From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

John, I know you’re probably busy living your very best life in Heaven. I can’t imagine that earthly happenings matter much to those who’ve left us.  But I want it to matter anyway. I want to imagine that you can still care.  I’m sorry that I stopped reaching for you in the middle of the night. It was a slow and painful process of retraining my brain and body. After 13 years you just weren’t there anymore. And I had to remind myself over and over and over again. “He’s dead, Katharine. Dead. You’ll never find him when you reach for him anymore…one day you’ll have to just stop reaching”. And one day I did. I can’t remember when it was. When muscle memory and instinct faded away. But suddenly I didn’t have to remind myself anymore…my body finally accepted that you’d never be there anymore.  I’m sorry I got rid of your things. Your books and projects and broken treasures. You had such plans and dreams for all these things in your garage. And I threw them away. I sobbed and ye...

  I. Am. Brave. I say those words to myself over and over again as I clean out my dead husband's garage and tool boxes and old work truck. I say them as tears fall, creating tracks down my face as they mix with the dirt and grease that have somehow found their way to my cheeks.  I whisper them as I sit in a freezing cold garage after hours of work that seem to not make a dent in reshaping John's old haven into something usable for the widow that I am now.  I sob them as I throw away another treasure, another memory...another moment lost forever. Just things...they're just things. But...sometimes "things" are all the tangibleness that's left after a 13 year marriage dissolves into tragedy. I. Am. Brave. I say those words as I sit at my kitchen table and homeschool my teenage daughter. Even though I never wanted to homeschool her. Even though I thought that I just didn't have the mental capacity to take on one more hard thing these days.  I say it as she sto...

  I went by the site of my husband's fatal motorcycle accident the other day. I stopped by just to see how it felt. If I still felt a little closer to John standing in the exact spot where his life ended. I always hope I feel...something... I want God to speak to me as I crouch down next to the spot where his life was stolen from him. I want a sign, a symbol, a reassurance that God still sees me...still remembers the widow He allowed me to become. Not that I actually think He’s forgotten me…but in the moment I stop and look at the same mountain that John surely looked at in the moments before his death…I just hope for a little something more for the heartache that he left behind.  But in all the times I've stopped by the accident site in the last 2.5 years, I've never received any type of sign. What I have experienced is the fading... The fading of the stains on the road from the accident. The fading of the grooves in the asphalt from his motorcycle. The fading of the mark ...

2023 has really been one heck of a year. Full of all the highs and lows that you can imagine come with the life of a widowed single mom in the midst of adopting her teenage kid. So, without further ado, here is my brief recap of 2023: 1. I still miss John. I don’t say that because I thought I wouldn’t anymore. But, just in case you were wondering, it still sucks that he died…and I still miss him.  2. You can, in fact, heal. You can face inconceivable trauma and you can heal. It's still sad and it still hurts...but healing happens if you put in the effort. (sidetone: I highly recommend EMDR therapy if you struggle with trauma triggers). 3. Adoption takes SO much more time, energy, and funds then it should. Zero regrets and it's worth every single bit of all of that...but still, can't it be more easily accessible? 2024 is gonna be the year we finally make it official...I hope. 4. Dating is half hope and half disappointment. The majority of men don't live up to the image t...

     Tomorrow would have have been my 15th wedding anniversary with John, had he not passed away just shy of our 13th anniversary.  It still sometimes boggles my mind that "death do us part" happened so much sooner than we planned. And yet here I am...out in the dating world attempting to find "it" again. It certainly has me feeling some type of way, let me tell ya. And I think the past 1.5ish years I've spent in the dating world has also made lots of other people feel some type of way. "It is what it is" seems a bit of a cliched response...but it really  is  what it is. In the absence of a husband with whom to celebrate a covenant made many many moons ago...I feel like now is a good time to update the world (or my small corner of it) on how dating as a widowed Christian mother in her 30s is going. Here are some things I've learned: -"Christian" is a term used by so many men...yet personified by so very few of them. I am in a somewhat con...

I sat with my daughter on the beaches of Virginia and I breathed in the salty air. Writing while I am at the beach is one of my most favorite things to do. There is something about the sand and the waves that brings clarity to my soul.  So, I sat with some hard things this week, while my kid splashed in the waves and our dog tried to eat seaweed any chance he got. I sat and I prayed and I wept and I wrote. She's lost so much in her short life, this wonderful, frustrating, kind, heartbroken kid of mine. She's been left and hurt and broken...and she deserves so much more. And, somehow, I think that I have this false sense of guilt that I need to be that "more". She should have had John as her dad, I should have had John as a partner in this journey. And somewhere along the way I think I bought into the lie that I  had to be both mother and   father...both Katharine and John to her.  And I have failed, guys. I've failed often. Because, as amazing and wonderful as w...