August 15, 2010

Sometimes in grief, your heart remembers things your mind doesn’t. Every time I have looked at August 15th on the calendar my heart told me something was missing. This morning, I woke up and remembered 6 years ago Patrick asked me to be his girlfriend. On this day, every year he would remember and send me a sweet text or wake me up with a special kiss and tell me he was so glad I said yes. Even through all this gut wrenching pain, I still would have said yes 1000 times to that amazing godly man.

I had no idea that my first boyfriend would be my first love, and would be my greatest heartbreak. I had no idea God was going to produce in our family endurance through the form of death. I didn’t know as I got butterflies in my stomach holding his hand, that one day I would stand over his grave holding the little hands of his fatherless babies. I didn’t know that this man’s life and death would impact me and others in such a eternal way.

I’m glad we said yes to life. I am so glad we said yes to each other. I am so glad we didn’t wait to say yes to children and had three close together. I’m so glad we didn’t wait until the kids got out of the house to enjoy each other and invest in our marriage. I am so glad that we fought the fight of life on our knees, knowing we had no strength in ourselves to do it. I am glad God chose to use our yes. This day is tender and the pain is so real but so is the thankfulness I feel for that simple yes. I wrote that day, that saying yes felt like I was walking in the unknown trusting God’s hand to lead me, even to heartbreak if that was His will. Never would I have imagined the heartbreak it would lead too, nor did I realize the love it would grow. Now 6 years later I am saying yes to God again, unsure of the future and trusting His hand through this journey of life. He is holding me through the heartbreak and He will hold me through the healing.