Much Loved....

This has been a hard, hard week. I have missed Matthew more than I feel like I ever have. Mini-breakdowns happen for no reason, at random times, and with increasing frequency. I am afraid of what the coming weeks and months hold as I am really just at the mercy of my heart and my tears. It is a very unsettling feeling.


Just when I feel as if time passing may finally be helping, I literally stop breathing simply because I look at one of his pictures and I am overcome with sorrow. I just want to sob and sob some more.


This week has also been wonderful though...I have been blessed to call a group of women my dear friends for nearly 13 years! We all met when we were all newly married, and most of our husbands were in flight school in Pensacola. Hence, we call ourselves the Pensacola Girls. Yes, we know....very original. We spent the first few months-years of our marriages and lives as young wives together--in church, leisure and neighborhoods even! We have tried to get together every year since we all (but our home-base Jenny!) moved on to our various duty stations, usually at Labor Day. Sometimes the reunions are less populated than others, based on where people are and who can and cannot travel, but we are never far from hearts in joy and in sorrow.



These women have seen us through thick and thin and have been down the roads of our family-building with us. When Matthew died, these women rallied around me and lifted me constantly. I felt it, and knew it. Mandy flew out at a moment's notice to represent all at the funeral, and I can never express what it meant to have her there. When I saw her, I literally fell into her sobbing...I really didn't want to let her go and I just wanted to bury myself in her dark coat and have it all be a bad dream.



They all expressed interest in getting together...but really, knowing how close these women are to my heart was enough to make me very apprehensive. These are women who have known my heart's desire as theirs for me. These are women who love me so much that my grief truly is theirs. These are women who I could not imagine talking to without breaking down over the devastation of it all. More...what do I have to talk about but the same sad story??? While I can now share the experience of pregnancy with some of them, my experience then ends in tragedy. I have nothing new to share but the same disbelief, shock and horror of it all. I have nothing new to say but that I am heartbroken, don't understand and don't know how I can spend the rest of my life aching like this. I have no motivation to do much of anything, nor do I have control over my emotions and my engagement.

Really, as I feel in most situations in my life right now, I worried about them all going to the trouble of getting together because I just don't have much to give.

I just don't.

BUT....these are also women with whom I laugh and share so much joy. We came from all over; Pensacola, Jacksonville, Wichita, New Hampshire and OKINAWA....to cry over our broken hearts and to soothe them with just being together. I am deeply humbled and honored that they dropped their very busy and full lives to just be with me. I am touched deeper than anyone can ever know nor I can ever convey.



True to my new motto of "If It Can, It Will," we all met in Virginia Beach during what is being called "The Worst Winter Storm Of the Century," and that has made things interesting, to say the least. As I type, I am looking at a clock that will buzz its alarm in 4 hours so that I can get Jenny to the airport here and then get Salley up to Dulles by 10 in anticipation of her making it out before the world ends.



I couldn't go to sleep without letting the world (well, those who read, that is!) know what God does to help heal broken hearts. He sends His comfort in the form of five amazing women I love dearly.



I am much loved.


Matthew, your Aunties Salley, Jenny, Lisa, Tina and Mandy agree: You were one beautiful little boy and their hearts are broken with mine because you are not here with me. You as well are much loved.

The Pensacola Girls