faith and healing

Eleven Years.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

Eleven Years. 

Somehow it’s been eleven years. 

Eleven years since my mom took her last breath, and somehow it still doesn’t make sense. 

People say time heals. I don’t know if I believe that. I think time teaches you how to carry what never really gets lighter. It teaches you how to breathe around an ache that never leaves. Some days it’s tucked quietly into the background. Other days it consumes everything. 

Today is one of those days. 

I still miss her with every part of me. 

I can still hear her laugh if I close my eyes long enough. I can still smell the familiar scent of her house and her perfume. I can still remember exactly what it felt like to wrap my arms around her or curl up against her on the couch. I hate to admit this, but when she first died, I was terrified those things would disappear. I thought that as the year passed, her voice would fade, her face would blur, and eventually I’d forget what it felt like to be loved by her. 

But eleven years later, those memories are still startlingly alive. 

Sometimes it honestly feels like she was just here yesterday. 

I don’t think that’s an accident. 

I think it’s one of God’s sweetest gifts – that He has allowed those memories to remain so vivid. They have become little reminders that love doesn’t disappear just because someone does.

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. 

I never wanted to know what life looked like without my mom in it. There isn’t a single part of me that was prepared for that kind of loss. The absence of her presence still breaks my heart in ways I don’t always have the words for. 

If I’m being completely honest, there have been seasons where I’ve pushed memories of her away because missing her hurt too much. I almost felt guilty for doing it, but sometimes grief is so overwhelming that your heart does whatever it has to do just to survive. 

Lately, though, something has changed. 

Instead of running from those memories, I’ve started welcoming them. 

They don’t just make me cry anymore. 

They comfort me. 

I find myself smiling through tears because for just a moment it feels like she’s close again. 

When I think about my mom, I don’t just remember her kindness or her laugh. I remember her faith. 

Her unwavering, immovable faith. 

Cancer took so much from her physically, but it never stole her trust in Jesus. I watched a woman whose body was failing continue to cling to the One who never does. She suffered with a strength that could only have come from Christ Himself. 

Now, standing in one of the scariest seasons of my own life, fighting my own physical battles, I find myself looking back at her. 

When I feel weak, I remember how strong she was. 

When fear tried to convince me in the hospital that I wouldn’t make it, I remembered the courage she carried. 

When life gets so heavy that I wonder how I’ll get through another day, I remember that she did. 

Not because she was extraordinary on her own. (Which in so many ways she was…) 

Because Jesus was faithful. 

I can still picture one particular day as though it happened this morning. 

I was sitting on the back porch of her house, curled up in one of our patio chairs, crying, listening to the same worship song on repeat. Just on the other side of the window, my mom was taking some of her final breaths. 

There should have only been devastation in that moment. 

There should have only been fear. 

But somehow… 

Jesus met us there. All of us. 

He brought a peace that still doesn’t make sense to me eleven years later. Not the kind of peace that erased the pain, but the kind that somehow carried us through it. The kind Scripture talks about that surpasses all understanding. 

He carried my mom. 

He carried my dad. 

He carried my siblings. 

He carried me. 

He carried our family through a loss so profound I still don’t think language exists to fully describe it. 

Looking back now, I can see His fingerprints everywhere. 

I can see His faithfulness in the smallest details. 

I can see that He never abandoned us- not for one second. 

And I believe something with all of my heart…

I believe the prayers my mom prayed while she was on this earth are still being answered today. 

I think about all the nights she prayed over her children. All the tears she cried. All the prayers she whispered when no one else knew.

I believe a faithful God continues answering the prayers of a faithful woman. 

What an incredible legacy. 

There are still days I wish I could call her. 

Days I wish I could hear her tell me everything is going to be okay. 

Days I wish I could hug her one more time. 

I imagine that ache will stay with me until Heaven. 

But today, as I write this, more than anything, I am grateful. 

Grateful that God gave me the privilege of being her daughter. 

Grateful that although their marriage didn’t work out, that she gave me a father who would stand by me, pray over me and love me through a moment that neither of us knew if I would live through. 

Grateful that I could see firsthand, a faith that still strengthens mine eleven years after she’s gone. 

Grateful that even death could not erase the impact she made on my life.  

