A long time ago I read somewhere that if God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn’t be big enough to be worshiped. Often that’s brought comfort. Its a release from having to have all the answers. A reminder to keep a childlike faith. Sometimes though…man…what I wouldn’t give for a little understanding.

6 months without him. 6 months closer to seeing him again. Today, as texts poured in, friends and neighbors brought by bright and beautiful flowers, videos of him were played and replayed and sent from friend to friend, plans for a headstone were tweaked, and dinner was brought to us, I sat again and tried to comprehend that this is our life. He’s really gone. My brain just can’t get there yet.

Six entire months without him. Half of a year. It’s still unbelievable to me. Incomprehensible. Impossible. I’ve realized these last 6 months that I always had a wrong understanding of the “denial” part of the grief process. I just thought maybe it was that a person didn’t want to believe it. As though maybe if I don’t believe it, it can’t be true. But it’s more than that. It’s a literal, actual, disbelief. I still CAN NOT wrap my mind around the fact that he’s really gone. That those tragic and precious hospital days happened. Surely the doctor announcing his time of death that repeats itself over and over in my head daily is somehow just a dream. Denial runs deep.

In the impossible though, Deacon feels so close. The reason it’s still so hard to believe is because he’s still so with me. And while it’s easy to just be sad, I can also start to list all that he gave me and there’s no way to feel anything but joy that I got to be his mom and deep, deep gratitude that he came to me. That I got to call him mine for seven years and eight days. I could never possibly begin to say how incredibly grateful I am for him.

Because of Deacon I know:

• deep, unconditional, uncontainable, limitless, unchanging, undying love
• Heaven is here with us, around us.
• emotions can be conflicting and opposing yet happening at the same time. darkness + light; shattered + unbreakable; hopeful + lost; fighting to live + begging to die
• a braver voice
• a deeper purpose

The same voice that whispered, “you will GET UP” to him in the hospital says it to me now each morning. Even though I don’t want to. Surviving the unsurvivable. Only because of a God who is, thankfully, big enough to be worshiped even when I don’t understand, and a little boy who makes me so, so thankful every single day that I got to be the one he called Mom.

A dear friend sent this video today and I laughed through the tears. Just a tiny clip but it reminded again about the LIFE he brought. Still brings.