A Year Without You: Grace on our Canvas

TODAY MARKS ONE YEAR
Kent, I didn’t expect grief to repaint everything.
I’m still learning how to hold your absence without letting it hollow me out. Some days, grief feels like walking into a room where the furniture has been rearranged in the dark, everything familiar, yet nothing in the place my hands expect it to be. I reach for you in small moments. In ordinary moments. In the kind of moments I used to rush past.

When I try to explain what this past year has been like, the only way I can describe it is with a canvas.
I keep seeing an artist standing in front of a painting we started together.

At first, it was two colors, your steady and my striving. Your calm and my constant motion. Your “we’ll be alright” and my “let me make a plan.” Two colors that somehow made a masterpiece I didn’t even realize I was living inside of. It wasn’t perfect, but it was ours. Modern and classic at the same time, like love that had history, but still had vision.

Then one day, the Artist lifted your color from the palette.
Not to erase it.
Not to discard it.
But to place it somewhere I cannot reach at the moment.

Now, what used to be two colors moving together has become one.
One brush left in the Artist’s hand.
One set of footsteps moving forward.
One heart learning how to carry love and loss at the same time.

Yes, some days, although the brush is steady, the color is shaky. Some days, the paint goes on unevenly and is scattered. Some days it presses so hard it leaves grooves in the canvas. Some days it barely touches the surface because, well, I have no idea what this canvas is anymore.
BUT GOD IS MY GUIDE

Stroke by stroke, He keeps teaching me that what looks like “unfinished” to me is still being transformed into something meaningful.
Not the same picture.
But not meaningless.
An abstract, maybe. A new kind of beauty. A holy kind of rearranging.

Just so you know.
I miss you. We all miss you.

GRACE FOR WHAT I USED TO TAKE FOR GRANTED
I didn’t realize how much I took for granted until grief and missing you made me slow down long enough to see it.
Grace to wake up.
Grace to open my eyes and realize I’m still here.
Grace to breathe without earning it.
Grace to watch our kids grow.
Grace to see our grandson learn, excel, and achieve.
Grace to witness milestones I used to assume you would always be here to see with me.
Grace to keep building.
To write.
To teach.
To publish.
To create.
To lead.
To carry vision.
To show up

And to get up again and again after every blow life has dealt.

God has given me grace that doesn’t make sense. Grace that doesn’t require me to “be over it.” Grace that doesn’t rush my healing but strengthens me. Grace that sits with me on the edge of the bed when the memories hit like waves.
Grace to keep living.
Grace to keep loving.
Grace to keep breathing.
Even after all the loss.

GRATITUDE INSTEAD OF ONLY GRIEF
I could spend this entire post naming what I lost.
But today, I want to name what God gave.

Because the truth is: God blessed me with you not once, but twice when He restored our marriage.
And then, in His mercy, He gave me almost ten additional years with you.
Ten years I didn’t have to earn.
Ten years I didn’t deserve.
Ten years that were a gift.

Twenty eight years total.

We weathered storms together.
We faced challenges together.
We carried burdens together.
And even the hard seasons were a blessing, because we were together.

There is a kind of strength that comes from having someone beside you in the storm.
Not someone who fixes everything.
Someone who stays.

You stayed.
And I will always be grateful.

WHAT THIS YEAR HAS CHANGED IN ME
Grief has changed how I see life.
It has changed how I hold time.
It has changed what I focus on.
It has changed what I refuse to hurry past.

I’m still a work in progress, but I can feel the change.
I’m no longer as impatient.
I’m softer.
I’m slower.
I’m more present.

And the part that still humbles me is this: I’m becoming more like you.
You were laid back.
You were present.
You knew how to live inside a moment instead of rushing past it.

If I’m honest, sometimes that irritated me, actually most of the time.
Because I was always planning, always organizing the next thing, always trying to stay ahead of life.
But now I get it.

You weren’t lacking intention.
You weren’t unaware.
You were steady.
You were wise.

You understood something I’m still learning: life isn’t only found in what we build, it’s found in being present in the moment of what we’re building.
In the way we slow down long enough to savor what God has already given.
In the way we love people well while we still can.
In the way we let “ordinary” become holy, simply because we’re fully there for it.

And in your absence, your pace has become a lesson.
I’m letting the example of what you carried shape how I carry life now.
Your life has left an imprint on mine.

GOD IS STILL PAINTING
A year without you has been a year of learning how to live with a missing color.
It has also been a year of realizing that God can paint in the places I can’t.

He can steady me when I’m shaking.
He can hold me when I can’t hold it all together.
He can give me grace for the next hour.
Grace for the next decision.
Grace for the next step.

And that’s what I’m standing on today.
God has carried me.
God has covered me.
God has kept me.

So today, I honor you.
I remember you.
I thank God for you.

As God keeps painting, one brush, one stroke, one day at a time, I will continue to show up as the one color still on the canvas, trusting that the same God who restored our love is the God who will continue to sustain my life moving forward.

Until the day our colors meet again, I love you, always have and always will.