Two Years On...

How do you go on when you think you can't go on? 

How do you learn to live again when your heart's been broken?  

As we walked across the busy parking lot, I remember taking his arm and feeling like we could take on just about anything... so long as we did it together. We were a team - the two of us. Somehow, it always felt like everything would be okay because we had each other. So much that could've ripped apart our bond had only made it stronger, and that was the beauty of our friendship: ours was one that was tried by fire and still survived. 

Under those clear, Texas skies I recall saying goodbye, little knowing it would be for the last time. We had enjoyed three incredible days together - he told me it was the happiest he'd been in a long time. I always knew I could get his soul to sing. Before he got in his truck to drive away, I asked him for one more hug...

It's been two years since I received the news that tore my world apart: my brother, my friend was gone. For the next fourteen months, my heart ached. 

You never know how grief can change a life until it's changed yours. 

You cry until your eyes can cry no more. You long with everything inside you to just see them once again. To hold them or tell them one more time that you loved them. And with the finality comes a deep, dark void - an empty space where they used to be that now sits vacant. Painfully so. 

Nobody tells you you'll face such heart-wrenching, soul-gutting days. Nobody tells you that you'll feel as though you've lost the will to live because you're not sure you can live without them. Nobody tells you that you'll sob your sorrows out day after day and wonder if the loss that feels like it's eating you alive will ever stop. Nobody tells you... and that's the truth of it all: grief is truly only something that can be lived. Words fail to describe and only those who have felt with the heart will understand. 

After you've faced so many things together, you never dream you'll have to face the worst of them all...alone. 

Two years on and I still get lonely for him. Still miss him. Will always love him. Life is slowly teaching me how to move forward and carry the loss better. I'm figuring out, one brave day at a time, how to find myself again in this new normal with no Alex in my world. But there are still days... 

Days when the void seems greater than usual. Days when I can feel that final hug again and I just wish I could it feel all over again and I realize it'll only be in my dreams from now on. It's those moments of done-ness that just catch me sometimes - a cruel reminder of death and that we're all finite people with a certain end and that our moments are numbered and only God knows... 

Only God knows what you've been through. Only God knows how to comfort you. Only God knows what to say to you when all other words fail. Only God knows how much you can take, and only God can give you what it takes to go through that thing you think you can't take. 

It's hard to lose a hero. To lose your inspiration and the one who always believed in you and told you life was richer because you were in it. The one who said out loud he never doubted you would show up in the worst moments. And you never doubted he would do the same. It's hard to lose a person that's a brave one all their own and to feel the ache of letting them go because you always thought you'd never have to let them go. 

In his darkest moments years prior, I told God that if I lost my Alex, it would kill me. But I never thought it would actually happen. And the grief came close a couple times to spelling the end of me, too. But, in the spirit of him who was the ultimate survivor, I made a choice to go on. Made a choice to live because he'd shown me how to live. Made a decision to let this loss show me a better way because The Way would make a way through all this pain and, just perhaps, I could learn to thrive again. 

It all still seems surreal, and it probably always will be. A piece of me died the day I heard the news, and I will never be the same again. And yet, such loss has shown me a strange beauty I never would've discovered otherwise... almost like his life is still showing me how to live mine even in his absence. I'm still drawing strength from all the things he exemplified and, while the sad-sweet still intermingle, I'm thankful to have such a story to drive me forward and remind me that every. single. precious. day. counts! 

On those days when all I'd want most is to hear his voice again, to take in his laugh, to see his smile... I hear him saying as he always did when life looked the bleakest that "there's a silver lining to every cloud..." And even as I struggle to believe it now in the face of losing someone so dear, I have to keep reminding myself of that truth. It was what carried Alex through so much and it's what will continue to carry me now. Because He carries me now and always has. Always will. 

You never know when pain will visit your door. Little did I think that May evening two years ago that life as I knew it was about to be shattered forever. But, in looking back, I can see how I've been carried. Lifted into the safe arms of Jesus and held close through the valleys I've been asked to traverse. I now know the reality of that old story about the "Footprints" because I can see all the times where I ended, God began. When my strength ran out, His strength was perfect. When I couldn't carry on, He enabled me to. When I lost belief, He believed for me and believed in me and believed with me. 

Mind runs back to that star-lit night as I savored that final hug I've come to treasure to this very day. All our days are limited and nobody knows their time except it's God's time and all we have is right now to embrace what we've been given. That night, I told myself I wanted to hold on and make that moment last forever. In an odd way, it has. Just not in the way I expected. 

The next time you're given time, don't let time take from you the opportunity to say, "I love you" one more time. In my case, it was the last time. And, until I see my hero again, it is the precious lasting memory that I have for the rest of time. 

So how do you go on when you think you can't go on? 

You go on because He goes on and because life goes on with Him and you'll miss the still-beautiful if you remain in the past.

How do you learn to live again when your heart's been broken? 

You do what Alex did and you gather all those shattered pieces of yourself and you open your soul and you make the brave choice to love others and to be loved. To be laid bare so you can be healed. To view the world with hope in spite of everything to the contrary. You make the choice to live the emptied life because you become filled with more of Him. 

Two years on and I can say that, in my grief, my emptiness has created space for God. 

And isn't that His way always? To collect all the million shards of you and turn it into a testimony of grace... a reminder that whatever worst thing you face is never the last thing and what looks to be the last thing will end up being the best thing. 

So here's to yet another year of traveling life's journey without my Alex, missing him in all the ways on all the days, but still gazing into the future with peace...knowing that even this loss will, in His time and way, be made beautiful and every soul-cross will eventually find its redeeming resurrection.