One Year Ago Today

 One Year Ago Today

      It's been nearly one year since my beloved wife met my beloved Savior.  The month of the November has been an unbearable storm at times.  I have carried a smile and laughed, but sometimes those are fake.  The past sixteen days have been nothing short of a roller coaster, and if you know me, you know that I am not very fond of roller coasters.  I can vividly remember details of the last weeks of Tif's life.  I can remember the color of the floor tiles, what we ate each day, the color gown that she wore, her schedule of meds, the names of our nurses, and I used to remember the exact number of steps that it took to walk her floor.  Those memories are burned into my mind.  I treasured those last moments with Tiffanie.  We knew that time was fleeting and we made the absolute best that we could.  We continued to glorify the Lord and point others to Jesus.  She continued to fight the cancer despite knowing that her days were short.

      One year ago today Tif woke up at home feeling poorly.  She just came home the night prior.  We spent a few days in the hospital as she tried to recover from getting a drain placed into her lungs.  The night before we watched "A Christmas Carol."  We ate Applebees, Maggie and I stopped at Dollar Tree to buy her welcome home balloons and I bought her the ugliest fake flower from dollar tree since all the florists were closed, and we sat in the glow of the Christmas lights together as a family.  Tif was so excited to be home, but home didn't last long, it didn't even last 24 hours.  The next day her breathing became much more labored, her heart rate jumped up, and you could tell that she was worried.  I hated telling her that we had to go back to the hospital.  She looked so defeated.  My kids were afraid.  Tif and I had already been in and out of the hosptial for weeks on end, so it had become fairly normal for us to be away from them.  But this time felt different.  Tif was out of medical options.  There were no more treatments.  Baring a miracle there was no more getting better.  We wept as we drove to the hospital.  I remember my heart hurting so badly.  I remember my mind racing.  I remember feeling the heaviest sadness in all my days.  I didn't know what to tell her.  We both knew.  She looked at me and said "I'm never going to make it back home."  It was like a gavel hitting.  You could hear it echo.  For the first time ever Tiffanie said what we knew, this was it.  There was no heading back home.  Hope on earth died that day.  But as soon as she said we drove by Martin's Potato Rolls.  Martin's regularly posts verses on their sign, and that day the verse was 1st Peter 5:7, "cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you."  So once again, as we did for the previous ten months, we threw our cares onto the Lord.  We prayed together, we wept together, but we trusted the Lord together.

      My sweet Tif was wrong about one thing that day.  She said she would never make it back home.  To one degree she was right.  She never came back to the camp house.  She never slept in the same bed.  For fourteen plus years Tif and I slept in the same bed together.  Thousands of days, probably nearly 50,000 hours spent together in that bed.  It's been over a year since I've had someone lay beside me.  That's a sad reality as a 41 year widower.  O' how lonely those nights have become. No body heat from your best friend, no more kisses, no more affection, no more leaving love notes to her. The emptiness still strikes me now despite the emergence of a new relationship.  Yes, Tif would never come back to the brick and mortar home full of memories and her home decor.  But she would arrive home soon.  Tif would pass away a little over a week later.  She heard the words well done good and faithful servant and she saw Jesus face to face.  She got to go home and rest in the house of the Lord.  She finished her race, she fought her fight, and now she is in a place that is more home than I could ever provide for her.  One year ago today we abandoned a physical home to hope for a home that no rust can decay, moth eat, nor cancer touch.  One year ago today our souls shifted from earthly healing, to heavenly healing.  One year ago today we casted the heaviest care we ever carried onto the shoulders of the only way that could bear the weight.  One year ago today God started a work in my heart that is still on going.  This is her story, and her story matters.  Yes, life has caused me to move forward.  Yes, God has given me hope to know that I still have good days in front of me.  But I want to honor my first love these next few days by pulling back the curtain and again, inviting you into our journey as we talked with Jesus through her final days.