My walk from suffering to resurrection.

How resurrection can be a real thing in your life and mine.

I distinctly remember the moment that changed how I viewed everything.

It was a week after Mike died. The kids and I were praying our nightly Rosary and I felt the thought, the inspiration, strike me like lightening.

Resurrection.

A word I knew so well as a Christian. However this time it came with a vision.

It was Mike, raised from the dead.

I know that sounds silly, and perhaps you’re thinking it was my mind unable to cope with his death. Maybe it was but actually, due to the graces and inspirations that took root after that encounter, I know it was God planting a seed to propel me to a faith I never knew existed.

It was a faith that opened my eyes to what God can really do and what life can really be.

That very night I internet searched the term “can God raise people from the dead?” and lo and behold volumes of stories came flooding before me. Saint upon Saint, from St. Patrick to St. Vincent Ferrar to St. Teresa of Avila, all raising people from the dead. Like dead, dead. Bones to flesh. Some for an instant (to find out information lol) and some for another chance, all because faith and God’s will made it possible.

I then dove into the Gospels. The widow of Nain’s son. Elijah raising the widow’s son. All the widow’s prayers for resurrection, heard. Answered.

Praying for resurrection…

Without hesitation, as if it wasn’t even me, my mind took hold of the truth of God’s power, my prayer life adopted it, and my soul knew, just knew, that the resurrection in my life would be so profound as to shake the faith of many, including myself.

Someday I’ll share more about that time and prayer of resurrection specifically after Mike died, but what I want to highlight is the depth of God it opened before me.

You see, we tend to limit God to space and time, to our meager understandings of the world, life, nature. “What a miracle!” we proclaim to something, not really understanding what it is we’re saying. But what I realized in true resurrection is that the effort God takes to make the sun rise every morning is the same effort God takes to raise someone from the dead. Think about that for a moment…really let it sink in.

I sure did. And I realized that the only thing stopping God from going from working ordinarily (if there ever is such a thing) to God working GREAT MIRACLES is simply the faith in which I ask Him.

It didn’t matter if Mike was in the earth. Buried. Bones. If God but willed it, he could walk through the door. And whether Mike walked through the door or not wasn’t the point…it was the utter knowing that God is limited by nothing. That God’s effort is nothing. That anything can occur at any time.

What a joyous, hope filled understanding! What a powerful truth to acknowledge!

And while this hope and truth didn’t take away my human pain and grief, it sure did give me strength and vision to move forward. It gave me a confidence to approach God (and life) in ways I never had before.

In the past my prayer had been, “God surprise me!” When in college, waiting for my future to unfold, this was what I lifted up more often than not. Knowing He knew what was best for me, I focused on living my daily life as best I could and letting Him unfold the rest as I (hopefully) walked in obedience.

Now, however, my prayer was one of clarity and assertion. It wasn’t rude, but it was bold!

With Job as my friend, I recounted to God the numerous times He fulfilled His promises of restoration, healing, life and abundance. I’m not talking about the false prosperity Gospel, I’m talking about true stories of death to life. Once I told someone about my resurrection prayer encounter and the restoration I was longing for and they said, “well, that happens in heaven.” Yes, it does. “But God is also God in the land of the living,” I responded.

And this is what I would tell God, Himself. I would repeat to Him the words He spoke to me. When He told me to be patient, I would take scripture and reply “I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living…” When I would have seeds of doubt, I’d say to myself (and Him), “and God blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.” Sure, I was open to what unfolded in my life…but I held fast to the truth, the knowing, that God can work such incredible things as “eye has not seen, nor ear heard…for those who love Him.” And boy, did I love Him.

An unsettling fact…

Putting aside those bold prayers for a moment, there was another theme running concurrently in my mind in the aftermath of Mike’s death. It was that I was a widow. I couldn’t shake this fact. Not just that my husband died and I was alone. But it was the fact that I had discerned my vocation, for almost a year in college, and knew without a shadow of doubt I was called to marriage. I remember sitting in Bible study and the clarity that I needed another person, a spouse, to propel me to greatness, to holiness, was so evident at that time that the fact I was now alone quite consumed me once Mike passed.

It was an unsettling fact. Did I discern wrong? Was I not cut out to be a good wife? Did I deserve to be in the place I’m at now? I was only 37. It didn’t sit well.

As my faith life grew and my time spent daily with the Lord increased, I could see two more truths: that I very much loved this new intimacy with Jesus as widow while also longing to feel settled in my new vocation. Was I to remain single forever? Would I end up consecrating myself as a widow? Would all my kids die and I would go off to be a cloistered nun of Carmel? Was I to get married again??

A year and a half after Mike’s death I felt the pull to really figure it out. I had hit the limit again on my own. I had the ability to be both “mom and dad” but I didn’t like the fact I had one foot in two different worlds: I was God’s spouse without the vows or support of a convent and I was a parent without the vows or support of a spouse.

In my discontent, I sought out the one thing in my power: prayer. And not just any prayer, the rosary. And not just any rosary, the 54-day rosary novena.

My intention those 54 days was that God would “bring about my new state in life without delay.” I had no idea what that even meant practically. I just knew I needed clarity in what my role would be moving forward. And as I prayed that novena my hope continued to grow, the seeds of life new took root, and my confidence that what was to come would be so beautiful, so incredible, that I couldn’t comprehend what it could even be.

The power of the rosary.

The day after that novena ended, I found myself in a coffee shop with a man named Alex. We had been texting for a bit, just as friends. He was a widower himself, having lost his first wife to breast cancer. I knew his family from church, him less than his late wife or kids. I thought he just wanted to pick my brain about being a widow since I was a bit further down that road than him.

