Grace in Wilderness

Grief is kind of like a jar full of glitter. One minute it’s contained and the next your toddler knocks it off the table. Glitter spills everywhere, clinging to your clothes, your hair, your skin, and every surface it can find.

I thought there would be a point where grief settled. Where I could put the lid back on and move forward without it following me into every room. I thought wrong because that isn’t how this works. It lingers. It softens in some ways, sharpens in others, and even surprises me in moments that were supposed to be light.

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens…
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance.” | Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

I always pictured those times as separate. Either or, not and. What I didn’t expect is how often they show up simultaneously.

I can be laughing and then feel it. That quiet shift. That familiar ache that settles in without warning. And, if I’m being honest, any spark of joy comes with questions: am I allowed to feel this? Is it okay to actually enjoy something good without immediately bracing for the heaviness to follow?

I’m learning that it is.

The best way I know to honor Lee’s life isn’t by staying stuck in the weight of his absence. It’s by choosing to keep living my life to the fullest. To notice joy when it shows up. To receive it without guilt, especially when it feels unfamiliar. To let the love we shared continue to shape the way I live now, in occasions both big and small.

Some days joy feels natural, like rediscovering an old hobby, dancing around the kitchen with my kiddos, or a genuine smile. Other days it feels impossible, like the glitter has spilled all over again, catching me off guard and embedding itself in the most obscure places.

But…both can exist. The grief and the joy. The remembering and the living. Not as opposites, but as parts of the same story I’m still figuring out how to live.

Healing isn’t choosing between weeping or laughing. It’s letting both exist and continuing to live a life that honors his legacy.

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