I am in the place where widowhood isn’t my every day life; here my biggest concerns are the headaches I’m getting from fluorescent lights and the backpain I feel from an uncomfortable chair.  He doesn’t fly across my radar every day.  When I think of who I miss, it’s my boyfriend who’s in another land right now.  It’s weird…and wonderful.

There always feels like there should be a guilt attached to moving on, and I can’t distinguish if this comes up from the way I was raised (religious more than parent) or if it’s attached to the grieving process.  I believe mostly that it’s a mesh of everything.  It’s a mix of who I am, the loss that I experienced, and the intense joy I feel beyond that grief.

When I look back on the past year in particular, and my deep want and need to move forward professionally, and in other ways, I see that it all couldn’t happen until now.  Many times I wish I could see, in those coming-to moments, that if I could just be content where I was, I would get to the next step and understand it all.  But I never find that contentment, I just seek for ways to leave the unrest.  But I stuck with it, I pressed on through breakdowns, therapy, physical breakdowns, surgery, cutbacks, setbacks, and now I see how all of the things that literally broke me in the past year bloomed into this.

Into a career that slightly terrifies me enough to push me forward to work my bum off.  Even if I only just completed day 3, the comfort I feel in this new place is surprising and real.

Into a seriously committed relationship that only came to this point because of the birth of a niece that made me realize my grief wasn’t conquered or anything like that; but that loss had traumatized me – and that God would give to those around me to be able to support me financially and mentally while I battled through that trauma with a professional so that I could come to a healing and coping stop in life where I could see a person in front of me who I could be strong for, who I didn’t have to lean on 100%, but whom I could grow to lean on 100% if I needed to.

Into a broken body that made me stop and say no and to realize that just doing one or two things is just as good, if not better, than doing 100.  That the brokenness could lead to a more overall health so that I can do more and I can recover in a way that is healthiest for me in the long term, not just a quick fix.

Into a new and more challenging life.  One that offers up commitment in ways I questioned before, that offers a future that I had been scared to dream of, that grants me quietness with a trust that stepping back won’t mean that others step away.  Into a comfort and belief that if I do right, if I lean on God, if I trust in my abilities, if I love…I will succeed.  It is evidence that there will be things along this journey that are not calm, but are disastrous.  They will break me again and again and then I’ll be here…eventually.  I’ll be at a point of trust and faith.  I’ll shimmy and shake, but ultimately, here I will be again.

So what I am saying is that all the times I questioned and thought, God, how can you keep giving me this hellish life?  How can you keep handing me cancer, and brokenness, and death, and debt?  I can answer that from that,  this person becomes.  This well equipped person who can handle all of that ^^.  Not that I want to.  Oh God no.  No cancer please.  Let the chemo work.  Let the job pay the bills.  Let the sick live.  But I can’t prevent it.  It’s gonna happen.  But I’ll get there.  I am there.  I’m not prepared.  I’m preparing.