Two years ago today…nothing particular happened.  Trey wasn’t feeling all that good but he wasn’t horrific either.  Work was good, the volleyball season was over.  Things were as normal as they got back then.  However, today…I miss Trey.  Granted, on Saturday it will be exactly two years since Trey died.  I suppose I will miss him then too.

You see, we miss him everyday.  For us…for us, benchmarks are nothing more than, “Huh?  How about that?”  We probably spend more time wondering how we are supposed to feel (wondering…not worrying) than feeling bad on given said benchmark days.

Amy, a new but good friend of mine told me a story about losing a loved one.  She said that people asked her, in an overlysympathetic way, “Soooooo, how bad was Christmas?”  She replied, “Christmas was fine…Tuesday sucked though.”  Her point being that grief comes whenever the crap it wants to.  It doesn’t come neatly wrapped on certain days.  I find that to be incredibly true.  I almost would like to take it a step further and say that, “Yeah, Tuesday at 3:30 when that commercial came on, that sucked,”  It’s that specific.

Another good friend of mine, Brian, sent me a podcast of a soldier who had his limbs blown off in battle.  The guy was super positive and had a great perspective on life.  He said that there is a big difference between reminiscing and dwelling.  Yes, he reminisces about the days when he could hold his baby girl but does not dwell on the fact that he can’t.  I certainly understand that.  Do we miss Trey?  Absolutely.  However, he is not here and won’t be.  We look back and reminisce about the time that we had with Trey.  All of us, the kids included, tell stories about great and crazy times with him.  However, if that lead us to stay there and not come back to today in healthy fashion, we would be dwelling on what we have lost…and not healing/moving on.  We need/needed to stay there long enough to have comfort attached to our grief.  We did that, and continue to do so.

Lastly, on Sunday I will be preaching on the parting of the Red Sea (spoiler alert…the Israelites make it).  As I was praying and planning (ok, planning and praying…in that order) it, my mind wandered a bit (shocker).  I thought about how incredible it was for God to part the sea.  I was once again so amazed at how big and mighty God really is.  Too often we read the bible and all we hear is, “words words words, bible bible bible” and forget that these things actually happened (yes, some of you disagree, that’s fine).  Well, God chose to save the Israelites from Pharaoh and escort them into the holy land.  That’s amazing.  Yet, He did not save Trey from cancer.  Say what you want or color how you may, He did not.

So what does that mean?  It means that He chose not to.  I certainly had a modicum of understanding of that when I spoke at his funeral.  If you missed it or would like to hear it again it is here (full disclosure: I just listened to it for the first time since I said it and lasted just under a minute and a half).  He has further refined that as I continue to seek Him in all of this.  It’s all part of that grieving process.  Even as I have typed this I realized, “He did save Trey from cancer…and absolutely escorted him into the most Holy of Lands.”  He just didn’t do it the way I would have liked.

Yes, two years ago (on the 5th) Trey died.  Two years ago today he didn’t.  Either way, we still miss him.  Either way, we’re ok.