my heart has been heavy lately

I must start off by explaining an excellent example of how I have the worst luck, ever.

I decided to check my email tonight, because I haven't in a few days... and turns out I won a drawing for some Colts Baseball tickets for a game next week in some drawing that Ryan and I filled out at the YMCA last week.

I was pretty stoked... because I've never won anything... and then I continued reading... and at the bottom it said "if you do not pick up your tickets by noon on Friday July 3rd (which is todayyy ughhh), then we will give them to somebody else."

Talk about a slap across the face. Whatever though... can't do anything to change it, I suppose.



So, I share an office at work with this wonderful woman named Suzie. She is a widow and a divorcee, 70 years young, probably weighs close to 400 pounds, and wears her platinum blonde hair in a beehive. She has 13 pet cats... yep, 13! A very unique woman to say the least. I told myself months ago that when I write a book someday, she will be a main character in it.

She is very independent, but I've always had a gut feeling that it hadn't always been that way. She's constantly telling people not to get married because her last 2 husbands were awful. She often says "I am twice the loser for being divorced, but my first husband died on me... that one wasn't my fault." Other than statements like that, I didn't really know much about her late husband... until yesterday.

It was around 4pm and I had to take her to the auto body shop to pick up her truck at 4:30pm. She randomly said "You know what Sunday is?" and I suspiciously said "July 5th... the day after Independence Day... why?" and she said "it will be the 47th anniversary of my first husband's death."

Well how in the world could one properly respond to such a statement? I said "Oh, really? How did yall meet?" and she replied with "He was my older brother's best friend growing up.... he used to throw rocks at me when I had my lemonade stands."

I saw a twinkle in her eye as she talked about him. My heart instantly broke for her loss. I then asked "How old were you when you married him?" and she said "Ooh, we were young. I was 18 and he was 20." She then began to pour her heart out.

"He was 24... I was 22," she said. "I think it was the pneumonia that took him.... he had been sick for a while though. You know, the older I get, the more I understand why the doctors didn't explain to me how serious his illness was... they couldn't... I was too young to understand. I was in love."

I saw the twinkle in her eye turn to a tear, but she was too stubborn to let it fall.

She then explained to me that her father had told her years after Jack's death that Jack had told him when he had a year left to live, but he made him promise not to tell Suzie. Her father kept true to his word.

Suzie then told me of how she had this feeling the whole time Jack was sick that everything was going to be okay, and when he died "it wasn't okay"... not for her at least. She wondered why God gave her that sense of "okayness" and He still took him home. Suzie's older brother, Jack's best friend, grew up to be a pastor. He attempted to explain to her that everything was okay for Jack because he was in heaven. She had simply misinterpreted God's answer to her prayer.

Since then, Suzie has been on a quest to follow God's will in her life. She went to bible school with thoughts of perhaps being called to be a pastor's wife... but she didn't fall in love with any soon to be pastors while at school. She later married 2 different men, one of whom was abusive, and the other a slob. Still, she seeks God's will.

She went on to describe how sad it was for a woman who is 70 years of age to have lived her whole life without reassurance from God that she is living in His will. She told me she has prayed non-stop for 47 years... but still has not a clue as to how she should properly be serving the Lord.

I told her that she honestly might not realize that she had been in God's will the whole time until she sees him face to face.

The thought of that moment brought tears to both of our eyes.



The car ride to the auto body shop was filled with silence.

My heart aches for her.