Come to find out that was the encounter that propelled us to the union of souls and lives and families God had planned. A union that brought more answered prayers (even from years back) than I can recount, a union that has not only propelled me to another level but has revealed the intimate love of God, through Alex, that I never knew existed. A union of joy and love and familiarity. The resurrection intended for us took shape in ways unexpected, in details that revealed God’s plans was higher and deeper than anything I could’ve imagined up myself.

In fact, if the past number of years had been the cross, these next ones would surely be heaven. Maybe not literally but heaven touching earth in profound, tangible ways.

When he asked me to marry him, my yes carried with it the weight of worlds. I said yes to a man who took his kindness, gentleness, and strength and broke down the walls I’d built in survival. I said yes to someone who is my mirror image - equally yoked in traditional faith, widowhood, humor, parenting, affection, and outlooks on life. I said yes to a man who let me heal his own broken heart. I said yes to bearing the sweet cross of marriage once again, to conquering my fears, skeletons, baggage and demons with another who’d lived the same. I said yes to a man my kids wanted as a (step) dad, to raising three more incredible children, to now making a lucky 7.

I wish I could share our love story here in all its depth. If you want to know about our whirlwind romance and literal pushing of God to bring us together as He did (timing, circumstance), I invite you over to my Instagram page where I shared it a while back. (There are 6 parts sharing our dating and engagement story and another 5 describing our incredibly intimate and special wedding day…) But the intricate and special details of what unfolded over the months we dated, the commonalities we shared outside of losing a spouse, and the gentle and yet swift combining of families (he had three kids and I had four), were all filled to the brim of both God’s will and immense love, joy, and peace.

We married on October 7, 2022. It was a first Friday of the Sacred Heart and Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. What a day.

We exchanged vows at the altar where we both buried our late spouses. We bought a home and moved both our families and, while combining families and walking kids through grief and new life is never easy, we had a home centered on Christ and a marriage centered on every virtue we strove to live in their fullest. (Having lost a spouse really makes you intentional with those sorts of things…)

When tears become diamonds.

I remember sitting on the kitchen floor not too long after Mike died. With tears as my bread, I had another vision. It was those tears, being collected by angels, placed into a chalice, and returned as diamonds. I could see the heavenly courts, and my own heart, praising those tears. Tears that prompted me to give my will to God, despite feeling abandoned by Him.

With those tears united to the persistent asking (I was that widow with the judge who wouldn’t give up…), God heard my cries of restoration, of seeing Him in the land of the living…Of hoping against hope that resurrection is possible, even in this fallen world. Those tears came back to me as a diamond, a wedding ring shaped like a tear drop. One that speaks to me of the mere sliver of resurrection I’m experiencing now compared to what is to come should I remain faithful to the end.

And this brings us to today.

I share these bits and pieces of my story as concrete evidence that abandoning oneself to God’s Will will be the ride of a lifetime. The twists and turns and threads woven in a tapestry unseen are more than any great novelist could come up with. But the Author of Life has it all in His hands. Evil may seem to triumph, but God can take that evil and make something better out of it than if it never existed. Mike died in a state of grace, therefore opening the gates of heaven to his body and soul. Our sufferings in the wake of his death purified and propelled me to the depths of life with God. The answered prayers show me that hope has no limit, that every suffering (even the ones I have yet to experience) will be seen as a gift in the eyes of eternity, and that those sufferings are the currency which God takes and returns as blessings.

God has also revealed that the rosary and Our Lady are more powerful than I realized. That what she asks God for is never denied. That she will obtain according to the abandonment to her Son’s will, according to our trust in her intercession as our Mother, too. God has revealed the power of the Sacred Heart. That when we place our desires in it and simply be obedient to our state in life, He manifests desires into actualities of abundant provision. Of abundant Love upon love.

While the trials (both interior and exterior) continue and perhaps will even increase as my life goes on, I see now. I am living a life reborn from the ashes of death. I have been ground into nothingness and have offered my nothingness and God has taken the nothingness and given a hundred-fold, just like He said He would for those who love Him.

As we walk this narrow way together…

So, my friend, keep loving Him. Keep hoping against hope. It is in those darkest of nights that the work is occurring, for one act of praise in the darkness, in abandonment to His Will, is worth more than a thousand in times of joy. In repentance and acceptance, we boldly ask for that which God can do. Believe in miracles. Believe every prayer is heard, every hair is counted. I continue to ask for big things (like BIG!) all while trying to live my state in life to the best of my ability…trying to be the best wife and mom I can. Letting God refine me even further in and through this new family.

As we walk through all that is life, let’s continue to look under the surface for the work God is doing. All of this occurs, not in a vacuum, but in and through the everyday. As we continue to walk together, we’ll unpack this coexistence of the lives we live (as spouses, parents, people in the world), and the lives God is longing us to live. Because when those two things unite, nothing is impossible.

I’ll leave you today with the verse from the Bible that became our companion when Mike was sick, one that continues to be our motto no matter what happens in life…

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21

When I get to heaven I’ll sit with Job and we’ll swap stories of how all was taken and how all was restored twice over. And we’ll praise Him for our trials (sounds odd, I know) and we’ll praise Him for being God.

For the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. And the Lord gives again. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

PS: for the first two parts of this story, check out my previous letters

Part 1: Let Me Begin the Story…

Part 2: My Own Narrow Way…

PS…we all love a good wedding…so here’s a few more pics.