To love and be loved

Today is our 28th wedding anniversary. Who knew what the words I said 28 years ago would come to mean? Love, honor, and cherish ... in sickness and in health ... until death do us part.

It's been five years, one month and three days since death parted us ...

Not a day goes by that I don't think about Brian. I even picked up the phone the other day to call him. Weird, huh? Brian was my homing beacon. The one person I circled around. Our lives were intertwined ... we were connected ... deeply.

I am still sucking air ... you know when you get the wind knocked out of you and you wonder if you will ever breathe again? I'm not really sure if I ever started breathing again. I think to those around me it looks like I am ... so I must be ...

Nonetheless, it is still a shock to me that Brian is not here. For most of my conscious life I live in this space of expectation that he's coming back, that it really isn't so. I think that's why going to work, as hard as it was to create a career out of the dust and ashes, has been of all the hard things ... the easiest to do alone. You're not really meant to parent alone, watch your parents-in-law die without their son to help them get to the end of the road, go to your kids weddings, graduations, birthdays, births of grand kids and SO ON. You are meant to do these things together. BUT work, although extraordinarily difficult has been the easiest of all the hard things. And so I live in that space A LOT and it allows me to escape my reality.

BUT then there are days like today ... where reality is right in front of me and Brian really is not here in THIS time and THIS space. And as shocking as it still is ... and while I would call losing him the greatest disappointment of my life ... I have come to see that finding him in the first place is the biggest, most tremendous surprise of my life. Honestly, marriage is a bit of a crap shoot. You don't really know who someone is when you embark on that journey called marriage.

Of all the pursuits in my life ...marriage has been among the most difficult. In fact in the world of difficult life pursuits, it comes second to picking up all the little pieces of shattered dreams and keeping on keeping on after death did part us. But the PAYOFF, the payoff was BIG. We choose to go deep. He rode my roller coaster because he could. And really Brian was so much better at love and parenting than I, but I got a front row seat to learning how to do it. And there were many days that marriage was so hard. But now that it is finished ... I get to look back at the sum totality and be like "wow, I was the lucky one". Well I feel unlucky to be here without Brian. And we surely would have traded places if we could have. With all my health issues it never occurred to us that I would outlive Brian. But here I am. And the ONLY salient reason (well besides it must be God's plan of course) I can think of to keep on keeping on is that I GET TO go on and do all the things that Brian didn't get to ...

Like be there for "US" in the moments of the kids lives ... no matter how big or small. I think Brian had accomplished pretty much all that he had set out to do. What was left to do was to grow old together, watch the kids move through graduations, growing careers, marriage, having their own children and so on.

I wonder if he gets to "do" these things anyway? I really don't know how heaven and eternity work. I know I feel nudges from the other side often. Who or what, I'm just not sure. BUT this I know: there is a Creator GOD who reaches down into humanity and weaves a story, one that we cannot see, we just get glimpses of the story and I'm learning to trust HIM even though I can't make sense of it.

So today ... on a day when 28 years ago I made the second most important commitment of my life (first was choosing to follow Jesus at the age of five) ... I said "I do" to the most extraordinary adventure. An adventure replete with ups and downs unfolded for 22 years and 11 months ... to an expanse of amazingness. Today, I can say that this amazingness was the greatest surprise of my life. The Author bestowed on me a deep and intimate, extraordinary love. I was lucky. And I am oh so grateful. And while my natural bent could just live in the space of anger and disappointment that our Creator took HIS gift away ... that is just wrong. Instead, I choose immense gratitude for all that IS.

If you have a love in your life ... just love till you're empty. Go deep and BE grateful you have someone to love. Set aside your agenda and love your love for who they are in the here and now because you CAN.

To LOVE and be LOVED is the greatest most amazing gift this side of heaven.