“Peace I leave with you,
My peace I give to you;
Not as the world gives do I give to you.
Let not your heart be troubled,
Neither let it be afraid.” ~John 14:27 NKJV

I woke up feeling hopeful. I had taken the day off and so it felt a little bit like a holiday or a birthday. And, in truth, it is a birthday. It’s Carl​’s Heaven Day. For me, it’s an equally special day because it’s the day I gave my life to God. Four years ago. Carl died and so did I. God took my life and, in the taking, gave me His. It wasn’t a decision, just as it wasn’t a decision for Carl either. It wasn’t anything that either one of us could stop. Rather, it is something we were both chosen for. In one moment, our old lives snuffed out. And we became brutally, completely, new. The day that Carl died, my life went out from me and was replaced by a glowing force that, even in my darkest moments has held me and kept my heart beating in a song beyond myself.

I’ve dreaded this day for weeks, planning every aspect of my life around it, giving this day space to be whatever it needs to be. Grief is a funny thing. It never guarantees you anything.

Even so, today started out with genuine peace and calmness of heart. Unexpected, but so very welcome. It felt like New Year’s to me. As if it could be January 1st with a whole new fresh year ahead of me. Except this “new year” is bittersweet in a way that splays my thoughts before I even make sense of them. The road behind me seems short, while the one ahead of me feels excruciatingly long. Over the course of the day, optimism gave way to sadness and sadness to the heaviness of melancholy. But, somehow, the feeling of peace remained.

I allowed myself a nap. I rested deeply. I ate a late lunch. And then took another nap. Again, resting deeply. I was soothed by dreams and memories of so many moments, like clips on a movie reel, coming alive in my heart and mind. Moments of joy and goodness, poignancy and purpose, all that have happened in this after-life since Carl’s passing. Maybe I should have left the house today. But something in me needed to, instead, spend time in this inner landscape.

All day long I keep going back to one thought.
Just last week.
Holding the hand of a dying woman.

Feeling so much love flow from her.
The warmth of her feverish hand as she softly squeezed mine. The gauntness of her young body and face ravaged, most likely, by the last stages of AIDS. The look of tenderness in her mother’s expression. Simply holding space because it was the only common language we had.

The feeling of Jesus saying, “this one,” and somehow that including all of us. The warmth and acutely tangible current of love so unexpected, so profoundly nourishing. The line between life and death, a tenuous thread at best. A holy moment. Our connection, like a prayer. She was the brightest spot in the entirety of that otherwise awful place.

How many precious and life changing moments made of Heaven have I been a part of since Carl’s passing? Sometimes shattering, other times simply dazzling. They have become too numerous to count. This life here in Africa has changed me. My encounters and experiences are both heartbreaking and joy-filled in ways that have destroyed me and are recreating me. God asks us to “count it all joy.” And, in the truest sense, I am beginning to understand what that means. Carl, my best angel, continues to love and encourage me, even from heaven.

It’s been four years of the most deeply challenging gift I’ve ever been given.

This evening, the girls and I will go out for a nice meal to celebrate “Papa Carl’s” Heaven Day. God sustains me in this journey in ways I could have never created or imagined or asked for on my own. He sustains all of us, if only we allow.