10! She's innocent and her father just died and her mother is a wreck but you still don't see fit to help. Now God expects this newly single Mom, to deal with all this too. I was right back in the place of distrust and feeling betrayed. Only this time was different, this time I didn't fall apart because my daughter needed me. I just started feeling calloused. I was no longer just hurt and betrayed, I was indifferent. I don't know why I'm bothering to try because obviously I'm not good enough at this. I don't know what the magic words are; I don't have the exact amount of faith needed or I'm just a crappy person, I don't know what it is but something is definitely wrong with me because God is just allowing knockout after knockout and he's not doing ANYTHING! At this point, I'm not sure why I'm trying to trust, when it doesn't seem like God even cares.

God's ideas of love and trust are certainly not compatible with the way my human mind works. . It takes a long time for me to trust people, but when I finally trust them, I'm all in. There is nothing I wouldn't do for people that are in my inner circle. I would have given Steve my heart and died myself, so he could live. I would give my daughter my pancreas, if it would cure her. I would and have driven to a friends house in the middle of the night to keep her ex from beating the crap out of her. If I love you, there's nothing I won't do for you. It just seems to me like GOD would have loved us that much too. I know how this sounds now, but in the middle of the storm it doesn't sound so far off.

Back to the conversation...Here is where the parallel happened in my mind. 

My answer to the Do you trust God question became "I trust that he can, but I have no idea if he will" because I had already done the trusting that He can and He will part and it didn't work out. He's God, I know he CAN. He could do anything he wants.

I don't really remember how long this indifference lasted, but because I'm me and it is not in my nature to quit anything. I started trying to figure this out again. Over and Over, I come up with placated symbolism to try to explain everything. But something happened this last time when my friend asked me, "Do you trust God," and I gave my "I'm trying" response.

I had a rough night that night; I woke up the next morning feeling like I had been in a battle and I this is what came was revealed from that.

I have been in a domestic dispute with God in which my perception of what He didn't do allowed me to lose trust in who he is and served to affirm my already difficult belief that He could really love me. I've been on the verge of spiritual divorce.  I thought we had worked out our differences, only to feel betrayed again and I became jaded in my perception of who God is. So, when people ask if I trust God my answer has been I'm trying, but in reality the answer was No. I had hit that part of the relationship where I felt like I was being asked to give more trust than was being earned.

I was so committed to my marriage that divorce was never an option. When I didn't feel like loving him because he did something I didn't like, I CHOSE to love him despite what I felt. He did the same for me. I trusted Steve's love so much, that nothing could make me believe he didn't love me. So, why is it so hard for me to wrap my mind around God's love? Is it simply because my husband was here in the physical form, he was tangible and God is not?  Again, I don't have any answers to satisfy my logical mind. These shifts don't resolve the all of the conflict, but they bring me closer.

Something about this divorce analogy hit me like a ton of bricks. People in the middle of a divorce only see all the details of what happened, what she said, what he did; they can't see the big picture anymore.  I have been so focused on trying to figure out the details of it all and the formulas for how I understood faith and trust to work and where did we go wrong and what should we have done, but I lost the big picture. In the end we are all just a vapor here for a little while and gone, eternity is all that remains and Steve is there; he made it faster than me, but I will catch up.

I am feeling liberated in knowing that It is not a requirement for me to like how any of this happened. I do not have to agree with the people who say it was God's will. I do not have to agree that this must have been the right thing. The reality is everyone is guessing, no one knows.  I can simply choose to trust that God has a perception that is inexplicable to me. Honestly, what excuse is ever going to be good enough anyway. I can choose to trust that the He can and sometimes He actually will intervene. I believe that the love I shared with Steve only existed because God loves me.
I believe that He CAN and He WILL bring

Beauty from this Pain!

If I Could See You Again

If I could see you again there are so many things I would love to say; I wonder if I would actually say them. I imagine that you probably would already know everything I'm thinking, but it would mean everything to me to be able to talk to you again.

After all this time, I STILL find it hard to believe that you are actually GONE! It is beyond my ability to comprehend how that happened. How did I go from kissing you goodnight to you being gone a few minutes later? You were so strong, my rock, my strength, my safe place to land and then you were just GONE.  How is that possible? How is my heart supposed to deal with that? Gone in an instant!

Did you have any idea what was happening when you died or were you as shocked as me. You have no idea how much I prayed, I tried so hard to bring you back. There are so many things I wish had done differently; I was so unprepared. I wish we had talked about this.

I can go about a week or two without crying now, but even that feels wrong. I don't feel guilty, I just feel like memories are slipping because the only way I keep from crying is to try not to think. Some memories are so strong and others are fading. Some of them are not all that important to most people, but just the fact that I can't remember something, even small, drives me crazy.How could I ever forget any of it.

Trying to "move on" but that doesn't happen. I know all you ever wanted is for me to be happy and I'm not spending all my days depressed anymore. Remembering makes me feel closer to you. It just feels wrong to try to live my life like it's normal that you aren't here now. Our daughters needed a Dad, so now I have to remind them of all the little things that made you amazing. I can only live this new life for a little while before the reality that you are gone gets to be overwhelming again.

