Before the Calendar REMEMBERS.....

YOUR BODY AND HEART DOES...

There are moments in time when your heart stops.

It breaks.

It shatters.

You can't catch your breath, and you don't know why.

Nothing happened.

No phone call came.

No bad news arrived.

Yet everything feels heavier.

You move slower.

The tears come easier.

The silence becomes louder.

You wonder if you're getting sick.

You wonder if you're simply exhausted.

Then, if you've lived with grief long enough, you stop asking what's wrong.

You ask a different question.

What does my body remember that my mind hasn't yet?

Because grief has taught me something no doctor, therapist, or textbook ever could.

The body remembers before the calendar does.

This morning I thought I knew why my heart felt so heavy.

Of course it was Jaxon.

How could it not be?

In just a few days, children all across the country will walk into first grade.

Parents are buying backpacks.

Packing lunches.

Writing names on crayons.

Taking pictures on front porches before the bus arrives.

Holding tiny hands before letting them go.

And my little boy...

My little boy should have been one of them.

Jaxon should have been starting first grade.

Five simple words.

A lifetime of shattered dreams.

Then my heart wandered somewhere else.

It found Darren.

He wouldn't be a little boy anymore.

He would have been a junior in high school.

His dad and I would've been talking about colleges, careers, responsibilities, and the future every parent quietly imagines while raising their child.

We would've been shopping for his first car.

Not the most expensive one.

Not the flashiest one.

The one he deserved.

The one his character, his grades, and the young man he had become had earned.

That's the kind of mother I've always wanted to be.

Then I remembered.

July 4, 2015.

One day.

One diagnosis.

One moment that forever changed the direction of our lives.

School doesn't just remind me of what my boys lost.

It reminds me of who they were becoming.

By then, I was certain I understood why my heart felt so heavy.

Until I looked at the calendar.

August 2.

Of course.

My body had already remembered.

Today we remember Mr. John.

My father-in-love.

My friend.

A Navy veteran.

A fisherman.

A man who loved the water.

A Dallas Cowboys fan through and through.

A husband.

A grandfather.

A protector.

But if you asked me what I'll remember most about him...

None of those things would be my first answer.

I'll remember that he was the kind of man you could call...

...and he would come.

No hesitation.

No excuses.

No keeping score.

He simply showed up.

In a world where promises are often made and quietly forgotten, Mr. John's word meant something.

If he said he'd be there...

He was there.

If you needed him...

He came.

That kind of man is becoming rare.

He was what I lovingly call a gentle giant.

Strong enough to make you feel protected.

Gentle enough to make you feel safe.

He had a way of making people feel seen.

Loved.

Heard.

Protected.

He didn't have to tell you he cared.

You already knew.

His character introduced him long before his words ever did.

When I married Darryl, I didn't just become part of a family.

I gained Mr. John.

He wasn't Darryl's biological father.

He was something just as beautiful.

He chose to step into that role.

He chose to love.

He chose to stay.

He chose to show up.

And sometimes, that's what makes a parent.

Not biology.

Not DNA.

Not a last name.

Presence.

Commitment.

Faithfulness.

Like so many blended families, relationships are built one ordinary day at a time.

One conversation.

One sacrifice.

One fishing trip.

One football game.

One "I'll be there."

Until one day you realize they aren't simply the person who married your parent.

They're family.

It wasn't until Mr. John was preparing to leave this earth that Darryl fully embraced what Mr. John had truly been to him.

Not simply the man who loved his mother.

A father in all the ways that mattered most.

That realization became one of the final gifts they gave each other.

Maybe that's why his story reaches my heart so deeply.

Because I know what it means to love a child you didn't give birth to.

I know what it means to choose someone every single day without biology ever being the reason.

That's who I was to Darren.

And that's who Mr. John was to Darryl & me.

Love has never required matching DNA to become family.

It has only ever required a willing heart.

This week has been one of the hardest I've had in a long time.

There were moments I wanted to quit.

Moments I wanted to disappear.

Moments I wondered if I had anything left to give.

I came back to work believing life would look different by now.

Instead, I found myself grieving all over again.

Not just people.

The lives I had already created in my head because of them.

That's the part people don't always understand about grief.

You don't just mourn the people you buried.

You mourn every tomorrow that was buried with them.

I grieve watching Mr. John grow older with us.

I grieve seeing him teach Nolin how to fish.

I grieve hearing him laugh from across the room while a Cowboys game plays on television.

I grieve Darren's junior year.

His graduation.

The first car his dad and I would've proudly handed him the keys to.

