𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐃:

I was at Duke Raleigh yesterday for labs I need in advance of my long-awaited immunology appointment next month.

I had other places to go afterwards, so I exited a different way than usual.

On my way out, I drove right past the bench where I collapsed after saying my final goodbye to our sweet Jimmy.

My legs simply could not carry me that day. I remember people walking past, talking, smiling, oblivious to the quake that had just occurred.

I remember thinking, even then, “If you only knew how profoundly diminished the world is by the loss of this one extraordinary man, you’d hardly be able to stand it.”

It was the tragic end to eighteen days of overwhelming sorrow and abject fear. Of hoping against hope. Of realizing that not everyone gets the miracle.

It all rushed back with one glimpse of the place that had held me up in those first devastating, surreal moments that were simply a prelude to more of the same.

It’s been almost six years now, and all I could think was what an absolute miracle it is that I ever survived it. How astonishing it is that joy and delight and wonder have any part in a life so irrevocably altered.

But such is the way of God, I’ve learned. To redeem what we would never choose. To bring beauty from what we can hardly bear to remember. To make room for joy without asking us to surrender our grief. To breathe healing into our tender places, and life into our losses.

There were no tears yesterday, although there have been enough to fill an ocean.

There was only gratitude.
Gratitude for the mystery of how a heart so broken can be mended. How a life so shattered can be made whole. How a woman left so utterly alone was never, for a moment, alone.

I will never get over His goodness.
Grief lingers.
Sorrow intrudes.
Tears still fall, but I don’t.

I am held by the everlasting arms of the One who never left my side, and who has matched me step for weary step since I first sought refuge on that bench.

How broken I was. How blessed I am.

“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms:”
~ 𝐃𝐞𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 𝟑𝟑:𝟐𝟕