Friday was 3 months since Scott's been gone. 3 months! It has thrown my brain for such a loop. He's been gone for 3 months--even more of missing him and us than that for me--and it hasn't even been a year since we've known about cancer. I cannot wrap my mind around that!
A friend asked me the other day if I've always been good with dates. I haven't. I've always been more of a landmark-memory-kind of rememberer. Place and feelings and smells. I've always remembered where we were and who we were with and been able to guess what year. I could backtrack and remember moments before we were even dating, when I knew he couldn't possibly not see the chemistry. Everyone around us could feel it. I remember a friend's anniversary party and he walked me to my door--not quite dating yet. I can trace back-15 years ago, 13 years ago, 10 years ago.
But now I feel a shift--in my mind it looks like the wheel on the front of a riverboat as it changes directions--the water gets rough and white from getting upset. It's noisy and seems to happen in slow motion. The scary dates are forward now, starting this week. The day the phone call came that something was growing in his neck. The appointment that said 'rare, concerning, aggressive'. I hate those days. They're not days I want to celebrate or make a monument out of. I can feel the water getting jumbled up around me. It makes me want to pull back. It makes me feel like my mind is foggy and the sad is different, like I can't see so I should close my eyes and go to bed. I can feel mad and numb at the exact same time.
These are the days where I will fight for what I know is true. This week, gratitude is not naturally rising up in me like it has on other surprising days. But I can choose it. On Father's Day, one of my boys was talking about things he had learned from Scott and he said "while our time was not near long enough, some people go a lifetime without what I got". I am choosing to remember how grateful I am for time that I had. I am gritting my teeth and fighting through the hatred of the days in early July and looking ahead at what God did on so many days on our back porch last summer--hard, tearful conversations. A husband and wife fighting to be a united front, holding hands, talking through horrific things. A family hashing out terrible days. Friends gathering, praying, crying....and forgiveness and grace that led to one of our sons giving their life to Christ. Scott fought to pray bold prayers out there. That deck that Scott built with a metal roof for me! Because he wanted a screened in porch but I didn't and I won. That's what I choose to remember! That although I didn't wish for this story and still can't quite fathom why God has written it this way, He was present and near there.
And He is present and near now. Even when I don't necessarily feel it. I go back to 2 Chronicles 20:12 at the end when Jehoshaphat said "we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you". This is the passage that Scott clung to often during chemo--"Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf". (20:17). But it all started with them gathering in fear and setting their faces to seek the Lord. Standing firm and seeing salvation seems hard-it seems too foggy up ahead. But I can instinctually cry out "I don't know what to do but my eyes are on you". The rest is His. He has to still be who He says He is, even on these hardest days. Or it's all just up for grabs. I believe Him and trust. I am setting my face toward Him today.
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