In The Missing

Today I'm working with intention to sit in the missing, reflecting

on the passing of not just one, but both of our youngest brothers.

Like bookends each third from the end, both stood with us in this picture from Kaitlyn's wedding last year. Both died from artery blockage that neither knew he had, both a reminder that we aren't promised forever, that we need to pursue people and love them relentlessly, that life is fragile, something best handled with care. And prayer. Lots of prayer.

So it's kind of heavy in our home these days while we return to work and bounce forward into our new normal. John and I are taking it one breath, one moment, one day at a time. Sometimes we wonder how the world could possibly go on without them; the grief comes and goes in waves and it's exhausting. I'm journaling through tears, processing the loss through counseling, napping, sitting poolside, baking. My WI family came in for the memorial service for Richard, so it was an incredible gift to have that additional time to process our loss and grieve together.

I was thankful to have agreed to speak at a women's retreat long before either of the losses, so I went last Saturday and led a one-hour session called Gracious Acceptance: Unwrapping God's Gift. It was a blessing to be able to plant seeds of self-compassion and care in our retreat participants as I helped them unwrap the gift that each one is.

We talked about how self-care is a practice, something we have to do proactively rather than reactively, we created these wellness wheels with strategies that feed these sides of who we are, then we wrote a thank-you not to ourselves to express gratitude for who we are and how we show up in our world to help care for one another. As a gift to me, my cousin Amy flew in from Chicago to spend the day with us.