Love, Loss and Overwhelming Grace

2014. Sometimes it still feels like a bad dream. Yet at the same time there was so much beauty in the brokenness and not for a moment did God leave our side. He drew us closer to each other and closer to himself.

My grandmother died in March. She was not in great health, but it was a case of pneumonia that she couldn't overcome and it still seemed too soon for us.

I remember getting the call from my mom as we were driving through Wall trying to get to the hospital. It was like the air had been sucked right out of my lungs. It was harder for me to be 15 minutes away than to be three and a half hours away. So close yet so far away. Literally. Not that anything I could have done would have changed things and she may not have even known I was there. I just wanted one last chance. I had visited with her not long before she was hospitalized and I know she knows I loved her. But here's the thing, we should never wait for our last chance. We should take every chance we get to let people know we love them. This life is fleeting. I am thankful for a lifetime of memories with her. Camping trips, sleeping in the "blue room" at her house, her love for gardening, playing the accordion, the homemade sugar eggs at Easter, Christmas Eve at her church. That is how I will remember her.

In April, a friend of mine from the preschool my kids have attended committed suicide leaving behind her two young kids. She came to my kids' birthday parties, I usually saw her twice a day at drop off and pickup and while we were not super close I felt extremely guilty for not knowing the heartache she was struggling with. I was often rushed to get to the next place and felt like I should have taken more time to invest in her life. I saw her earlier in the morning on the day she took her life and it still haunts me. I think about her often and my heart aches for her mom, who is the director at the preschool, her husband and her children. I am reminded of her every time I see them. She had an infectious smile that was hiding so much pain. It taught me to never assume anything and to slow down and be kind for everyone is fighting a hard battle.

In July, I had to leave my conference in Houston early to come home to Harley's lymph node in her neck swollen to the size of a tennis ball. She was admitted to Dell Children's the next day and had a series of tests run. We didn't know what was wrong for several days and why she wasn't responding to the IV antibiotics. We finally got an excellent ENT that switched her meds and he let us go home with instructions to return if the swelling didn't reduce or her skin started turning red. We went home only to return for surgery a couple of days later. She had lymphadenitis and the lymph node had to be drained. She stayed in the hospital for three more days while they ran more tests and ruled out some very scary things. This was not my first rodeo with a child in the hospital or having surgery, but still heartbreaking nonetheless. The needles, chest x-rays and the blood draw where they had to wrap her up in a sheet like a straight jacket while she screamed my name were almost too much. I begged God to take her place, but he held us through and she fully recovered with no problems.

In early August, after a months long fight with aggressive cancer diagnosed in February, our dear family friend, Jimmy Don, went to be with Jesus. I watched Connie, my mom's best friend, put her life on hold and fight the good fight with him until the very end. I watched an entire community of warriors come together to pour out love, prayers, encouragement and financial gifts to battle alongside them. It was truly humbling. And while he didn't win his earthly battle, there were victories to be found all around and he has surely gained more than we could ever imagine.

About a week later, my dad's brother also passed away. He lived for less than two weeks after they found his cancer. My dad flew back from Arkansas where he was visiting my uncle in the hospital to carry Jimmy Don to his final resting place as a pallbearer only to return back to Arkansas and watch his brother die days later.

In October, my mom casually told me one night that she had to go for a follow up sonogram the next day after an abnormal mammogram. The fear I felt at that moment was crippling, but I could hear the tremble in her voice and knew this was not a time to let fear consume, but rather to let Jesus enter. She received the results from her biopsy a couple days later and it was confirmed. Breast cancer. Right in the middle of "Pinktober" where everyone dons pink t-shirts, and companies raise the price of their newly pink packaged products for the sake of "breast cancer research",  and a pretty pink ribbon is tied around an ugly life altering disease. And here we were left to reel in this devastating news. Ironic. I got in a car as fast as I could and drove home to be with her and make a plan. We researched the best doctors, talked to other women and made appointments in Dallas.

I have MUCH more to say about my mom getting cancer, but that will come later. She had a double mastectomy with latissimus dorsi flap reconstruction on November 11. The surgery was eight hours long. I am still processing many of the emotions from this day and the days that have followed.

I went back to San Angelo after her surgery and stayed there for two weeks. I went home for a few days and then returned for Thanksgiving. The night of Thanksgiving, my Pawpaw, my mom's dad, was admitted into the hospital with pneumonia. He became septic and was suffering from the end stages of COPD that he had been battling for years.

On the morning of December 16, I stood at his bedside with my mom and my family and watched him drift peacefully to eternity while we sang Amazing Grace and It is Well.

I watched my mother mourn the loss of her father while the wounds from her double mastectomy were still fresh. I watched my Granny say goodbye to her husband of more than 50 years.

On Christmas Day, a day that we were carefully treading through the new normal, Hayden woke up with the flu and we had to cancel our plans.

If you are still reading, I need to make something clear. I don't write all of this for pity or sympathy. I write this because we made it to the other side. And there is only one way to explain that - grace. Waves of unexpected grace in an ocean of doubt. We were loved, we were held, we found joy, we found the strength to keep going. Our God is good. Always good.

This is the first time I have thought about this all at once and while it feels good to write it out, it makes me weepy, yet above all it is well.