Grief…it hits you like a sledgehammer and drops you into a jungle where you find yourself searching for
a way through. You try to avoid the potholes, and definitely the quicksand that wants to suck you under.
You’ve been placed on an endless journey without a roadmap and that no one prepared you for.

That’s where I was as I stood outside my husband’s room, after he’d gotten his wings to heaven, staring
at a blank wall and not knowing how or where to go. Fifty-four years, two months, and ten days earlier
we’d stood in a little Open Bible Church pledging our lives together. I truly was “The Happiest Girl in the
Whole USA” that Donna Fargo wrote and sang about, I was blessed to have “and they lived happily ever
after” – until I wasn’t. Five weeks from his diagnosis he was gone, and I felt my life was over to. I’d lost
my hero. I’d lost the wind beneath my wings. I felt I had reverted back to the shy, insecure, young
seventeen year old girl before I met the love of my life.

As you read through my grief experiences, yes even the “did I just throat-punch you?” chapter, I trust
this book will help you find your way through this jungle you’ve been dropped in on your own journey of
grief. But know this, “All the days ordained for me (and you) were written in Your book [God] before one
of them came to be,” Psalm 139:16. God wrote a book about you before you were ever born. If you’re
still breathing your book isn’t finished. You’re not walking this journey alone and God sees all your tears.
Psalm 56:9 (NLT) tells us “You keep track of our sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.” That means in our most sorrowful, tearful moments, God is
standing right there with us, with a bottle to collect our tears and a record book and pen to record them.
 

May this book bring you comfort as you read my story, knowing you’re not alone on this path.