𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒:

“Nobody in the widow’s household ever celebrated anniversaries.”

~ 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐊𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐳

I’ve been quiet recently.

Worn out, I think. There’s been a lot going on, for sure, but sometimes quiet is the only way for me to make sense of things.

This month marked nine years since I was first diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Nine years.

The memories have not abated. They remain vivid and undiminished by the passage of time.

Indelible, they are seared into the recesses of my mind as though they just happened.

I remember the night we found out. And then the PET scan, with its awful news about how widespread the disease was. I remember Jimmy’s devastation and fear for me. It broke my heart. But almost immediately, his fear gave way to protection and resolve, wrapped in a depth of love I have not known since.

I remember the myriad treatments. The hospitalizations. The progress and the regressions. The good reports and the bad news. The fears and the celebrations.

But mostly, I remember him.

How selflessly he took care of me.

How tenderly he filled in the gaps.

How continually he prayed for me and over me.

Gosh, I miss that.

I miss him.

I remember the way he checked his fear at the door to spare me my own. I remember his courage. I remember all the times I watched him, tears streaming, hands raised, still praising God.

I am convinced faith like that pleases the Lord.

Jimmy never wavered in his conviction that God was good.

A good man maintained his allegiance to a good God. Never faltering when things got hard, Jimmy clung to Him.

He never pretended it wasn’t terrible. He never sugarcoated suffering, ours or anyone else’s.

He simply refused to allow it to persuade him that God was anything other than unfailingly good.

His assessment of the One he loved was based on history, by the way, not happenings. There was a track record, a confidence, that surpassed what Jimmy could merely see.

He always understood that there was more going on behind the scenes and behind the seen. He never doubted that there was glory at stake, and, for as long as I knew him, God’s glory was paramount.

I look back at all that has happened since Jimmy breathed his last and have finally connected some of the dots. I see now that it was Jimmy’s extraordinary example that paved the way for my own fidelity to the One I could so easily have blamed and forsaken.

I learned from Jimmy never to blame the only One who offers me hope. And I never have.

With the beauty afforded by time plus grace, I realized that during all those years when Jimmy thought he was simply loving me through cancer, he was also teaching me how to live without him.

It was a lesson I never wanted to learn, but he always led the way, and I would have followed him anywhere.

Our 37th anniversary is Wednesday.

I don’t think I have the heart for it.

I have been unwell for months now, in and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices, undergoing countless tests and waiting for results that have been frustratingly slow to come.

As I ponder this current amalgamation of sadness, weariness, and longing, I realize that there is something about being sick again that makes Jimmy’s absence feel particularly acute.

The memories intrude because of everything that preceded them. So much love. So much protection, advocacy, and affirmation.

So. Much. Love.

It spilled over and ran down the sides. It was a love grown in trials and cemented in adversity. It was fortified in darkness and watered in tears. Calamity and misfortune didn’t chip away at it. They deepened it. We were co-conspirators, Jimmy and I, choosing defiant joy when hardship came knocking. There was grace galore under duress and celebration aplenty in the rests and the respites.

After part of my lung was removed, I remember saying to Jimmy, “I will never be the same.”

He answered without hesitation:

“But you will always be the one.”

I miss that.

I miss being the one. His one.

It encapsulates, I believe, the peculiar cruelty of anniversaries that follow loss. Love persuaded us to mark time together. Death interrupts the tally, but the dates continue to arrive.

Unbidden.

Unwelcome.

Sneaking up and marking me before I’ve had a chance to properly mark them.

Thirty-seven years.

It was bliss. It was. Life wasn’t always easy, but our love was effortless.

Tomorrow, there will be no dinner reservation. No flowers. No cards. No reminiscing together over the young people we were and all that happened between then and now.

Nobody in the widow’s household ever celebrated anniversaries. No, I suspect not.

I understand Kunitz now.

But I also know this: an anniversary doesn’t cease to matter simply because one of us is no longer here to celebrate it.

Thirty-seven years still testifies.

It tells the story of a boy and a girl who chose each other. And who kept choosing each other, year after year. It speaks of vows that were promises, and not just words. Vows that survived ordinary days and extraordinary ones, alike. It recounts laughter and pain, sickness and health, fear and faith.

It invites us to remember an amazing husband, a devoted father, a kingdom-minded pastor, and an honorable man who understood his purpose and embraced his calling.

I bask, tonight, in a love so strong that, years after his loss, I can still hear his voice answering:

“But you will always be the one.”

I don’t feel compelled to celebrate Wednesday, but I will honor the day with all the reverence it, and my love, are due.

I will consecrate to God what I cannot yet celebrate.

Grief and gratitude have consistently characterized hard days, and Wednesday will be no different. But I can grieve what is gone while still giving thanks for what was. I can mourn the man who loved me so well, without concluding that his love disappeared when he did.

And I can remember the greater Love to which Jimmy pointed me his whole life long.

The God Jimmy trusted through every trial and every uncertainty is the same God who remains with me now. He excavates the elusive joy obscured by adversity, and displays, anew, that there is no season, storm, or trial that exceeds His power.

The One who received Jimmy’s prayers still hears my own. The One who carried us as a couple, still carries me today. I matter to Him, it seems, and though I am alone, I am never unaccompanied. God’s presence remains as palpable as Jimmy’s absence.

There are many unknowns ahead regarding my health and what will be required for regaining it. In a life that bears little resemblance to all that came before, questions abound.

But there is courage enough for the road ahead, there is grace that arises with each new need, and there is faith augmented and on loan until I can make it my own.

There are a thousand small evidences of God’s guardianship and redemption that span decades, each one enabling me (and you) to face and embrace what comes next.

Wednesday, I will honor the only boy I ever loved. With gratitude. With tears, undoubtedly, and with praise.

I will thank God for the boy who chose me, for the man who kept choosing me, and for each and every year that I was privileged to be his girl.

I will remember love that grew and faith that held. I will commemorate this extraordinary man whose confidence in the goodness of God became, in ways neither of us could have known at the time, part of the inheritance he left me.

Jimmy taught me how to be loved through suffering.

And somehow, in ways neither of us understood nor recognized, he taught me how to trust God through losing him.

If it is true that grief is the price we pay for love (and I believe it is) then a love like ours was certainly worth the ache.

Wednesday, I will grieve my Jimmy Carroll, but I will also give thanks that I was ever blessed to know such a love at all. I will miss the one who walked beside me, but I will also worship the One who has never left my side.

Thirty-seven years still testifies.

My sweet Jimmy’s life still testifies.

And, by the grace of the God he loved so well, hopefully, so shall mine.

The day is coming when every wound will be fully redeemed and every pain finally made whole. What we experience now, only in part, will one day be complete.

Present suffering will give way to future glory that does not fade, fracture, or fail.

Until then, we surrender, in ways both great and small, to the only One who truly fills us.

So, whatever our Wednesdays and hard days hold, whether they bring beauty or burden or some unexpected mingling of the two, may we receive it with open hands.

May we pay attention to what is being formed within us.

And may we find our rest in the One who holds us through the rest.

To Him be all the glory, for He is worthy of all the praise.

Happy Anniversary, my love. You were my fairytale. I can’t wait to see you again.