Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Everyone has been asking me how I am. Your birthday just passed again. It came and then it went and I don’t know how I feel about that. I took all week to process and still haven’t come to a conclusion. It’s just not fun…how about that? People had great suggestions of what I should have done to celebrate your heavenly birthday. My only response to it was “eh!”   

These special days are a more intense reminder that you are no longer here. My whole body is preparing for the days leading up to them with a flood of cortisol. This is our second birthday without you, and I cannot imagine it will get any easier. Each passing birthday reminds me of how many months have passed since that awful day. It’s been 17 months. It seems like enough time for whatever is supposed to happen, but when you go through something hard, something traumatic, the world doesn’t stop and wait for you to catch up.  I know that you would understand with an empathetic ear. 

I believe in the healing, transformative promises of Christ because that’s what you taught me to do and because I’ve experienced that truth. Although I am still figuring out how to survive this hurt and will be til my own time comes, the good part is that this pain is not without purpose. I’ve discovered areas of weakness that I didn’t even know existed and I thank God for that revelation. We should all strive to know ourselves more in light of the God we serve. 

“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). 

Through all of this. Through tested friendships. Through losing Dad. Through feeling alone and abandoned. Through battling all the negative emotions that accompany those things, the Lord has revealed to me that the most significant battle is the one inside of me. Because of this, the only thing I know how to do is to learn to trust God more by knowing Him more. 

If only you were sitting in front of me now, I know you’d be nodding your head in agreement. You’d have so much to say. Often we had so much to say to each other that we would have to continue our conversations at another time. I can’t describe to anyone how the absence of our discussions has impacted me. I’m sure many will have to experience that feeling on their own when their time of grief comes, and it will undoubtedly be unique to each person. God knows how close we were, and He has provided everything in my time of need. Undeservedly so, for this spoiled brat. How unfathomable!

So Happy Birthday Mom. The family and I spent some time in one of your regular stomping grounds.  It was “eh” cause you weren’t there. But we talked about you and remembered you and we do that everyday anyway. Love you on your birthday, forever and beyond. 



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