Time to shift..

Losing Josh changed a lot for me in my life. You don’t realize how much it touches, until you do… Hard to explain! Anyways, I have been in a grief coaching group for 7 months now. It was just the hot cup of coffee I needed on a very cold day, so to speak. I’ve learned that you know when it is time to shift and that it is okay. And trust me, each shift is never comfortable.

This time the shift was with our home church.

In a smaller nutshell, Josh and I both started attending this church around the same time, when we happened to sit on the same pew. We waved and smiled at each other for about 6 weeks, when I finally introduced myself. That handshake turned into a beautiful blossomed relationship. After a few months at our church, He started on the worship team. Man, he had a beautiful gift with music. He played every Sunday, aside from a 6 week paternity leave later on. We sat on a certain pew, close to the stage. My oldest loved hanging out with him on the stage after the service while he put away all of his music things. After we volunteered at our church’s Food distribution day, he planned a beautiful date at Starry Nights, where he asked me to make him the happiest man for the rest of his life. Four months after that proposal we got married at a beautiful ceremony and reception at the place where we had met. Later on that year we birthed a beautiful baby girl that made us a family of 4. And when he passed, they held a beautiful and heartfelt memorial on the very stage he played on every week.

After he passed, I still attended every Sunday, most of them in person and some of them watching the live version on YouTube. When I was there in person, I clung to our pew. That pew brought comfort… until it didn’t… I felt so disconnected from what I once knew. I would tear up a lot, looking at the side of the stage he was normally on, and not seeing him there. Eventually, that pew and that stage became a sore. Don’t even get me started on the weird things people would say to me, when trying to just connect. 😂 I could write a book on that… Anyways, I threw myself into serving in the back of the church. I thought if i could just serve, I would be okay and it wouldn’t hurt as bad. Truth is, I was running from something I knew was coming… But the thing is, you can not out run something in grief. It will catch up to you. And it did! I had the realization that the time had come where I needed to leave the church I love so much.

Talk about HARD.

Leaving that church meant closing a final chapter for me and my late husband. It was our church, our home. I find comfort that he is in our hearts and I see him in the lives of my girls every day, but that church was a BIG piece of US. Closing those doors were really hard. With much prayer and time with God, I truly wrestled it. Like fought it. And I tried to make it work. But friend, let me tell you, when you stop fighting something and resisting, the relief you will feel is amazing. There was a church that he had laid on my heart and I finally took that leap of faith. I sat down and wrote our Pastor and his wife a letter, letting them know where my heart was. When I say it opened up the floodgates, boy did it… Isaiah 41:10 says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

I’m so thankful for that church and it will always have a special place in my heart. I met my husband there, met a lot of wonderful people, and built a beautiful relationship with some.