I feel like I'm walking a tight rope attempting to balance being strong for them to keep going and allowing myself to grieve and feel whatever I need to feel. Most days I am balancing o.k. or at least, on the surface I am. Today, I'm falling. The tears don't stop and I can only describe the pain as feeling like my heart is being ripped from my body AGAIN.

I used to feel your presence sometimes, especially when I woke up from dreaming about you. You hardly ever show up in my dreams anymore and I haven't felt your presence in a long time. I don't understand why. I really want that back.

If I could see you again, the thing I would want you to understand most of all is how much I have always loved you and how sorry I am that I left that hospital, or that I didn't make better decisions. No words would be able to explain the depth of either of those things and I imagine that, until I see you again, I will continue to wish that I could try to explain them. Until I see you again, I will have to hope that God allows you see how much I love you.
Until then...

Shift. 19 Months

I have felt a shift trying to happen lately. I'm not sure what is happening, but there is something going on. At first it seemed to be a really good thing, but I don't know. I wondered if maybe this is what it feels like to get stronger. But, it starts and stops.

For the last 19 months, the shifting of stages has typically taken a long time to happen. It seems to be happening faster now. I'm hoping it is not an illusion. I have kept myself pretty busy so that I don't have as much time to think. So, I'm hoping that when things slow down, I'm still able to keep myself in a good place.

I am listening to music almost every day again. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's huge for me. He was always singing to me and since he's been gone, music brings out the worst emotions. I have been able to talk about the good and the bad times, a lot more lately, without falling apart. I can see that we are making progress. There are still some things that I'm not sure will ever get better. Most importantly, I'm not sure I will ever again feel as safe as I felt with him. I know there are many incredibly strong single women in the world. I'm still in the pretending I'm strong phase, I don't know if I will ever actually be there. I was spoiled after so many years of having Steve to lean on and draw strength from; he was my safe place and now all of that is gone. Of course, life was not perfect before he died, but that doesn't matter. For some reason, it takes tragedy for people to realize that what they had may not have been perfect, but it was perfect enough.

I'm doing my best to figure this life out on my own, because now, I'm thinking about what my girls are going to learn from how I handle all of this. 

Let me just say this, if it were not for friends who check in with me everyday, I have no idea where I would be. 

My Biggest Fan

It sounds so cliche, but it's true, my husband was my biggest fan. I'm having one of those moments in time where I REALLY need my other half. I need my sounding board; I NEED MY BIGGEST FAN. 
So much has been happening with me and the kids. There's the normal medical and schooling issues, but then there are the overwhelming medical and school issues for all of us.

One thing I never had to worry about was my education. I have always been one of those people that just naturally loved academics and learned very easily. Every time I would start freaking out, Steve would just say, "You know your going to ace that test, so quit worrying about it" he always reminded me of the last time I freaked out and everything turned out great. Law school is a whole new world. It's nothing like college, not even my Masters classes compare to how demanding this is. I miss my FREAK OUT partner. I am freaking out all by myself now and there's no voice of reason calming me down.

I am getting an average of about 5 hours of sleep a night, NOT continuous. My body and my brain are revolting . I'm losing focus on even simple things; it doesn't feel like widow fog anymore, it's sleep deprivation.

I'm going to have to make some medical decisions for myself in a few days and I need to make some life adjustments for us going forward and it absolutely sucks to have to make these decisions without him. It's one of those times in life where I don't just want him here, I NEED him here to "stand up when I can't."

I know that first he would tell me that he knows I can do this and then he would tell me to do what I felt was right, but having the memory of what he would say is not helping. He knew the darkest and the brightest parts of who I am and he always believed in me. Most days I just miss him, right now, I miss HOW SAFE I FELT just to be with him.

Happy Birthday, Babe!

I tried to psych myself up for today. Last year, his birthday was harder than most of the other holidays. So, I have been trying to figure out what to do to keep myself busy all week and I've come to realize that nothing I can do will stop the flood of emotions.

I woke up crying AGAIN about the things I should have done differently in that hospital room. The flashback memories of 8:45 p.m. to 11:06 p.m. that night just running circles in my mind.  I thought I had worked through all of that and let it go, but today it came back. The words to the song "Say Something" played like a soundtrack to it all.  I never realized how well that song fit the situation until today.  I stood there in that  room praying, while holding my breathe waiting for him to just breathe; just look at me and say something.

I've been trying to decide what I'm going to do today. My ideas ranged all the way from going to the grave to getting completely trashed  Just being honest here, I've never been trashed, but today seems like a good day to try anything that will stop the pain. Having kids keeps me from being able to do dumb things, so I didn't.

I thought about what Steve would be doing today if he was alive. He would probably have gone to breakfast with some CMA guys and gone for a ride. So, I got up and decided to take the money I would have spent on a birthday present for him and donated it to the CMA Run for the Son. I can't think of any better way to honor his life than that. Even in death, he's winning the lost. 


