Ladies, let’s talk about the elephant in the room… imperfection. We work so hard to be the perfect wife, perfect mom, perfect daughter, perfect sibling, employee, friend, boss, Christian, neighbor, woman… whew! I’m exhausted just writing it. But, let’s face it… trying to chase perfection is like trying to put a fitted sheet on a bed. You get one corner on nice and snug and you feel so proud, and then the other corner pops right off. So you move around, re-tuck that corner down and get it looking neat and “perfect” and up pops the next one. It’s a never-ending round and round as you struggle to get it…

Being the spouse of someone that is in deep mourning is a unique kind of helplessness and pain. And whether it comes on suddenly or over time, it rocks your world, just as it shakes theirs. The focus is, rightfully so, on the partner in deep mourning. So, when you’re the spouse, you feel selfish to even acknowledge that you are on a somewhat parallel path, also mourning a deep loss, but a different kind of loss. The loss of the one standing right in front of you. The one that is physically still there, but emotionally, they feel empty and gone. You face the fear of the unknown as…

I remember reading a line in one of Lysa Terkeurst’s books that really spoke to me… “I’ve gotten so much better about sitting in the space between the feeling and the reaction.” She went on to say, “I sit with the feeling and take time to sort it out.” I remember thinking, wow… I want to be able to do that. It sat with me for a long, long time. As strange as it sounds, I feel like God took me on a refurbishing journey this last year. Some people say they reinvent themselves at some point in life, but I didn’t reinvent myself. I was refurbished. I liken it…