Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

This is a big week. A big month actually. My daughter turns 18 on Saturday. She and I are doing this amazingly, hilarious show “Legally Blonde, the Musical” together and have met some incredible people. These people make us laugh, create beauty with us, and take us to another place – a place where we can get away from our reality. It sends us forward.

But John is not here to watch her turn 18. Backwards. He is not here to watch her “Bend and Snap” in this amazing show. On her birthday week, they will be finally installing my husband’s gravestone with his name, the words “Soli Deo Gloria” and his birth and death dates. Rachel is moving forward, turning 18, going off to college, and John gets a headstone. Forward and Backward. I have no idea how to put those ideas into life.

Yet everyday, I seem to be doing it. We shop for Rachel's dorm room. I accept another job description at the school where I teach, I plan a cast party at my house, I hang pictures, I redecorate Jake's room with him, and I change my cover photo on facebook. I have such happiness for the pride I feel for my daughter on stage, for the joy I have that Jake gets to travel to California, Boston, North Carolina beaches, and Switzerland this summer. That is forward.

But I keep thinking about the gravestone. Couldn’t BE more backward and wrong. I love to think that he knows about this show,

knows about Jake’s travels, and watches us from above. (I’m not sure if this is theologically correct, but there is a cardinal in our backyard and I say “Hi John” to him everyday.)

I cannot stand doing these things without him, but then again, he wouldn’t want me to NOT do them. 

SO….we keep going. We keep planning. We paint rooms, we plan vacations, we host parties, and we blog about how it all seems messed up, yet healthy; very sad, but also exciting and fun; very maddening at the loss of him, but very hopeful that he sees us and that we will see him again. Somehow I have to navigate the forward and the backward everyday. And I am thankful that I have friends who listen, a God who cares even more than they do, and a love for life that can rise above pain and sadness.

Deep breath.