This is so hard.

I totally understand that when I'm upbeat and positive it is easier to listen to me. I actually like myself a lot better when I'm that way too. But this whole experience comes with so much hurt, and fear, and anger, and sadness, and I can't always just move past those emotions. Sometimes I get stuck in the middle of them...that's where I'm at right now. So I try not to post, not to infect anyone with my negativity or cry poor me poor me. But then today I thought this is just all part of this...the hope and the hurt; the laughter and the sadness, the ability to handle it all and the need to just scream like a lunatic falling down a hill. It's not right to just remember the good times. It's not fair to only share the moments when I'm filled with God's grace and peace. Anyone who has ever gone down this path before, and anyone who comes after, knows it's not all butterflies and candy land. And I write this blog and these updates because I want to share this entire chapter in our lives with  the people who want to know how it goes. I do this because I want to remember what it was like, all of it. I want to remember every funny thing Ryan said and the way the kids squeal when he throws them up high and yes, I absolutely do want to remember how much this hurts. Because this kind of ache, this kind of tearing apart of the very center of who you are...this isn't something you feel when you skin your knee or a date doesn't turn out the way you had hoped or even when the career you've poured your life into is ripped away from you. There are so many levels of hurt and most of us experience all of them at least once in our lives. But this... this is something different. I'm not saying it's something exclusive to me or to what is happening in our lives. I'm not saying no one has ever loved like this before blah blah blah barf. I'm just saying that this is different, and it's not something everyone will experience, and it's not something I ever wanted to experience or would wish on anyone else... But the breathless depth of it...the searing burn of it, I know I only feel it because I have been so so blessed to live and love beside the one person in this entire world that was made Just. For. Me. And I don't ever want to forget what that feels like, even if someday this pain is the only thing that reminds me that this was the life I was blessed to live once.