The Long Road Home

“I was twenty-six the first time I died. I stepped beyond the veil to stand at the edge of it all, looked out over the vast wasteland that awaited me, a barren reflection of my own madness.”

So begins my new book, Even if you don’t – the harrowing journey of a young couple learning to live their fairytale in the midst of great tragedy. Rest assured, this is not a cancer story; it’s a love story. It’s the story of a cute, quirky, blue-eyed, big-smiled woman whose indomitable spirit changed the world one person at a time. It’s also the story of the man that loved her, and loves her still.

In so few words, it’s Kailen’s story. And it’s mine.

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Thanks so much for visiting my blog. As many of you know, this blog will explore various grief-related topics in an effort to answer one of life’s most difficult questions: How do I live life like a fairytale when it feels more like a tragedy? I hope to employ the hard lessons I’ve learned about love and loss to help you answer that question for yourself, and in so doing, equip you with the tools you’ll need to navigate this tortuous path we call grief.

But before we get started, there are a few questions I need to answer:

1. What authority does a 28-year-old have to teach others about grief?

The short answer is that I’m a widower. But the better answer is that I’m a stranger in a strange land, haunted by the soulless vestiges of a life already lived. In all candor, I have no verifiable authority. I’m not a psychologist or a counselor. I merely have a story and the willingness to tell it. I also happen to believe that God never wastes pain; it’s a sort of divine curriculum, and though we rarely recognize it in the moment, it always serves a purpose. I pray the purpose of mine is to help you with yours.

Also, though I will certainly integrate portions of my story into future posts, if you’re interested and don’t want to wait, you can find some much-needed background in Kailen’s former blog — http://www.teamkct.com

2. Is this blog just a fancy marketing method to help sell more books?

I’m writing this blog for the same reasons I wrote the book: to honor Kailen, to glorify God, and to help others in similar situations. In fact, I didn’t decide to launch the blog until shortly after completing the third draft of Even if you don’t. Because on that third trek through the manuscript, I was deeply convicted by an excerpt I hadn’t really noticed before:

“But even still, beneath the weight of the most staggering loss imaginable in this life, Kailen used her agony as a platform from which to proclaim the goodness of God and encourage others.”

That excerpt comes from one of the most painful parts of the story, a time when Kailen had just been dealt a devastating blow. If she was able to proclaim the goodness of God and encourage others from the deepest depths of her sorrow, then shame on me if I cannot do the same in my present agony.

I will do it. For her, for you, and for the God that gives me breath.

3.  For what audience is this blog intended?

Considering none of us are immune to pain, this blog is quite literally for everyone. I want to encourage people in all stages of life – the mother that miscarried; the boy that lost his papaw; the bereaved spouse trying to rebuild their life in a world they no longer understand; and even the man that isn’t actively grieving, but desperately seeks comforting words to share with his brother who is.

I want to help people grieve well, but more than that, I want to help people help people grieve well. It’s one of the most neglected skills in all of society: the ability to love someone while they’re in pain. Simply put, it’s a fault that must be remedied.

A brief side-note: this societal shortcoming is especially glaring in the case of young people. Young widows and widowers are an emotional minority in our culture, rarely understood and often stigmatized. Furthermore, young people, having experienced fewer losses in life, are often poorly equipped to help their peers cope with grief. As you might imagine, this is an issue close to my heart, and it’s a shadow I hope to illuminate.

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I began this post with the first paragraph from the introduction to my book. I will leave you with the final paragraph from that introduction, a fleeting glimpse into the season of my life I call the wasteland. Many of you may be enduring your own wastelands, and though it’s bleak and you feel lost, left out in the cold, I promise it gets better.

For as we’ll soon discover, grief is rarely static; it’s a journey – your journey, and mine. I hope you’ll accompany me as we fight our way home.

“Here I remain, in this empty ocean without shores, fighting the stale battles of a war I lost long ago. I often question if God made a mistake when He took the light from the world, leaving me to wander amid the shadows of cold and lifeless things, in the company of stone statues that never speak. But then again, who am I?

I was twenty-six the first time I died. And I’ve died again every day since.”