"God, please help us be okay."

Eight years ago today, I stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, too sad to even cry. As per tradition, I wrote a prayer on a scrap of paper and stuck it in a crack. 

“God, please help me and my family be okay.”

Eight years later, I don’t claim to be okay—because what is “okay,” anyway??  No matter how far along I am in my healing journey, it will never be okay that Josh isn’t here.  No matter how much time passes, the person I lost is still lost to me, and the life I lived and the person I was are gone as well. 

​Here’s the honest truth.

How long does grief last?  For as long as your loved one is absent.  

BUT…
🤍 There will come a day when you don’t have to remind yourself to breathe in and breathe out. 
🤍 There will come a day when you don’t cry in the shower...or at least not the whole time.
🤍 There will come a day when your tears still fall but at least they don’t burn. 
🤍 There will come a day when you have enough emotional energy to glance at that photo and blow a kiss before turning away. 
🤍 There will come a day when you watch the video and listen to the voice, even if it’s just for a second. 
🤍 There will come a day when you see clouds and think of heaven instead of rain. 

I say this for my friends who are still in a different day—the one that feels like a waking nightmare, or the one that feels like continual dread, or the one that feels like hope is lost.  You don’t have to survive a whole day—or a whole year—or a whole five years. You just have to survive this exact moment you’re in right now. And somehow, this exact moment will stack upon other exact moments…until this broken day has passed and you’ve made it to a better one. 

My prayer for today—for me and for anyone else reading this—is the same as it was six years ago....

May God help us all to be okay. ❤️