From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

    Let me be the keeper of the broken things. Give me the shards of memories you hold on to that hurt so much. Show me the stitches in your scars.  Let me carry them with you...for you. Because "grief demands a witness"...so let me be yours. I want to hear about your baby that barely got to be and how they changed your entire world while the world somehow kept spinning.  I want to hear about what haunts your dreams or keeps you up at night when the world seems to slumber peacefully around you. I want to hear why you cry in your car before going inside after everyone else has run in like its totally normal that you need an extra 5 minutes just to breathe it all out. My heart aches so much for the broken things of the world that we all clutch on to...terrified that if we stop clutching them that they'll slip through our fingers and the world will forget...we might forget. So let me keep your broken things too. And I will breathe the goodness of God into the shards and...

  I was raised by a Christian father who, though far from perfect, loved his family. I had a front row seat to his relationship with my mother and loved being his daughter. Through him I learned that I wanted to find a man like him in all the best ways. I married my first and only boyfriend when I was 19 and spent 13 years growing up with him. Through him I learned that I was a valued (and treasured) partner and that life is unbelievably special when you adventure together...and when you love unconditionally. A doctor met me one time and performed a dozen tests on my body. He was unkind and judgmental and his indifference made me cry in shame. Through him I learned that I might not ever be able to have children. My only son was born after years of infertility. He never took a breath and his death took my entire life by storm. Through him I learned that joy and grief can exist side by side...even when, or especially when, it is hard to find the joy. My father-in-law loved two childr...

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...

  John Died...2 years ago. 2 years...how has so much time passed? It feels like just yesterday I was writing about the 1 year anniversary of his death, congratulating all of us for surviving the brutality of that first year. Regardless, it feels like now is a good time to throw out some life updates, talk about how life as a 2nd year widow is going. It's great...definitely great...well, it's ok...sometimes it's ok...actually sometimes it's awful...it's always awful...no, no, it's usually fairly good...sometimes it's amazing. I guess it really just depends on the day... I no longer reach out in the middle of the night for him. I don't grab my phone to text him about something that just happened. I don't look for him in a crowd. I don't struggle to fall asleep alone. I don't even dream about him anymore... It would seem, that even my subconscious has truly accepted that he's gone. That's good...right? He is no longer a part of any of my...

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...

  "I don't want to do this." I give myself permission to whisper those words into the painful world I find myself living in sometimes. I look at the hard things I have to tackle all by myself and I allow myself the moment to grieve. I didn't want this hard life...I didn't want these hard things...I didn't... But sometimes we simply have to. Life throws everything at us and even if we don't want to, we have to. So, I allow myself the moment to accept that this was never how life was supposed to be, a moment to accept that this is hard and this hurts. And then I do it...whatever the hard thing is...I do it. Because, usually, I don't have a choice. I have had a lot of people ask me why I push myself? Why not ask for help? There are so many people who would willingly step in to help a widow. "The Bible calls us to help the widows and the orphans" they remind me... There was once a time when I was incredibly cared for. There was once a man who h...

Do you know how hard it can be to live the life my late husband and I cultivated specifically for a future together? All the plans, all the dreams, and all the hopes... He left me behind with all these broken things that he was fully capable of fixing…things I have no idea what to do with. The old water pump he planned on replacing.   The Land Rover he laughed about even as it broke every month and he spent far more hours than he planned tuning it up.   The broken doorknobs that keep adding up.  The ridiculous internet that has only gotten worse the more we try to fix it   The dishwasher that decided to start dying this weekend   …me. I had to figure out how to survive without him. How to fix or replace all the broken things he enjoyed so much. He loved things because they were broken. He loved that they had a history…a story. He wanted to be a part of that legacy. To give something a new life, a new hope.  And then he died…leaving me with all the broken th...

Hello Charles, My name is Katharine...you don't actually know me, but you were involved in a car accident with my husband, John, a year ago.  You chose to take cocaine and fentanyl and chose to drive, heavily impaired, on a revoked license.  Because of those decisions, you drove, head-on, into my husband while he was riding his motorcycle home from church…and you killed him. My amazing, full of life, kind-hearted husband...died brutally on some meaningless strip of road that will forever be imprinted on my mind. Your choices destroyed my whole world... You may wake up every single day in a jail cell but you are not the only one left to face horrific consequences of the choices you made that day. Every single day I wake up and face a life without the greatest man I ever knew. Every day I wake up and I must make the conscious choice to find joy in life still. Because your choices broke me...and I have to live life every day without my partner. Not to mention the grief of countle...