One year and a week.

If there is anything I've learned in this grief journey, it's that everyone is different. For someone who likes to do a lot of comparing to make sure I'm 'on track' this is no good. I read a lot, I read stories of people learning how to grieve and what worked for them. Each of the stories goes something like 'with time I learned how to deal with the grief better' but rarely do I read 'time made the pain lessen'.

The week leading up to the year anniversary of Ricky's passing was hard, my mind kept re-living all of those last interactions we'd had. Or what I was doing this time last year, or the hopes and dreams we had. The night before he passed I sat with him in the hospital, we thought this was just another illness he would battle. Talking made him tired so we sat in silence.  I pulled out his phone to read the Bible. When I opened the app it pulled up what he had most recently read, Hebrews 11. Ricky had underlined the word faith in each example given, people who walked by faith and not by sight. He had underlined all of vs. 13-16.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth..they were seeking a homeland..they desired a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. 

I read it and thought about how all of those people didn't know the outcome, they simply chose to trust. These people knew hard times, they were kept in chains, stoned, sawed in 2 (hello) because they chose to trust Jesus. They had their sight set on things above, Ricky did too. I thought we had a lot more time to live out our faith together, we'd look back when we were 70 and talk about how Jesus brought us through the trials in our path. 

Ricky had crazy God things happen to him, he had gold fillings straight from Jesus (no lie). I liked to point it out in front of people who didn't believe Jesus STILL heals and touches our physical bodies. I'll never forget when he came home from the dentist one day. The dentist had asked him where he had gotten such a perfect gold filling, I asked gleefully if he had told him from Jesus. He was not amused, he didn't want the dentist thinking he was a quack. I watched one evening at a prayer meeting (we arrived with him hobbling on a sprained ankle the size of a grapefruit) as Jesus came and healed his ankle, the swelling went down and he went home with a perfectly healed ankle. Why would Jesus take care of these minor problems only to let something like bum lungs and the flu get the best of him? God doesn't make sense to me.

Yesterday I spoke with the friend who prayed for Ricky's ankle years ago. Over the course of the conversation the phrase 'God doesn't make mistakes' kept coming up. This is a running theme I keep bumping into. God is sovereign, His ways are higher than ours. Reasoning or trying to figure His plan is out of my league. I'm called to trust and obey today, to believe in things unseen. I will look to the cross and remember that Jesus suffered. God took what looked like the most cruel act, death and punishment for an innocent man and made it into one of the most beautiful acts. Could he take the suffering and conflicts in our lives and turn them into something beautiful?
We know that God causes everything (EVERYTHING!) to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Rom. 8:28
What is left but to believe God will take hard seemingly senseless things, things like death, divorce, war, incest, or murder and draw us closer to Himself. Jesus has the ability to bring us closer to him in the middle of tragedy. Every situation. God doesn't make mistakes.
My heart is overwhelmed by HIS goodness and the HOPE He brings. Thankful for glimpses of his good purposes in the middle of pain.

Easter 2016 fell earlier in the year. Ricky passed away less than 2 weeks after. It was one of the best Easter's we had as a family. Isabelle and I color coordinated to match his oxygen tubes, when life hands you lemons you make lemonade, right? When Grayson saw the picture above he started giggling. He reminded me he laughed so hard he peed himself. Ricky took the easter basket hill-billy teeth, and kept saying, "let me nibble on your neck" in his southern accent. The day was full of sunshine and sweet family time.
This Easter is full of hope and a reminder as Christians our life on earth is only the beginning, because of the Cross.