And grateful that because of Jesus, goodbye was never forever. 

One day, because of the same Savior she trusted until her final breath, I will see her again. 

Until then, I’ll keep carrying her with me. 

In my memories. 

In my faith. 

In this blog that started as a continuation of what she started, and became an eleven year testimony of how incredibly faithful the Lord has been in my life. 

In the prayers she taught me to pray. 

In the courage she modeled. 

And in the quiet confidence that the same God who carried us through one of the worst days of our lives is still carrying me today. 

The worship song I had been playing on repeat that day, and have continued to play on repeat years after, has stayed me ever since: 

“Faith makes a fool of what makes sense.”

At the time, it didn’t make sense that peace could exist so presently in the middle of that kind of heartbreak. 

It didn’t make sense that God could feel so close while my world was falling apart. 

It didn’t make sense that one day I would survive losing my mom, let alone find joy again. 

It still doesn’t make sense that eleven years later I can miss her this deeply and yet be so certain that death was never the end of her story. 

But faith rarely makes sense. 

It simply believes that Jesus is who He says He is. 

And because of that, I know my mom is more alive today than she has ever been. 

I know I’ll hear her laugh again. 

I’ll hug her again. 

And by some miracle, I have to believe that heaven will in fact have an Olive Garden where we can continue to have our momma/daughter lunches, that the breadsticks are perfect, and all the food is free. 

And until that day comes, I’ll keep holding tightly to the same Jesus she held onto until her very last breath. 

Because eleven years later, I’ve learned, or am finally starting to truly believe, that faith doesn’t always explain the pain. 

Sometimes it simply carries you through it. 

Here Again

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t plan to be here again. 

That’s the part I keep circling back to – the quiet confidence I had this time felt different, that I had it under control – or at least was well on my way to. And then something shifted, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was always there, just waiting. 

I replasped.

Hard enough to make my heart sink as I write this. And even typing that feels heavier than I expected, like the words themselves carry shame I haven’t figured out how to put down yet. 

Anyone who knows me and knows my journey of the past 7 or so years of trying to get sober, of trying to figure out how to live sober, knows that relapse is not unfamiliar to me. In fact, it’s been more consistent than my actual sobriety. That’s a hard truth to have to swallow and come to terms with. Yet, it hasn’t stopped me most times from going back. 

In fact, a lot of times, I think it’s what drives me back. The shame of it all. 

It feels like it escalated so quickly – like one moment I was steady and the next I was right back in it, full force. Addiction raging and suddenly I couldn’t see the way out. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I want it to be sudden because sudden feels easier to forgive. 

If it “just happened”, then I don’t have to look too closely at everything that came before it. But there were signs, weren’t there? Subtle shifts in my thinking, in the quiet justifications, the moments I chose not to pause and check in with myself or anyone else. 

I keep asking how I got here again, like it’s a mystery, but part of me knows it wasn’t one step – it was a series of small ones I didn’t fully notice, or maybe didn’t want to acknowledge. 

I think the hardest part to admit is that it doesn’t feel like I just slipped- it feels like I’ve been slowly giving up on myself for awhile now. Little ways, quiet ways, choosing what’s easy over what’s right, telling myself I’d try harder tomorrow.

And now it feels like that’s caught up to me, like the people around me can see it too, and maybe they’re starting to give up in their own ways. And I can’t say that I blame them. 

That’s what hurts the most I think – that this doesn’t just live inside me. It spills out onto everyone who cares about me, and somehow I feel like I’m the one causing the damage while also being the one stuck in it. 

I feel alone in a way that’s hard to explain, like even when people are there – reaching out, trying to support me – I’m separate from them, watching myself disappoint them in real time. And I want it to get better so badly, I want to feel different, to be different – but the work it takes to actually change feels so overwhelming that I don’t even know where to start. (Or start over again, I should say.) 

And that’s the trap isn’t it? Because picking up a drink cuts through all of that for a few minutes. It softens the edges, quiets the noise, makes everything feel manageable – until it doesn’t. Until those few minutes get shorter and shorter, and I’m left chasing something that barely even works anymore. Something that not only doesn’t work, but is intent on destroying my life. 