I grieve Jaxon's first day of first grade.

The backpack he never wore.

The classroom he never entered.

The artwork that never came home folded inside a little blue folder.

Those futures were real.

They lived in my heart long before they ever had the chance to live in this world.

And those futures deserve to be grieved too.

Today, I really don't know what the lesson is.

I wish I could tell you I have some beautiful revelation that explains all of this.

I don't.

What I have is trust.

Not because I understand God's ways.

But because I have learned His goodness is not dependent upon my understanding.

Some days faith looks less like certainty...

...and more like refusing to let go of His hand.

Today is one of those days.

Yet even here...

God quietly reminds me that He is still writing.

After we suffered a miscarriage, I had already made my decision.

I had already scheduled the appointment to have my IUD placed again in September of 2023.

That chapter, as far as I knew, was over.

Then I walked into that appointment.

Instead of preventing life...

I discovered I was already carrying it.

Nolin.

Only God!

I smile every time I think about him and how I can only imagine Papa John organizing in heaven.

His laughter.

His joy.

His endless curiosity.

The way he reminds us that life still has room for wonder.

And somehow I can't tell that story without thinking about Mr. John.

Not because one life replaced another.

Nothing ever could.

But because, in the very season we were learning how to say goodbye...

God was preparing us to say hello.

He doesn't erase grief.

He meets us in it.

He doesn't ask us to forget the graves.

He keeps planting life beside them.

There is one memory our family will forever carry with holy reverence.

When Mr. John entered eternity, Darryl was the one who pronounced him deceased.

The stethoscope around his neck was the very same one he had used years earlier when he pronounced Darren deceased.

Some moments are too sacred to explain.

They simply become part of your family's testimony.

I still don't know why God calls home so many of the people who make this world feel safer.

I don't know why some children reach Heaven before they ever reach first grade.

I don't know why fathers leave before we're ready.

I don't know why some dreams end before they ever begin.

I may never know.

But I do know this.

Every one of them left this world better than they found it.

Mr. John left us integrity.

He left us faithfulness.

He left us the example of a man whose word could be trusted.

Darren left me courage I never knew I possessed.

Jaxon taught me that love is never measured by words spoken or miles walked.

And Nolin reminds me every single day that God still writes new chapters.

The greatest inheritance I've ever received wasn't money.

It wasn't possessions.

It wasn't a title.

It was character.

It was watching ordinary people quietly live extraordinary lives.

It was learning that the greatest measure of a life is not what you accumulate...

...but how many people felt safer because you were here.

Today I'll light 3 candles.

One for Mr. John.

One for Darren.

One for Jaxon.

Not because they need the light.

But because we do.

Because remembrance changes us.

Because gratitude deserves a voice.

Because love deserves to be spoken aloud.

If there is anything faithful in me...

Anything compassionate.

Anything courageous.

Anything worth leaving behind...

It is because God allowed me to be loved by remarkable people.

So today, I don't simply honor the people I've lost.

I honor the people who built me.

And if, one day, my children, my family, and my friends gather to remember my life, I pray they won't spend their time talking about what I accomplished.

I pray they'll simply say what I can say today about the people who built me.

She showed up.

She kept her word.

She made people feel seen.

She made people feel heard.

She made people feel protected.

And she loved us with everything she had.

If they can say that...

Then every one of you will still be living through me.

At the end of the day all we will have is MEMORIES!!!!!

May we live so well that one day, when our names are spoken, someone else can say what I say about them today:

"Because they were here... my life was better."

P.S.

The greatest inheritance I've ever received wasn't money, property, or possessions. It was character. It was watching people live lives so full of integrity that even after they're gone, they continue teaching me how to live. Darren taught me courage. Jaxon taught me unconditional love. Mr. John taught me what it means to simply show up. My prayer is that when my own life is over, the people I love won't remember what I owned. They'll remember how I made them feel. If they can say they felt seen, loved, heard, and protected, then I will have honored the people who first gave that gift to me.

GOD BE WITH ME....THESE TRANSITIONS ARE WHAT MAKES IT HARD TO BREATHE AFTER FEELING LIKE YOU JUST TOOK YOU 1ST DEEP BREATH ALL YEAR. AND NEXT WEEK IT WILL BE YEAR IN HEAVEN FOR MY BROTHER.

IF YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING AT ALL FROM ME...KNOW THAT KINDNESS IS FREE AND THAT SEEMS TO BE THE MOST EXPENSIVE THING GOING THESE DAYS. SO MY CHALLEGE FOR YOU IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST IS TO BE KIND!!!!!

ST~