For a long time, I believed I had to choose.
Grief or gratitude.
Brokenness or healing.
Fear or faith.
Love for my late husband or love for someone new.
But God has gently taught me something so powerful—it’s not always either/or. Sometimes, it’s both/and.
There is such freedom in the word AND.
I can grieve AND be grateful.
I can miss what was AND embrace what is.
I can love the life I had AND the life I have now.
I can walk in faith AND still feel fear.
Read more...As I write this, we are getting ready for a trip that I always thought was so far off in the future, but here we are! Jillian is GRADUATING from college!!!
I mean, how is this even possible that we are at this point? Wasn’t it just yesterday we were diving into algebra in homeschool, and college was a distant dream? And now, somehow, she’s walking across a stage, ready to step into this next chapter. I find myself wondering, When did she grow up? How did we get here so fast?
As with many milestones, this one comes with a lot of BIG emotions. Joy, pride, excitement….and grief. This winter has been a hard season, and wrapped up in it has been the anticipation of Jillian graduating. I am deeply proud of Jillian—she has poured her heart into these years and grown into such an incredible young woman. And these big moments bring up grief and an intensity of missing Jon.
Being a widow can be messy. Grief is unpredictable and shows up at unexpected times. In late February I had a particularly difficult week.
I took a quick trip to Maine by myself to attend a Celebration of Life for a dear man who had a profound influence in Jon’s life. Jeff was a Godly man that poured his heart and soul into discipleship, and Jon benefited greatly from his ministry. The last time I saw Jeff was in November, and he knew he would not be around much longer. His cancer had spread to his brain, and he was ready. His joy was contagious as he looked forward to Heaven. We had the opportunity to chat, and he said to me, with tears in his eyes, “I can’t wait to pray with Jon again.” We hugged, and that was the last time I saw him.
Read more...I can’t tell you exactly how it all occurred, or when we became interested in each other, but we did. I knew Heath from church. We were both involved in the music at church, so we would see each other pretty regularly at rehearsals. We would talk at rehearsal and at church on Sunday mornings and once in a while we would chat on social media. The more we talked, the more I liked him.
And then it happened.
On Valentine’s Day, 2016, Heath asked me for my phone number. He called me a couple days later and asked me out on a date. My first date since Jon had passed. My stomach did flip flops, but of course I said yes!
I was feeling ALL the feelings. Excited, nervous, unsure, happy...it was overwhelming. I tried not to get too far ahead of myself, but I wondered what God was up to. When I told my kids that I had a date, Jillian said, “Is Mr. Bailey going to be our new Dad?” I explained to her that it didn’t quite work that way - it takes time and many dates before deciding on a big commitment like that.
When I first became a widow, I never thought I would remarry. Falling in love and getting married again was something I was very opposed to. But God had other plans.
Shortly after Jon passed in July of 2009, Jillian, who was 7 at the time asked me, “Are we going to get a new Daddy?” I was completely surprised by this question and wasn’t sure how to respond. It had literally only been a few weeks since Jon passed, and I wasn’t ready to even begin to think about anything like that.
Of course, in her mind, it was the most logical thing in the world. It just made sense that a family had a mommy AND a daddy. So I told her the only thing I could, and that was for her to pray about it.
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