Even though it doesn’t feel like there’s hope right now, I know – somewhere deeper than my emotions – that there is. Because God has never been dependent on how I feel. He isn’t a God of fleeting comfort or temporary relief; He’s a God of promise. 

And I’ve lived that before. I’ve walked through darker, heavier seasons than this and somehow, every single time, He’s been steady when I wasn’t. Faithful when I drifted. Present even when I couldn’t feel Him at all. So I know He’ll do it again – I just don’t know how to hold on in the meantime, and that’s the part that feels almost unbearable. 

Maybe that’s where surrender comes in. Not the kind that feels peaceful or resolved, but the kind that costs everything. 

Letting go of the person I thought I loved. Letting go of the life I was trying so hard to build and control. Letting go of the version of myself I keep trying to force into existence. And trusting – really trusting – that maybe everything needs to be undone before it can be rebuilt the right way.

That maybe, I need to step back and let Him rearrange what I’ve tangled, rebuild what I’ve broken, and carry what I was never meant to hold on my own…. Even if it means starting all over again.

I don’t write any of this to impress anyone or to turn it into something meaningful for other people. If anything, it’s the opposite. I write because I need somewhere to be brutally honest with myself, somewhere I can come back to years later and see the bigger picture I can’t always see in the moment. 

Because when I look back over the years, over entries written in completely different headspaces, I can’t ignore the pattern – God has been faithful even when I’ve been completely lost and out of my right mind. 

It hasn’t been random.

It hasn’t been pointless.

Even when everything felt chaotic, He was still doing something underneath it all. And if I’m really honest, the times my life has gone the most off track are the times I stepped out of where He had me and decided I knew better. I chased my own way, my own timing, my own desires and my own control- and it’s never once ended well for me. And still, I keep going back to that, like I forget every lesson as soon as things start to feel okay again. 

So I write because this is the only place, outside of numbing out, where things get quiet enough for me to actually think. 

Where I can sit with the confusion instead of running from it. Drinking makes everything go silent for a moment, but this – this is different. This is where I try to make sense of things that don’t make sense to my very human, very limited mind. 

Where I can be messy and unsure and still somehow feel like I’m not completely lost in it. Where I can remember, even faintly, that there’s something bigger happening than what I can see right now. 

Right now I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel redeemed or even remotely put back together. I feel like something in me has been scraped raw – like I can still feel the damage in my chest, in my hands, in the way I keep replaying everything I wish I could undo. Everything I wish I could unsay. 

There’s a heaviness that sits in my body like I can’t outrun it, no matter how much I want to disappear from it for a while. And I hate that I did this again. I hate the version of me that reaches for something that destroys me just to stop feeling things for a few minutes. I hate how quickly it becomes a cycle I recognize and hate, but still step into. 

But if I stay here long enough – past the shame, past the spiral, past the urge to shut it all down – I know the only way forward is through honesty and small, deliberate steps back toward life. Not fixing everything at once. Not becoming someone new overnight. Just stopping the bleeding where it is, one choice at a time. 

Reaching out instead of isolating. Telling the truth instead of hiding it. Letting the discomfort exist without feeding it. And trusting that even now, especially now, I am not beyond repair. I don’t have to feel ready. I just have to not disappear from myself again. 

If this is the version of me the world sees right now – struggling, messy, trying and failing and trying again – I don’t want that to be the whole story to my life. I don’t want to be remembered for the nights I gave up on myself or the ways I numbed out when things got hard. I want to be remembered as someone who kept coming back. 

Someone who fought for her life even when it felt impossible. Someone who loved deeply, who cared, who didn’t stop believing that God could still make something beautiful out of the broken pieces. 

I want to be remembered for choosing to get back up, over and over again, even when no one saw it, even when it felt pointless. Not because I did it perfectly – but because I didn’t stay down. 

So this is where I am. 

No clean ending, no neat redemption arc – just me, sitting in the wreckage of my own choices, telling the truth about it. I don’t have a breakthrough to wrap this up with. I don’t feel fixed. I feel exposed, tired, and painfully aware of how easily I can lose myself. 

But I’m still here. 

And maybe that’s the only honest place to start again – not with confidence or clarity, but with nothing left to hide. If there’s any way forward, it has to begin here, in the mess, with me choosing – however weakly, however imperfectly – not to run from it this time.

To be continued….