After donating to the CMA I decided to get my nose pierced. It was something Steve and I had talked about for a while and he loved the idea. I just never got around to doing it.
Before anyone starts in on biblical aspect of nose piercings read Genesis 24 where Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for his son and he was to give her a nose ring as a sign of engagement. So, I figured today, on his birthday, I would finally get around to getting that nose piercing. It didn't hurt that bad. I also went to Applebees with a friend. The very first birthday that Steve and I celebrated of his was at Applebees, so I did it again 20 years later.


Most people are very understanding about this journey, some are not. I have recently been told that it's time to move on and all the general cliche lines you hear: Steve would want you to be happy, you can't stay stuck here forever, you have to let go of the past, etc. I understand all of that, I really do. I also understand that people usually mean well when they say it. For the most part, I'm doing leaps and bounds better than I was but I have come to the realization that there are some days I AM GOING TO FEEL THIS PAIN; I am going to fall apart and nothing I can do will stop it AND it's o.k. It doesn't mean I have had a setback or that I'm worse than I was yesterday. It's actually proving my progress. It no longer takes weeks to recover and find my way out of the dark again. I'm not stuck in depression.

I don't know your experience with love and loss, I know that I have loved and been loved deeply and I've lost it. I only have 18 months and 9 days experience at this. I don't know what 3, 5, 10, 20 years down the road looks like. I think it will be much like the last 18 months; I think with time the pain will sting a little less, but I'm sure there will be days or circumstances that bring it all back again. I'm sure that the unanswered questions will flood my mind again. There is no way to know what the future holds and I'm honestly, not even worried about it. I've learned to live in the here and now, but there is no way to have loved Steve and intertwined our lives the way we did and not still feel the loss.
Grief really is the price we pay for love. Do not assume that someone who has experienced a loss is clinically depressed or refusing to let go or happy to be stuck in grief just because they periodically have days that the pain is overwhelming. Life does march on and so do we, but sometimes we have to pause and let our hearts take a rest.

UNDONE - This is what 18 months looks like

Yesterday was 18 months that he's been gone. I thought about it all day yesterday, but the pain hit today. Today the memories of the day after would not leave me alone. I woke up early and told my girls that their father was never coming back. I went to the office to keep the appointment I had made for 9:30 a.m.; they  never showed up. The office is where I fell apart the first time. I stood there in complete disbelief that he would leave me to figure out how to do all of this alone. Then, I went to the funeral home to answer a hundred questions about how I wanted his obituary and picked a casket. Picking the casket is where I fell apart the second time, how do you get past the pain of knowing the person you love most in this life is going to be buried in that box in the ground. The memories are so real that I still can still feel them. I wonder if I will always feel them. For the longest time, I kept flashing back to the hospital staff performing CPR and them yelling CLEAR every 2 minutes and the surgeon asking me what I want to do. Over the last 7 months I've been able to keep my mind busy enough to not constantly think about it. But, when the T.V. is on and CPR starts or doctors using AED happens, IT ALL COMES BACK. Will it always feel like this? I don't know for sure, but I'm beginning to think that no matter what I do or how far I go it will always sneak up on me. Love like that doesn't die. 

It has been 3 months since I wrote "Ruined by True Love" at 15 months (Ruined by True Love) and I have to say not  a lot has changed in the past 3 months. I have made small steps at developing a new normal for me and the girls. We've worked on making some new traditions and letting go of old ones. I've started listening to music again. Some days I can listen for an hour and some days the first song hits me and I'm done. 

I'm trying to figure out who I am without him; it's not an easy task. I was married at 18, somehow during the process of 18 years of marriage a lot of who we are was dependent on each other. So I'm learning to look at what WE liked and did together and figure out what I still like and want to do, alone. I often wonder if he could see me now, what he would see. 

The whole process feels like I'm coming UNDONE, like pieces of me are being taken apart and reassembled into something different. Not better or worse and probably not a lot different because we were so compatible, but it's still different. Some days I feel a little hopeful that I'm figuring out who I am, many days it just feels wrong because I shouldn't be figuring out who I am alone. 

The moral of the story is still at 18 months into this journey I am only able to take this a day at a time and I'm o.k. with that. 

I NEED YOUR HELP!

If you personally knew Steve, I need your help with a project. It's taken a long time for me to decide how to go about doing this and the blog seemed like the best option.

I have the privilege of having a lot of memories throughout the years of Steve. His incredible personality is unforgettable for those of us that knew him. My problem is that I'm concerned about how much our daughters will remember. Our youngest was 8 when he passed away, so she may not have concrete memories of how great of a man her father was.

So here's my plea. If you knew my husband well, I would love it if you would catalog some of your memories with him. There is no deadline for this. You can write it down right now or you can buy a notebook and write in it every day for a year. As long as your memories get written down, it will be exactly what I'm looking for. It can be funny moments, sad moments, spiritual moments, ridiculous moments, etc. The point is, I want them to know the kind of man he was from your perspective. You can email them to me, facebook message them to me, mail them to me, however you want to get it to me.

I appreciate your help and I know that the girls will too.