We How did you surrender that control and just those feelings of regret and the what ifs? What I realized pretty quickly

in grief is that I had some pretty precious idols.

And I didn't know they were there.

I didn't mean for them to be there.

But one of them was the idol of control.

One of them was the idol of self-sufficiency.

Like I can handle it.

How could you if this is not good, but you are good?

Mm-hmm.

We can have the tragic losses, like we have had in our family, to really just deep disappointments.

But in each of those, God is with us.

He sees us, He understands, and sometimes I think we chide ourselves for feeling all the emotions, especially if it's not loss of a person, if it's some other kind, form of grief.

But God made us with emotions.

He made us to think and to do and to feel.

And so our emotions are His very good idea.

How do you fi- how would you define transitional grief, and why do you think it's so easy for mothers to dismiss or minimize what they're feeling when their kids leave home?

But can you share like a story or something that God did that was really special?

Oh, when you ask that, my mind is like a Rolodex, if anybody remembers those.

Yes, yes, yes.

of times that God answered just so specifically.

My kids still talk about this time.

This was a big time.

There were lots and lots of small personal ways that God met me that wouldn't be nothing to anybody else but that meant the world to me.

Okay.

And for those who haven't heard your story, would you please take us back to that before and after moment that you walked through and tell us about your grief journey?

Yes.

You know, I was married to my high school sweetheart.

We had met, if you can believe it or not, in seventh grade.

So we had a long history together.

Of course, he was just another boy across the room.

But by high school, we were dating.

How do you sit in the presence of God and give him those tough questions like that, thinking, why did this happen and sitting with the one that you feel like could have changed that yet trusting him with the outcome? How in the world do you get to that place?