It’s been a year and a month. Since the accident.
In the last year and a month, we have, in no particular order: bought 27 acres, traveled to the Northeast and along the eastern seaboard and Christmas last year on the Gulf Coast, we swam in the lake several times, we’ve visited Silver Dollar City a half a dozen times, went to White Water a few times, had an auction, went to Seattle to visit friends, cried (a lot), continued to schooling the kids, we travelled to Tennessee for a family reunion, the girls have started gymnastics, Josiah started Warrior Sports, they all started piano lessons, Mike has continued working at work and building things up here at the inn, began building storage containers, new lego creations have been built, new knowledge has been learned, more books have been read, Harry Potter has been started, we designed plans for a new house, we also got new family pictures taken, we have grieved and there have been many days we weren’t sure we would make it out of bed, but each day we did and at the end of each day I wondered how we made it through another day.
It’s amazing how life continues to roll on. It’s amazing how our lives fall apart in quick moments or long moments and with each day Jesus gives us grace to make it through the time we step out of our beds and back into them at the end of the day.
I cannot take credit for making it through 398 days with strength and grace and mercy, because most of those days I did not have strength, dignity and grace. There were usually a bunch of moments of grief, heartache, snapping at my children, frustration with others and messes to clean up with an ungrateful heart. Somehow Jesus was gracious enough to allow us to make it through the end of the said days and to wake up for more.
In the book Stepping Heavenward, Mrs. Campbell says to Katy, “…before I go, I want once more to tell you how good He is, how blessed it is to suffer with Him, how infinitely happy He has made me in the very hottest heat of the furnace. It will strengthen you in your trials to recall this my dying testimony. There is no wilderness so dreary but that His love illuminates it, no desolation so desolate but that He can sweeten it. I know what I am saying. It is no delusion. I believe that the highest, purest happiness is known only to those who have learned Christ in sickrooms, in poverty, in racking suspense and anxiety, amid hardships and at the open grave.”
My husband made a comment in a grief group that we were a part of several months ago, he said, “I don’t want to be healed. My wounds will not be healed. My heart will not be healed. I want to suffer well.” Mrs. Campbell suffered well.
Stepping Heavenward has been a long time favorite of mine. I started reading it two years after Eli passed away. I was wrestling with God’s goodness. I knew He was good, just not good to my family. Then I realized through this book and through studying that God was good because He gave His Son. Because He died for us. Because He conquered death. Because He saved us. It’s that simple, but it’s that’s hard too.
We have gotten up for the past 398 days, because of His goodness. Because of His death. Because He conquered death. I have wept myself to sleep and I have called and texted friends to tell me the Gospel because I had forgotten. Jesus has held us. He has. I cannot describe how He has carried us, but He has.
Jesus is enough. Always. Because He promised He would be.